iPhoto 2005 Review
We finally received our copies of iPhoto 2005. around here. Some quick notes after installing it on my own machine:
The program upgrades your existing iPhoto. No clean install option (you have to delete your old iphoto if you want a clean install).
Upon first startup my old thumbnails had to be converted. My library has 12,314 files. The conversion took 25 minutes on a 1.8mhz G5.
When it finished, my new iPhoto crashed. This happened again after restarts.
I determined the problem was one or more of the many plugins I had used in my old iphoto. So I threw out the old program and the old prefs and reinstalled.
This time everything went smoothly. Startup to screen with thumbnails took a long time (over a minute), but once up scrolling on my large library was much smoother than with the old version of the program.
The search box is welcome. It will search for terms in tags, in roll titles, and photo titles. Unfortunately there is still no simple or handy way to enter tags. Keyword assistant doesn't seem to work with the new iphoto... Apple could learn quite a bit from flickr when it comes to tags and tagging. They could also learn some lessons from flickr on date views (Flickr's organizer is leagues ahead of iphoto...and believe it or not, it's written in flash). In fact Apple should just buy flickr outright and replace the photo area of .mac with it.
Speed is still an issue. Scrolling through and selecting photos is fine. The problem comes when you change a date, a keyword, or make an edit. The program seems to write files after every edit. Fine with small images, a big issue when your images are 10megs or 20megs. Also the interface is sluggish when you have complicated views. For example if you are viewing by film roll and have some rolls open, some closed and are moving around with the keyboard, the program struggles to keep up.
There is no simple way to batch change dates. This is something I do all the time and it's a bit of a pet peeve.
Batch change does not include keywords. In order to add a keyword to a photo you must add a keyword in preferences and then get info on a photo and select that keyword. Obviously Apple doesn't think of keywords as tags... this implementation like the previous one is clumsy.
The best new feature is the addition of folders. Finally I can find things (I think hierarchically). One nice feature is that selecting a folder shows all items inside all subfolders. This allows for fine grained control over the set of images displayed.... What's lacking? A simple way to sort lists of folders/albums.
The new edit tools are certainly welcome, although they could be much better. I would have appreciated a set of pre-canned controls for common problems (interior lighting, neon lighting, etc). Also I wish there were some more advanced controls (like the shadow/highlight control in Photoshop or the healing brush). Still the new controls mean that I will go to photoshop much less.
Email export still doesn't allow for control over sizes.
I found the new slideshow a bit confusing. Automatic Ken Burns Effect is selected in preferences and then there is a second box for Ken Burns Effect. on each slide. Huh? I don't understand what the big deal is with the Ken Burns Effect to begin with.
The "Share" menu is confusing. Unlike virtually every other Mac program "Print" is in the Share menu as is "Export". Why Apple is eating it's own good HI rules is beyond me.
I also had a chance to try out Picasa 2 today. While I won't be using it much (I do most of my photo stuff on my Mac and it's PC only). I think it's generally ahead of Photoshop when it comes to managing large photo collections. I basically agree with this review by David Pogue:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/technology/circuits/20stat.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1106273179-LG6QMBjfLRYbnJ34G28Zlg&pagewanted=all&position=
All in all, this version of iPhoto is definitely as step in the right direction but far from the major leap I had hoped for.
