By Graham K. Rogers

A new and simple free app from MacPhun, Filters for Photos, has appeared on the Mac App Store. As well as the standalone app, this also works as an extension within Apple's Photos app.

There have been several good apps for those interested in photography on the Mac in recent times, especially Priime Styles, Polarr, Pixelmator and Affinity Photo. Each has its own special attractions and with these, users can make almost all the adjustments they want. Some of the apps also have the additional attraction that they can be used as extensions in Photos, although some have more features than others. With this in mind, I might also add on the excellent Intensify and Tonality from MacPhun.

There are some apps for the Mac with simpler feature sets and one of those I have had for a while is CameraBag. Like Analaog this features filter sets so that a user may adjust any image quickly and easily. Just arrived on the Mac App Store is a free app, called Filters for Photos, which comes from MacPhun (usually a good sign as far as I am concerned).

This is a free app and as it comes provides 15 filters for users. An advantage is that this may also be used directly from within Apple's Photos editing app as an extension.

Nothing in this life is really free, so we accept (up to a point) the intrusions of advertising. With Filters for Photos, when I started this as a standalone app, a panel informed me about the 15 free filters and asked for my details (name, email) to subscribe to a newsletter and unlock 15 more.

Like many other MacPhun apps, this has a full-screen (black) panel into which an image can be dropped. I did this and immediately, in the same style as other MacPhun apps, the image was shown with thumbnail versions of the alternative filters below. As each filter was selected, so the main image changed and sliders appeared to the right of the main image: different depending on the filter.

Above the image were two options: Original and Compare. Clicking on the former showed the initial image, while compare showed the original and current filter choice side by side.

When I added the extension in Photos, the same interface was available, so I was working on the original image - no need to export first - right away. The interface was identical apart from a "Get More Filters" button in the standalone version. I may well do that.

MacPhun appear to be making good use here of technologies thye have honed in their other excellent graphics apps and despite my reservations about the newsletter, Filters for Photos makes a lot of sense and is highly recommended, particularly for users new to Macs and the Photos app.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.