Often when people ask me what software I use, and I mention Oloneo Photoengine, the next question is, if it also works on a Mac. Regrettably, there is no Mac version, but there are ways how you can use it on MacOS quite easily. And today I will show you how to do it :)

As I don’t own a Mac computer, I did all my testing under a virtual machine, running on my PC. Suprisingly, even under this limited conditions, the Oloneo Photoengine works really nicely, and all the changes on the photos are done almost instantly, almost as quickly as running it directly under windows. So how to run it? Let’s take a look:

1. Download needed files

You will need two files for this. The first is the WineBottler (I used the latest stable release), an application that makes it possible to run windows programs on a Mac. You can get it from WineBottler webpage and it’s a free application.

The second thing you will need is the instalation package of Oloneo Photoengine, which can be found on the Oloneo webpage.

Just download both of those files to you Mac.

2. Setup WineBottler

Open the WineBottler Combo you just downloaded, and in that open up WineBottler. Here we will create the Mac application. Choose Advanced tab on the top.

 
The options you have to change here are:

– select the file that needs to be installed – PhotoEngineSetup.exe
– choose – This is an installer, execute it
– under Winetricks select – dotnet20 MS .NET 2.0
– mark the Bundle checker, as this will create a self containing application that does not require wine installation

When this is done, hit Install and choose the name for the new application and where it will be saved. Choose anything you want, I selected desktop here.

3. Go through the installation

You now have to go through two installations. First MS .NET 2.0 will be installed, as that is needed for Photoengine to run. Just click next and finish the installation. After that is done, a second installation start, this time for Photoengine. Again, just click next and normally install the program.

 
When the installation finishes, you have to choose which program starts from the ones that have been installed. Choose here PhotoEngine.exe and confirm. And also confirm the next popup about that prefix has been created.

4. Run Photoengine

In the location you specified, you will now have a new App, called Photoengine. It’s around 640Mb big, as it includes everything you just installed, plus few more things :) You can now open it.

 
And now you are running Oloneo Photoengine on your Mac. I would suggest using Desktop as the place to store the results, as that is the easies accessible folder that is shared between Win and Mac. If you save it to a different place from inside Photoengine, you may not find the file so easily, as it uses a different structure of folders, that is not accessible from the system.

Limitations

There is only one limitation I found, and it can cause problems to some of you. The problem is, that Photoengine here runs only as a 32bit application, not as a 64bit. This may prevent you from saving bigger files as the program will just run out of memory. The max you can do is around 25Mpix images, 36Mpix from the Sony a7r will not work.

This will be probably fixed over time, when a version of Winebottler that support 64bit is released. If I find other way to run it, so it supports 64bit, I will do a new guide.

Even so, I think you should give it a try, as you can get a 30day trial of Photoengine for free.