What’s new in Photos
Most of the improvements in the Photos app are for Memories, one of the ways in which Apple surfaces photos you may not have seen for a while and packages them up as a slideshow.
There has always been a degree of customisation available in Memories, but iOS 15 takes it much further. It adds lots of new songs to choose from as a soundtrack, and if you subscribe to Apple Music you can choose from tens of millions of songs in the Apple Music library. The Apple Music integration goes beyond just allowing you to choose songs from its library, however. It will make personalised suggestions by combining curated suggestions from ‘experts’ with your listening habits and the content of your photos. For example, it might suggest songs that were popular at the time the photos were taken, or in the location, or from an artist you saw at a concert where you took the photos.
Pet project
There are more memory types now, too, including child-focused memories, trends over time, and pet memories that recognise individual dogs and cats.
Memories enables you to pause, replay the last photo, or jump ahead. The music adjusts automatically so that transitions always happen on the beat. You can also change a song, or remove photos, or change the Memory Look, and it all happens in real time.
Talking of Memory Looks, there are 12 which Apple says are inspired by ‘the art of cinematography’. They analyse each photo and video in a memory and apply contrast and colour adjustments so that they all have the same look.
Photos also gets the new ‘Shared with You’ section that displays photos and videos that have been shared with you in Messages. You can choose to save them from there to your Library. The new info pane in Photos will tell you who sent the photo or video.
The way in which third-party apps work with Photos has also been improved. The image picker that enables you to choose photos from your library in apps like Messages, now allows you to specify the order in which they will be sent. And when you grant apps access to specific photos in your library, the apps can offer simpler selection workflows.
One new feature that will be welcomed by anyone who has waited days for iCloud Photo Library to sync on a new device is that the initial iCloud sync is now faster, according to Apple.