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Friday, January 30, 2009

Rediscovering iPhoto

I stopped by the Apple Store at Stockton and Market last night on the way home from work and picked up the new version of iLife '09. Since I started shooting pictures with my DSLR, I haven't really needed iPhoto much but I still pick up the new versions when they come out. This time is different.

I really, really like the new features of iPhoto and may have to start using it more if Apple decides not to add the fun stuff to Aperture. Because we all know that pros never like to have fun while they work.

The "Places" feature of iPhoto is probably my favorite new feature. Just tag a photo with a location and it plops down a little red pin on the map, provided by Google, of course. Very neat.

"Faces" is also very neat, but I'm finding it to be time consuming marking all the people in my photos with the correct names. But it's fun! I spent about 3 hours last night playing with Places and Faces. Although, oddly, iPhoto seems to think my step-father doesn't exist. Or he's an unrecognizable alien. No matter how many photos I marked with his name Faces still couldn't find the rest of the shots in my library with him in it. Mom, are you sure he's human?

The new integration with Flickr is also very, very nice. No more third-party plug-ins just to upload my photos to Flickr. Now I do it directly from iPhoto just by clicking a button. And for you Facebook freaks iPhoto will now upload directly to your account also.

The editing and enhancement features still aren't as powerful as Aperture, which might keep me using that for a while longer, but since I'm getting more and more shots "in camera," as the pros say, I don't need as much enhancement these days. Except for some of those pictures I took at the zoo last weekend. But I promised not to talk about that...

For me the improvements to iPhoto alone are well worth the $80 price for iLife '09.

2 comments:

  1. That's funny!! Try being VERY consistent in how you enter his name. Maybe that's the problem.

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  2. I have been. The problem is iPhoto simply doesn't seem to detect him at all.

    The way it works is when you're viewing a photo iPhoto places a square around the face of the person with a place to enter a name. For EO, iPhoto just never sees him. Ergo, he's an alien.

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