The Battle for All the Photos
Friday, June 27, 2014 at 1:19PM 
Today The Loop broke the news that Apple will (or really, did long ago) cease development of Aperture, their pro app for photo management and processing.
The new Photos app will also replace iPhoto, giving users a more seamless experience on Apple devices. The app will allow you to edit and search your entire photos library in the cloud on any of your Apple devices.
“Edit and search your entire photo library.” Sounds great, although I suspect there are some asterisks. Can we add any photos to this library, or just ones we took with our telephones?
My last post was about how Adobe is using its Lightroom mobile apps to add mobile editing and organization (but no search yet) to Lightroom. Not for all your photos though—only those you choose to sync. But the default setting on the mobile apps is to automatically upload every photo you take.
John Nack, formerly of Adobe, now at Google, recently wrote about (and demoed) how Google is doing the same thing with Google+. Google clearly wants you to consider Google+ a home for all your photos, inasmuch as they can remember it exists or consider it anything but a mistake.
Each implementation is slightly different. Should the master photo file be on your computer (Lightroom) or in the cloud (Google)? Should you be able to add photos from anywhere (Google), or should this service be tied to a device/app (Apple/Lightroom)? Should you be the paying customer (Lightroom, Apple), or should advertisers (Google)?
The consistent vector here is this: All your photos in the cloud, available and editable anywhere, anytime.
Ubiquitous, non-destructive, metadata-powered photo management is going to be great, and three powerhouses are competing to do it right. So while some may mourn the discovery of Aperture’s long-dead body, I’m excited for the very near future of photography.
Reader Comments (1)
All this cloud stuff is cool and all, and I'll find utility in it. But I have to be honest and say that I have very little interest...or desire for that matter, to upload and/or store over 100k (1.2TB)of my personal images to the cloud. I just don't want them all up there, even if bandwidth wasn't an issue.