Changes & Fixes for Photos within Yosemite!

Question

Greetings!
I am a semi-professional photographer who was VERY excited for the new Photos app to take place of iPhoto within Yosemite. (It was time for an overhaul!)
Many of the features are incredible, just what we needed! I for one, don't need the ability (most of the time) of transferring photos around from my phone, tablet, computer, etc. but totally understand the value in having this new platform linked with iCloud. Overall, it's very well done! Especially all of the new editing tools (keep them coming!) The more, the better.
...With that being said, I'm finding that Photos has some fundamental issues with it's user interface & organizational tools for people who edit their photos using Photos. The short answer from most people is "Photos, isn't for professional editing" - I understand that! However, I've been able to achieve some amazing results with iPhoto in years past using RAW files & love how simple it is when compared to programs like Lightroom/Aperture/etc.
Below, I'm going to highlight a variety of simple, but crucial things I'd REALLY like to see in future updates of the Photos program. Some are very simple but completely necessary; as I mentioned. (Hopefully the good folks working on this program at Apple are already adding these features! ..but I just wanted to make myself heard & get some feedback)
1. The ability to zoom in & out of a photo using the "scroll button" on my mouse - I'm not sure why I have to manually select the "zoom" bar at the top of the screen every time I'm zooming in/out of a photo that I'm editing within Photos. This is a basic feature, that needs to be addressed/fixed. Instead of zooming in/out, it simply moves the photo up+down. Very annoying. Additionally, where did the smaller zoom "window" go, showing your zoom factor? (In iPhoto, there was a smaller window that would pop up while zooming that allowed you to see where you were actually zoomed, within the entire frame of the photo you were viewing; this was very helpful - Please bring this feature back!)
2. Please add a plethora of options to the "Preferences" section of Photos! At a bare minimum, add in all of the old options that were included in the Preferences section of iPhoto... For example, I can't even change the background color of the program at this point. It's white when your viewing photos & black when your editing them.... In iPhoto, you were able to select an overall color ranging from white-black (the entire greyscale) for the background color of the program. I can't stand the white background (I'm sure I'm not the only one!) - I understand the reasoning, you want to be able to differentiate between viewing photos & editing photos; hence the different background colors; but give us (the users!) the ability to change this if we want... It just seams like there are hardly any options in the preferences tab of Photos - Hopefully this will be updated with lots of choices, in the near future.
**Just fixing/adding more options & customizable settings will really, really help this app - Maybe I'm missing something? But at this point, Photos needs some very basic features, immediately; to make it user friendly. As mentioned above,I really hope the wonderful people at Apple are diligently working on this, if they are going to dump Aperture & iPhoto in the future. As a colleague mentioned to me earlier, it's almost as if they just released Photos, knowing that it was missing all sorts of basic features (which is fine) as long as they intend to update them in the near future & over time! (as they always do..)  BUT let us know that they are missing & your working on them.. Haha. Jease!
Thanks again,
A loyal customer & Apple user
Mike G.
iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), iOS 8.3

Answer 1

Regarding the white and black background...   I, too, am very bothered by the glaringly white background.  I much, Much, MUCH prefer viewing photos against a black background.  I sent a Feedback request to Apple regarding this.
Question for you:  When you maximize the Photos window to Full Screen, does the background display as White or Black?  On my Mac, the background is White whether the Photos window is fullscreen or not.  But yesterday I was in the Apple Store and tried Photos on the new 12" Macbook, and when I switched Photos to full screen the background went black!  This was NOT edit mode, it was just the photo viewing mode.  (that is, I selected a photo and pressed SPACE bar to open it, but not the RETURN key to edit it).