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New Photos app for OS X coming soon (pictures)

The new Photos app coming this spring sports a familiar layout with easy to use editing tools.

Jason Parker
Jason Parker has been at CNET for nearly 15 years. He is the senior editor in charge of iOS software and has become an expert reviewer of the software that runs on each new Apple device. He now spends most of his time covering Apple iOS releases and third-party apps.
Jason Parker
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1 of 10 Photo by Josh Miller/CNET

Apple's Photos app

Apple's Photos for Mac OS X Yosemite combines an iOS-like interface with advanced editing tools familiar to desktop users. CNET takes a closer look at the developer release.

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2 of 10 Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET

Familiar interface

If you're an iOS user, you'll recognize the layout of your photos that lets you switch between moments, collections and years.

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3 of 10 Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET

Albums view

When you look at the Albums view you'll have all the albums you've created at the bottom, with ways Apple has designed to help you find pictures at the top.

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4 of 10 Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET

Faces

iPhoto users will recognize the Faces feature that picks out people in your images and groups them together so you can find them.

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5 of 10 Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET

Projects

Apple gives you a number of things you can do with your images under the Projects tab.

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6 of 10 Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET

Create a new project

Click the plus sign in the upper right to create a new project. You can make holiday and gift cards, photo books, calendars and more.

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7 of 10 Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET

Adding Filters

The Photos app doesn't come with very many filters, but all are high quality from what I've seen.

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8 of 10 Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET

Adjustments

These easy sliders for adjusting brightness, colors and other attributes hide all the actual adjustments made to your photo. You can click the arrow to the right of the heading to get the specific adjustments being made.

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9 of 10 Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET

Auto level and crop (1 of 2)

Not every picture is perfect. Sometimes you take a photo at an angle and while you can manually rotate it, it often leaves gaps at the top and sides.

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10 of 10 Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET

With the Photos app, you can click the Auto button in the lower right to automatically make it level and crop the gaps out for a perfect image.

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