Dear friend,

My name is Anders; I'm the CEO of Brattoo Propaganda Software. In my last letter I told you about some updates made on Photos Tagger and some about the very appreciated feature Perceptive Mode in Duplicate Annihilator. I have received some great feedback which I will later address in this letter. In the last few letters, I also focused on features in Apple Photos that helps us in organizing things, like smart albums and keywords. I believe it is time to also focus on quality and how to easily adjust our photos. I hope you will enjoy this.

Updates on Photos Tagger – now with color

I previously mentioned our new application, Photos Tagger, which extracts all the hidden metadata about your photos and their contents from the Photos database and assigns it to your photos as keywords, making photos organization much easier.

As it turns out, Apple Photos miss some features that can really be useful and one of those is color tagging; so, we added that feature. Photos Tagger now extracts the most common colors from your photos and assigns them as keywords as well. So now, with the help of Photos Tagger, you can search for, and locate that "red car" or "pink tree japan" photo that you are looking for.

We have also received feedback that names, especially in French version of Photos, seems to be divided in several keywords; so, we have added extra logging so with your feedback we can find and fix unexpected behaviors like this.

All these new features are implemented in Photos Tagger v1.2.0 which is available today and you can download it from here: https://brattoo.com/#photostagger

Duplicate Annihilator – Perceptive Mode

For those of you who have missed it; Perceptive mode is a great new feature in Duplicate Annihilator that allows you to detect duplicates "visually" based on what the photos look "like" but still keeping the photos with the highest resolution as the originals. Another great thing is that, Perceptive Mode even works with photos that are only located in iCloud and even when offline.

Duplicate Annihilator for Photos v2.0 with Perception Mode is available for download today. https://brattoo.com/#photos

Making photos look great

For so long we have focused on organizing photos and getting rid of duplicates, but we also want them to look great; don't we? Editing photos is a complete science. I have a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Arts Technology and over 25 years of experience in editing photos but I still have things to learn; and I would not describe myself as a professional. Still, I have some tricks up my sleeve that I would like to share with you.

Auto Enhance – the undervalued tool

In Apple Photos you have this very helpful tool called Auto Enhance which can be located in the Image->Auto Enhance menu or by using the key shortcut Command+E. This is a super simple tool that will mostly improve the quality and colors of your photos. It is not like a professional photo retouch but it will increase the average quality of your photos and it is very undervalued. Try it. Since in Photos 3.0, you can also use the Auto Enhance tool on many photos at the same time. So, if you want a quick improvement with a minimal effort, you should try it.

White Balance – just what you want?

We have all seen them, those winter photos that are all too blue and those indoor photos all too red. These behaviors are caused by different light sources, like blue skies or candles. In real life, our eyes compensate for this; but digital cameras are not that smart. This is why we get those bluish, or greenish and reddish photos.

First, to access the edit tools use the menu option Image->Show Edit Tools or simply hit the Return key.

In the edit view, you will find different adjustment settings to the right. We will focus on the White Balance adjustment, this time. Click on the small triangle next to the White Balance label and a few settings will appear. To keep things simple, I will focus on two methods, Neutral Gray and Skin Tone, which usually, is exactly what you need. You choose which method to use in the popup just below the White Balance label.

After you have selected either Natural Gray or Skin Tone, you click on the small pipette tool icon which is located to the left of the popup. Now it is time to make a color sample which the white balance will be based on. If you selected Neutral Gray then click on any part of the image that should be gray, or at least in the neutral white-gray-black spectrum. The colors of the image will now be recalculated based on the color tint of the point you clicked on. When you select Skin Tone it works the same way but click on skin in the photo to sample the color. When the adjustment is done you can adjust the warmth of the photo by dragging the yellow slider below the popup.

This newsletter and previous letters

Several of our readers have requested that we resend previous emails so that they could catch up on earlier tips and information. All previous emails are available online in our Newsletter section at https://newsletter.brattoo.com

The free apps section

As I have mentioned in previous letters we have received requests on how to automate some tasks in Apple Photos or tasks related to photos. Those tasks might be tedious to work out manually but are easy for us to solve. The apps include a tool to set the Photos Titles based on filename (with or without file extension), a tool to copy and apply GPS coordinates between photos and finally a utility to set the correct file dates on image files based on the photo date stored in the metadata within the image files. You’ll find all our free apps at https://free.brattoo.com.

Upgrades

Finally I would just like to tell you that our upgrade discount for Duplicate Annihilator for Photos is still available. For only $4.95 you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to Duplicate Annihilator for Photos and for just one dollar ($1.00) more you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to the Duplicate Annihilator Toolbox including a family pack! This means that you get five licenses for you and your family for all versions of Duplicate Annihilator including iPhoto, Aperture, iOS and Photos for only $5.95.

Get the upgrade from: https://upgrade.brattoo.com

London calling – a personal request

I try to keep those newsletters personal and therefore I have a personal request. I'm visiting London with my daughters, 5 and 7, in June and if you have any suggestions on what we should see or do then I would be really glad to hear from you. It would be really awesome.

Thank you for your time, I hope that you found this email informative. If you have any feedback, suggestions, questions or ideas then please reply to this email. I read all emails and reply to them in person.

Best Regards,
Anders, CEO and Founder, Brattoo Propaganda Software