“Two of the best photo organizers have just been updated, and I have been testing them on my collection of more than 10,000 digital photos. One is Picasa 2, which runs only on Windows and is now a free offering from Google, which purchased Picasa last year. The other is Apple Computer’s iPhoto 5
, which runs only on the Macintosh. It comes free on every new Mac. Existing Mac owners can buy it as part of the excellent $79 iLife suite, which also includes programs for organizing and editing music and videos, and for authoring DVDs,” Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret report for The Wall Street Journal.
“Both programs are packed with good features and have been significantly upgraded in their new versions. But iPhoto is the better of the two — mainly because, unlike Picasa and most other competitors, it totally frees users from understanding the computer’s file-and-folder system. With iPhoto you can organize your photos in any way you choose, regardless of where the underlying picture files are stored on the computer. This makes iPhoto much easier to use than Picasa, or any other photo organizing program I have tested,” Mossberg and Katherine Boehret report. “If you have a Windows PC, Picasa is a decent choice, as long as you understand and maintain a good system of folders on the hard disk. But Mac owners have a better overall photo organizer in iPhoto.”
Full article here.
not a hard article to write. Here, let me help you with the next one:
Apple’s *blank* beats companyX’s *blank*
…ready…GO!
^
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I love Pages and Keynote!!!!!!!!!!
There are few mysterious things… I still love Pages and Keynote!!
I can´t remember the day when I made one presentation and two pages so quickly! And so that it looks like PRO=ME
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Me so In Love!!
We still need that iVisiCalc and meProject!!!!!!!!!!!!
Frankly, I’ve been disappointed in iPhoto specifically because of the way it stores photos — getting to your actual image files in the OS is a huge pain in the ass, ‘cuz it puts them into its own little storage system.
I’m just saying. I’ve never tried Picasa.
MDN magic word: “put” – as in, where’d you put my pictures, iPhoto??!
When I need a pic from iPhoto I just drag it from the iPhoto window to the desktop. iPhoto makes a copy of it and puts it right on the desktop for my use.
Let me try.
Apple’s iPod beat’s IHop’s pancakes. WOW, you’re right gForce!!!
iPhoto kind of blows
You can export them out of iPhoto in their original file format. I’m on windows now but I know the feature is there. I can’t wait to f**King buy my Mac and leave this Wintel crap in the trash.
Yes that is true…. Why do you need to get to your files in the finder… It is much easier to export them in original format to wherever you want.
One man’s “benefit” is another’s pain in the ass. When users don’t know where their photos are actually stored, it is very easy to lose them. I’ve seen it happen many times.
When a program forces you to pay attention to where your pictures live, then you can include them when you back up your hard drive or switch computers.
Brain-dead operation may facilitate ease-of-use, but losing thousands of treasured images can be a very rude awakening.
Importing photos in iPhoto is too slow. Compared to iViewMediaPro, iPhoto is still 10 times slower. Why can’t Apple make a decent product that won’t take 1s/picture to import. I have 17,000 photos, this is a big issue for me. Of course, for 300 photos iPhoto is good enough.
Too bad the pretty slide show transitions belong to the slow picture viewer.
I don’t the fact that iPhoto can’t browse photos by directory. I have 100+ photo directories, each prefixed with date and title. If I do that with iPhoto (and I can’t simply import my directories as lists, I have to do it over by hand) and iPhoto crashes, I loose everything. The iPhoto database is a closed format, the possibilities of full access to the photos are crippled. Finder is much better ar handling a 17,000 JPG collection!
I’m at 22,000 photos on a G5 with 2gb of ram. iPhoto handles these 6 megapixel images very well. When I was on a PC, my problem was that I would edit a photo at the file level and then the photo library program couldn’t find it. I had a ton of blank photos as a result. I like the way iPhoto handles it. And you can revert to the original with a ‘right’-click of a button. Love it!
I still find iPhoto too slow to use. I only have something like 3,000 photos, and the latency is painful.
Any advice on what I should do? It seems like others here have no problems with it, even with much bigger libraries.
Any advice would be most welcome.
iphoto is better than something? googles offering must SUCK.
But iPhoto is the better of the two — mainly because, unlike Picasa and most other competitors, it totally frees users from understanding the computer’s file-and-folder system.
Hmmm. I’m not sure which Picasa Mossberg is using because the one on my computer, courtesy of Google, found every, single photo on my HD in short order, regardless of where they were originally stored. So it sure doesn’t seem to me that one needs to understand file systems in order for the program to find your pics.
The other advantage is that all photos are organized chronologically.
It probably won’t be too long before Google ports Picasa to OS X and then Mac users will be able to decide for themselves which they prefer.
I personally think Picasa kills the newest iPhoto in many different areas. I have yet to even really utilize iPhoto because it is such a pain in the ass to load libraries into it if they are on your HD but not in the iPhoto directory. And its slow, and it doesnt have as many features as Picasa.
Still, I am not going to go out and buy a PC just to use Picasa.
Advice = Import your pictures using the Image Capture program in the applications folder. Make a root folder of the YEAR of your pictures and then a date preceding the title of each folder of pictures.
Example:
2002–>……..
2003–>……..
2004–>……..
2005–>folder full of images: “05-7-4 Fourth of July Party” and folder full of images: “05-12-25 Christmas”…..etc…..
iPhoto is risky in that it can become corrupt and take your entire library down with it, forcing you to fish them out one by one. Give me a program that functions like iPhoto but lets me organize my own pictures.
