It’s not a huge update, but it preps the way for the upcoming transition to the long-awaited OS X Photos app.
On Thursday, Apple released iPhoto 9.6.1. The update, a 1.14 gigabyte download available via OS X’s Software Update/App Store feature, offers the following fixes and changes:
-Improves compatibility when migrating iPhoto libraries to the new Photos app in the OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 (available this spring).
-Fixes an issue that caused iPhoto to display only the first 25 images in a Facebook album.
-Fixes an issue that could cause iPhoto to become unresponsive when printing an image.
As we have known for months, the upcoming Photos for OS X app for the Mac is designed to be a replacement for iPhoto and Aperture, both of which Apple ceased developing last year.
Photos for OS X is an all new photo management app that’s been designed to integrate deeply with Photos for iOS. It introduces a Yosemite-style design that emphasizes flatness and translucency, and it works alongside iCloud Photo Library, streamlining photo availability across all of a user’s devices.
Reviews of the Photos for OS X app have suggested that it’s a vast improvement over iPhoto, with better photo editing tools and faster speeds, but it has been criticized for lacking many of the professional editing tools that were found within Aperture.
It is not clear when OS X 10.10.3 with the Photos app might see a public release, but thus far, the software is available to both developers and public beta testers. Developers have received four OS X 10.10.3 betas, and public beta testers have had access to two updates.
iPhoto 9.6.1 requires OS X 10.10 or later to install and run.