Brings pro power to Apple Photos

First of all to get the bona fides out of the way, I am a professional photo retoucher with more than 20 years experience. I spend most of my day in Photoshop and Bridge, and my work has appeared in most major magazines including Glamour, Time, Marie Claire, etc. I was a huge Aperture fan and was very disappointed when Apple discontinued the product. While I am a big fan of Photoshop, Lightroom gives me fits with its terrible user interface. So I exported my thousands of photos out of Aperture and have been using Bridge and Photoshop for the most part for my pro work. For my personal photos I switched to Apple Photos, but have missed Aperture’s ability to do quick, easy edits on images right in my organization tool.

I bought Intensify a few days ago basically to try out the Photos extension capability. Initially I tried a few presets and was not impressed. Then I switched to the “Adjust” mode and WOW, there is a lot of power packed into this inexpensive app. With layers and masking, I can apply my color corrections and adjustments selectively, and the tools give a pro-level of control over all the settings. The UI is very well done, and it is easy to apply the edits, which is important to me. While I will still always use Photoshop for complex retouching, when adjusting my personal photos I want something quick and easy but gives me pro-power. While you can use this as a stand-alone app, I really bought it for the Photos extension capability, and in that respect it excels. I love how you can preview the before after with one click, add vignettes easily and everything can be customized. I really feel like I have my Aperture replacement at long last with this combination of Intensify and Photos. No, Photos doesn’t give me the organization capability that Aperture had, but nearly all the photo editing power is here with Intensify. Looking forward to seeing where MacPhun takes this product in the future.

PatriotUSA about Intensify