Apple may have finally solved the Mac user's dilemma of where to store and organize photos with its new Photos app, reports the Verge.

iPhoto has been the tool for people to manage their photo library on a Mac for well over a decade. Now, Apple is discontinuing that software and phasing out Aperture in favor of bringing the iPhone and iPad photo storing tools to the Mac.

Here are three important things to consider when Photos for OS X:

1. If you use the iCloud Photo Library feature, which syncs all your photos across all your devices, you will probably need to buy more iCloud Drive storage.

2. Every image taken with your iPhone or imported into the new Photos app is backed up to your iCloud Drive so that sharing on all your devices is possible.

3. If you don't want to use the iCloud Photo Library, you can use the new Photos app as an iPhoto replacement. You will have to use the My Photo Stream feature for syncing images on all your devices.

How Photos for OS X Works

When you use Photos on your Mac, you'll see all photos as they appear in iOS -- photos organized by date and location. You can zoom in to see a particular picture or view a year overview by zooming out. You can see every photo as a small thumbnail to navigate through hundreds of photos at a time.

The most notable thing about the new app is you can now store every image on your iPhone in your iCloud Drive. To save storage space, users have the option to save full images in iCloud while smaller, optimized images can be displayed on your Mac and mobile devices. If you want the full size image, simply download it. If you don't trust Apple to keep your original photos safe in iCloud (you may recall the iCloud celebrity nude photo hacking last year), you can set up the Photos app on your Mac to store the original, full-size images locally. You can choose the optimized setting on your iOS devices to save storage space.

Photos will import both JPG and RAW files from digital cameras and treat them the same as iPhone photos. Once you import photos from your camera, Photos for OS X makes it nearly impossible to locate the original file in the Finder, even original images are stored on your computer rather than iCloud. If you want full control over your images, it is best to save original files in Finder and import the shots into Photos for editing and sharing.

The new Photos app for OS X has nearly every feature included in iPhoto for editing, creating calendars and books, using face detection and more. Best of all, Apple has made the cloud-syncing solutions simpler and more user-friendly.

Photos for OS X is more familiar to iOS and lightweight than iPhoto or Aperture. You have the same set of controls, effects and filters found on iOS. Everything is synced the second it's done.

The iPhoto and Aperture apps will live on currently, though are no longer being developed by Apple, according to the Verge. Photos is the new iPhoto. Aperture users can continue to use the software to make more advanced edits, but the edits won't sync over to Photos and vice versa.

Apple hasn't announced when Photos for OS X will be released to the general public.

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