With roughly 2 millions apps available in the App Store, sometimes all you need is something to tell you what’s good. Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac
Whether you like great time-wasting games, want to experience the beautiful photography that was once popular on Instagram, or want to preserve your favorite memories in video, this week we have some awesome apps to check out.
“Memories” from Maroon 5 can be the background music of your Memories. Photo: Apple Music
Maroon 5 is reportedly allowing iPhone owners to use the band’s new single “Memories” as the soundtrack when they build mini-movies from images in the Photos app.
Apple calls all these collections Memories, so the connection is obvious.
This wasn't taken on an iPhone, but it could have been. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Black-and-white photos aren’t just regular photos with the color taken out. Or rather, they are exactly that, but they are also more than that. A B&W portrait can seem to say more about the subject than a colorful version, for instance. B&W is also ideal for showing more graphic images. Take a color photo of scaffolding and it looks super-dull. Take the same photo in B&W, jack up the contrast, and it becomes a stark grid — way more interesting to look at.
There’s much more to taking a B&W photo than just removing the color. For instance, did you know that a color filter will have a startling effect on a B&W photo? Let’s take a look at some of the tricks to capturing and editing stunning black-and-white images.
Apple's phone-only training covers the iOS and macOS versions of Photos. But a Today at Apple training session might be better. Photo: Apple
Apple is once again offering one-on-one tutorials on photo editing. Oddly though, these training sessions are given over the phone.
There are grounds to question the usefulness of a lesson in which neither the teacher nor the student can see what the other is doing. Perhaps an in-person Today at Apple group session would be a better option.
After being around since 2002, the Apple photo printing service is going away. Photo: Apple
Mac users can still print pictures from the Photos app to Apple’s online Photo Print Products service, but only for a couple of more weeks. It’s being discontinued at the end of September.
iPhone and iPad users, there’s nothing to see here. This service never made the jump to iOS.
The Photos app in macOS High Sierra comes packed with great new features. Photo: Cult of Mac
In macOS High Sierra, the built-in Photos app packs some great new tools as well as lots of small improvements. It brings better organization, new editing tools (like selective color and curves), and extended integration with third-party apps.
Check out all the new features and improvements in Apple’s Photos app.
If Exify can't tell you about it, you don't need to know it. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Pick a photo on your iPhone. Any photo. Can you tell me where and when you took it? Of course — that’s easy. But can you tell me the shutter speed of that photo? What about your elevation when you took it? Could you show me a histogram of the photo’s exposure? If you have Icon Factory’s Exify installed, then the answer is “Yes.” You can get to all that info, and a whole lot more, with a couple of taps.