If you already updated to PhotoDesk 3.2, you may have noticed that among several very cool new features, it also removes the ability to download images except for your own.

This is a new App Store requirement from Apple. Apps on the App Store are not allowed to download things from third parties, except if they possess an official license allowing them to do so. Instagram does not give out these licenses, so Apple required me to remove all download functionality from PhotoDesk.

This means that you can't drag and drop images to your desktop anymore, or select a list of images and download them.

However, you can still
- Sync your own images in a folder on your file system (you made these yourself, obviously you have all the rights to those images, you can download them)
- Collect images into albums within PhotoDesk. Within those albums, you can collect images much like in a folder on your Desktop.


I'm terribly sorry about this change, and I've tried everything I could. PhotoDesk 3.2 was in Apple Review for almost 2 months because they didn't want to release it with download functionality, and I repeatedly talked to them to get them to allow it, but they wouldn't budge.

So with a delay of almost 2 months, PhotoDesk 3.2 is there, but doesn't allow you to download images anymore. I'm truly sorry about this.

I still hope that I may be able to get permission from Instagram and re-enable this function in one of the next updates.

Also, this affects other Mac Instagram clients too, as far as I understand it.

PhotoDesk version 3 launched this thursday, and the release has been nothing short of amazing. I'm really, really happy how everything has worked out.

The feedback has been superb so far. Based on Twitter, Emails, and Mac App Store reviews, people seem to love the update.

My most favorite Instagram client for Mac, Photodesk, by @terhechte has been updated to 3.0. Looks great, Benedikt! https://t.co/XDJH50Uk6n

— Andreas (@Zettt) October 17, 2014

@photodesk_app Excellent Upgrade to Yosemite! I love it!

— Adrián Gómez (@adriangomezme) October 16, 2014

What's more, I'm proud to say that PhotoDesk is currently featured in the Mac App Store. Which is something I would only have dreamed about. As a result, the app is currently high in the Top App Store charts, close to breaking into the top twenty (U.S App Store). All this is mind blowing and makes me happy.

So cool! #Photodesk for #Instagram is featured on the #Mac App Store, next to #Things & #1password. Awesome! pic.twitter.com/4zOBTBMx5P

— Benedikt Terhechte (@terhechte) October 17, 2014

People love the new way the news work in PhotoDesk 3. However, some find that the old way of doing things works much better for their specific use case. So the next update will contain advanced settings to activate the old news again. I will also work on an extending the dark mode to cover more areas of the app.

All in all, thanks for believing in PhotoDesk, thanks for the fantastic reviews!

Benedikt

After several months of hard work I'm very happy to announce that Photodesk 3 has just been released. Not so coincidentally on the same day as Mac OS X 10.10, Yosemite was released. This is because large parts of PhotoDesk 3 have been rewritten to utilize the new functionality that Yosemite offers.

As you can see, PhotoDesk 3 offers a brand new UI that looks much more modern than the old UI. However, this also means I had to stop supporting Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 as the lack of certain features of these was holding me back.

In addition to the UI revamp and the enhanced functionality, PhotoDesk 3 also offers several new features and functions. I will list the most exciting ones here. For a detailed list, have a look at the changelog / history.

Brand New Yosemite UI

The Photodesk UI has been updated to modern standards, many views have been completely rewritten to make use of the cool new Yosemite features. However, it also looks really good on Mavericks and Mountain Lion.

Insights

You want to know, which of your images people liked or commented the most or how many images you uploaded recently? Photodesk now includes figures giving you insights into your own Instagram account usage.

Search & Filter Facilities

Photodesk 3 offers a fantastic search engine to comb through vast amounts of images. You can now create specific searches for every aspect of an image (Only images shot after date xx and before date xy, only with tagged users, only those which contain this text, etc). Combined with the “Load More”, ability, which lets Photodesk download up to 20.000 images, you can find the proverbial needle in the haystack.

Folders

You can now create folders in the sidebar to sort and structure your Favorite Friends, Favorite Tags, Favorite Places, and Favorite Images. Just right click anywhere, create a folder, and put your items in it.

Tags

Photodesk 3 makes it much easier to find specific tags, related tags, interesting tags for your business, and much more. The new Tag View is an impressive tool for anybody serious about Instagram.

Places

Need to find images in a specific place in the world? Would like to see which places are currently trending? The new Photodesk 3 places view makes all these things a breeze.

Yosemite Today Widget

You can now see the six most recent feed images in the Notification Center, utilizing the brand new Yosemite Today Widget extension.

History

The last 250 images or user profiles that you visited are stored in a visual history, which makes it easy to find that one image again.

Integrated News

Instagram News, Photodesk News, Favorite Friends Updates, new follow requests, it's all in one handy news interface now.

Integrated Search

Just type something into the new search bar at the top, it will search for tags, locations and users with that name.

Sync Finder Tags

Every image/video you put into a folder is automatically stored on disk and Finder tags will be added for the album's name and any folder that the album is in. This makes it easy to find items that you downloaded right in the Finder with specific tags applied to them. You can activate this in the preferences under advanced.

Much, much more

See the changelog for all the Features not listed here, like revamped Detail View, Better Retina Support, Zoomable Images, Full Size image list mode, Secure Networking, Grouping, and much more

I really hope you like the new release. I poured a lot of hard work into it.

PhotoDesk 2.3.7 introduced a very handy new feature that is a key stone of improving your Instagram account in order to gain more followers. The feature lets you easily add more tags to your images, so that they can be found better. This post will explain how to achieve that.