Wernstrom!! err, Mossberg!! i wish i could get money by being a techie nittwitt, stating the obvious, and being carried by the WSJ
that aside, i do look at the iapps. they are geared to a good, wide range of people. and they are simple to use.
picasa sounds good, with a plethora of features and structures. maybe even winning hands down on the amount of features, compared to iphoto.
it is hard to please people as a programmer. there is always someone bitching, this program is too complicated, this feature is missing, it does not work as i want it too, this is all wrong, etc
inmaterial if your user base (current and returning) is healthy, imho.
however, i think that people misunderstand the purpose of one application. take WMP vs iTunes. WMP tries everything in its power to be the all and everything multimedia app for you, from music catalog to video whatnot (probably pictures too). iTunes plays music and has music related functions… that’s it.
the simple iapps have their definite use, and yes, for the geeks of you, it lacks certain features. then get a media asset program that does everything short of making you coffee, please. to use a half assed analogy: you can use a well made knife to make dinner, and you can use a swiss army 100-purpose-knife. you would pick a knife specific to your task, or do you choose a knife that also has a looking-glass, tooth-pick, can-opener and more? (try to sell that, popeil!)
just had to get that off my chest.
To those of you who are complaining about iPhoto:
You are a dinosaur. I photo does EVERYTHING better than picassa other than letting you actually touch you’re file. Do you really need to touch your file? Do you really need to organize it in a certain way in the finder? NO! In iphoto, you can designate keywords, or you can just do a batch change on your photos to add names in the comments section(or the title, or any other type of batch change). Now, if i want to find the pictures of my girlfriend, i just type her name and all pictures of her show up. I then do live scaling so i may look at as many as i want on the screen at once. At this point, i have one click access to posting any of them on the web, emailing, creating a presentation, exporting to any major format, having prints mailed to me, having a book made and sent, printing, editing.
Who cares if it takes a little longer to import? if you have to import your 17,000 photos, thats a one time action. Drag your pictures folder onto the iPhoto window and go to lunch. cry me a river. If you’re ever importing more than 150 photos at once, then you are out of the norm and i could see how the minute or so wait could be an annoyance. But isn’t it great that OSX is a superb multi-tasking OS? Wow, that minute is no longer wasted!
If you don’t understand the advantage of iPhoto, then you probably also don’t understand the advantage of iTunes, making you anal retentive or an old dog that can’t even learn the simplest and most amazing of new tricks.
I’m not saying iPhoto is perfect, but to say its crap just indicates a lack of understanding. To compare it to a finder-based photo organization app is an insult to the great work apple engineers have done to put it in a class by itself.
you should all be archiving your images ‘off computer’ if not ‘off site’
From iphoto you can easily export a selection of photos or an album direct to the finder to burn on cd/dvd.
Ashdog, while your Mac enthusiasm is good, your understanding of the facts is marginal. It does not sound like you’ve ever used Picassa and I further doubt that you’ve used iPhoto for other than casual use. The fact is that BOTH programs are completely inadequate for people that are serious about digital photography. Hopefully Apple had that in mind with the development of Core Image and we’ll be able to look forward to one or more Apple-branded professional programs.
For forward compatibility you should not export them as an iphoto library but as the original file type without size modification.
iPhoto will take any number of files from any number of folders in it’s own rather difficult to navigate file system, and put them into one folder using the ‘export’ command.
Modifications such as cropping and keywords will stick.
Few things:
1.) You can’t compare iPhoto which is FREE to iView Media Pro which is a $200 program. That is just a DUMB comparison.
2.) Picasa is a great piece of software for the PC and I don’t think iPhoto is that much better. Maybe slightly better, but a OS X better than Windows better, no way.
Sorry Jim, I have picassa on my Virtual PC right now, but i do not use iPhoto for professional use. I do, however, use a NIKON D1, and take many great pictures with it. As an enthusiast, i find iPhoto to fit my needs perfectly, and the workflow of Picassa doesn’t compare. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings or something.
My understanding of the facts is unquestionable. My father is a retired NYC professional photographer, and he would not use iPhoto for his business. I never claimed iPhoto was a professional tool, although its beginning to support some of the needs of pros with the full support of RAW.
For professional use, you’re going to want to use burnable folders and a separate RAID configured HD. I don’t know about other vendors, but Nikon ships with its own software for importing/viewing photos and camera control. iPhoto will never support the features pros use, and neither will Picassa. Thats just not the target market for either of these programs. As a professional, you rarely have the time to browse your old photos. The only photos you are working on are the ones for your current commission. After that, you back them up and most likely never need to see/use them again. Photoshop it, and if the AD likes it, burn and move on. I guess thats only if you’re a successful photographer who has a lot of work.
Personally I’m interested to see what apple come up with to integrate iPhoto and Spotlight. I would love to be able to access my albums/folders as saved searches (forget what they’re called).
iPhoto does a job for your joe public regular collection of photos, which is not to say it shouldn’t be better/faster etc but for what it does I think it does it pretty damn well, although it’s still not as good as itunes is in comparison.
Just for the record, iPhoto is not free. The current version of iLife is included with a Mac, but if there’s a new version you gotta spend $80 (or $2000 if you want the free computer that comes with it.)
Second, while I *can* export all my photos from iPhoto, that’s a lot of wasted time and space. iTunes lets me organize my own songs if I want to, or let iTunes organize them for me based on metadata. Why shouldn’t iPhoto give me the same choice for my pictures?