Why would you do this?

Many people search Instagram for photos that belong to a particular tag. Either directly in the Instagram app, or with a useful tool like PhotoDesk. You can tap into this by adding many tags to your pictures. Research has shown that the more tags you add, the more likes you'll get. That's why you'll frequently see images that have many, many tags in the list of popular images.

However, writing all these tags by hand is cumbersome and takes time, especially on a mobile device keyboard (like the iPhone keyboard or an Android keyboard).

This tutorial shows how to do the same right from within PhotoDesk, without having to type much.

How it works

Instagram has a great function, that PhotoDesk utilizes. Instagram does not let third party apps like PhotoDesk upload or edit any images. But what it does allow, is adding comments to an existing image. If this comment contains tags, and you're the author of that image (that is, if you're commenting on one of your own images), then any tags that are part of your comment will be added to your image. So just by commenting with tags, you can add additional tags to your image.

I'll now explain two different methods for doing this.

Favorite Sidebar Tags

The first way, to achieve this, are favorite sidebar tags. Favorite tags allow you to define tags, that you really like, within PhotoDesk. These tags appear in the left sidebar and give you easy notification whenever new images for this tag are being added.

PhotoDesk 2.3.7 introduces a new feature that allows you to add all of your current favorite sidebar tags to an image.

So if you have the sidebar tags #newyork, #manhattan, and #bestcity and you want to tag your new uploaded image with these tags, this is how you do it:

1. Go to “My Pictures”
2. Select the image you want to tag (you can also select multiple images)
3. In the popup menu, click “Add Favorite Tags…”
4. PhotoDesk will show you the tags that it is going to post, and ask for confirmation
5. Click “Yes, post Comment” to finish the process.

Next, PhotoDesk will automatically post the requested comment to the selected image(s).

This only works for tags that you added to your sidebar, not for normal Favorite Tags.

Comment Templates

Comment Templates is a great PhotoDesk feature that allows you to pre-define text snippets that can be added to as a comment to any image. You can even automatically replace certain words in there (like the author of the image in question). Obviously, Comment Templates are also a great way to add tag comments to your images.

They work especially well if you wish to post different tags to your images, based on some kind of category that the image in question belongs to. Say you generally post images that are either about “Travelling” or about “Videogames”. Then you can simply create two comment templates with the following contents:

Travelling:
#travel #vacation #holiday #travelling #world #nomad #asia #europa #america #usa #china #australia

Videogames:
#PS4 #DS #XBOX #Mario #Link #GTA

You create these Comment Templates as follows:
1. Select “File” in the Main Menu
2. Select “Manage Templates…”
3. Click the “Add” button
4. Enter the title of the template (say “Videogames”)
5. Enter the text of the template (say “#PS4 #DS #XBOX #Mario #Link #GTA”)
6. Click the “Save” button.

Then, after you posted one or more pictures, you simply:

1. Right click the image in question
2. Select “Comment 1 Item”
3. Select your desired template (say “Videogames”)

Now PhotoDesk will automatically post the requested tags as a comment to your image.

Thanks for your time!

Benedikt

I couple of days ago, PhotoDesk 2.3.2 was released. This was a minimal bug fix release for 2.3.1 which had an issue where the maps support would not work anymore after installing the app from the App Store (it worked fine when I submitted it, but due to a technical glitch it ceased to work during installation).

2.3.2 (as well as 2.3.1, then) brought an improvement to the like popup that appears when you want to see all the likes for an image. Where, previously, you would only see the name of the user who liked the image, now you can see the avatar, the username, and the full name. In addition to that, there's also the 'Fast User Preview' which allows you to quickly like back someone.

Feature for liking back

Now that the 'Fast User Preview' is part of the like box, there's a great and simple new workflow in PhotoDesk for quickly liking back users:

1. Click the 'All Likes' button to display the list of users who liked your post.
2. A new popover will appear that displays the newest uploads from this user.
3. Just pick one, or several of his images and hit the 'Like Heart' to like him back.

See it for yourself:

The new process takes only a couple of seconds.

This is just one example of many of how PhotoDesk helps you to quickly manage your Instagram account.

Benedikt

Maps on Mavericks

PhotoDesk nee InstaDesk 2.3 has just hit the Mac OS X App Store. The most notable enhancement in this version is the support for maps and places so that you can see all the images that appear in a specific place. Images are being displayed on a map, so that you can easily see where exactly they were shot. This features has all the bells and whistles that you would expect.

In addition to that, this release also brings a couple of other nice features that I'll copy verbatim from the changelog:

• Added a new filter mode. It allows you to filter the current visible images based on type (image / video), whether they contain geo information, amount of likes, and amount of comments.
• Added a new preferences that allows you to set the size of the font that is being used for the image icon views
• Added more keyboard navigation options to the icon views:
  1. Left Arrow now takes the selection to the next element on the left
  2. Right Arrow now takes the selection to the next element on the right

That way, you can navigate through images and like them accordingly without touching the mouse.
Important, the mouse hover has priority over the visible selection. So if you have one item selected, and you hover over another item, the hovered item will be liked / unliked if you press 'L'. So when you want to use the keyboard to hover through your images and like / open them, make sure that you're not accidentally hovering over an image.

Finally, this release should be more stable. The big memory rewrite in 2.2 introduced a lot of subtle bugs that took some time to find and fix. But with 2.3 I've taken a long amount of time to test and fix.

I hope you like this release!

Cheers,
Benedikt