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not a hard article to write. Here, let me help you with the next one:

Apple's *blank* beats companyX's *blank*

...ready...GO!

^

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

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?

You can organize your photos in iPhoto chronologically too. In fact, there is a calendar button that you can hit and it allows you to filter the viewed photos down by the dates/months you select. Dead simple. No need for a tray, or a useless collage button, or 2 burn CD buttons with little difference to each. All the buttons require you set up accounts with several other services, whereas iPhoto uses the .mac account for everything. Its not even easy to edit the info associated with each picture, like name and comments. A menu command or contextual menu is needed for that. You can star pictures, but not give them an actual rating. Crashes often(or that might just be my copy of windows). You have to apply each edit before adjusting the next one, which really is a pain.

That said, its good for a windows program, with smooth transitions between different UIs and a decent look. But seriously, enough with the wizards. I hate having to read instructions for everything, including what should be the most simple of tasks.

iphoto kind of blows,

Agreed. I never use iPhoto for the simple reason that it needs to maintain its own little library of my pictures. So I either have each picture taking up twice as much space as it needs to or I get rid of my HD accessible copy and have to rely on iPhoto each time I want to do anything at all with a picture. For that reason, I've taken to using GraphicConverter's file browser to sift through photos. I also like the fact that GC shows thumbnails of the folder along with a blowup of the selected file. With iPhoto, you get one or the other, but you can't have both. If Apple would address those two issues, both of which could be handled by adding a preference for doing things one way or the other so people who like the current system wouldn't find it suddenly changed, I would switch to iPhoto in a heartbeat. Until then, I just find it too bothersome.

iphoto kind of blows, Shempzilla and others,

If you want to edit a photo in Photoshop, you can set the iPhoto prefs to automatically open the photo in the editor of your choice when you double-click. If you want to get a copy of the photo to put somewhere else, just drag it from the iPhoto window to anywhere else (another app, the finder, etc.). If you want to get direct access to all your photos all at once, just go into your iPhoto Library folder, type command+F and search for files with kind "Image" and whatever other criteria you want. Then copy from the results window. Of course, this exercise seems silly when you can just open iPhoto and drag the pics you want from there.

The number one reason to use iPhoto: Non-destructive editing. Correct colour temperature, exposure, red-eye, crop, etc. to your hearts content and you never have to worry about regretting it because you can always go back and revert to the original photo.

Feature request for iPhoto 6: Allow me to undo any changes in any order. It would be nice to un-crop the image down the road without having to redo colour correction, red eye, etc. Oh yeah, and it would be nice to be able to play movies in iPhoto slideshows and within iPhoto without having to open it in QuickTime Player.

If iPhoto is too slow, and you use it a lot, then it might be time to buy a new Mac.

Now that iPhoto and iTunes manages my media files for me, I have so much more time to enjoy the media and not worry about keeping it organized/finding it.

Andy C,

Thanks for the tips, but unfortunately they don't really address either of my big concerns with iPhoto. If/when Apple takes those things into consideration, I'd happily switch, because there are some other great features to iPhoto, and of course it's the only one of its kind featuring Apple's style. Which unfortunately in this case includes more brushed metal, but I could live with that. Though I do wish they'd just give us a choice to get rid of it...

As discussed in the article, the beauty of iPhoto is that you don't need to access the file structure.

Don't say iPhoto blows because you can't access the file structure. That's why iPhoto is good.

With iPhoto, you never need to access the file structure. Want a photo? Drag it where you want it. iPhoto takes care of it. Want to edit it in PS? ctrl click it, choose edit in external program.

Use iPhoto before you say it blows.

I have been using Iphoto since the first version came out.
It has always bothered me that the software decides for me.
It took me until I found Picasa to finally be happy with organising
photo's.

Last year I lost my photo's due to a faulty HD, luckely I
had backups on CD and DVD and some I could recover from the faulty HD. You have no idea what a pain it is to get the Iphoto library back into Iphoto, specially with all these folders and sub, sub folders.

Since then I switched to picasa on my PC and ever since I never ever
touch Iphoto anymore, picasa is faster, has more possibilities and works in almost all points better then Iphoto.

But if Iphoto works for you and you don't mind the slower response and you like the way things are organised, then there is no problem.
But it is strange which tricks and manouvres some people do to convince themselves how much they like Iphoto. I see the same with people who are so used to OSX that they are blind for the good parts of other OS'es, the same with people who are totally crazy about XP.

I have both a Mac and a PC and I use them both for what they are best suited for, people who used XP by means of virtual PC, well they didn't use XP you can not compare a virtual PC to a real PC.

Picasa is absolutely free and good and it would be good if they would port it to OSX that people who use a mac would have a choice and learn to appreciate the good things from picasa.

I'm using photogrid on my powerbook (1.67ghz G4 w/ 1gig ram) until Google makes a mac version of Picasa. The only thing I use iPhoto for is a library of my artwork. I got iPhoto 5.0 with my mac free. I guess that is a good thing since I wouldn't pay more than 20 bucks for it.

You don't get very many features with photogrid, but it is a heck of a lot faster than iPhoto and is great if you have a collection of 5,000 or more images.

iView Media Pro is nice but I don't like how it creates library files and it sucks having to "import". I would much rather "browse" a directory structure. It has great IPTC support, though. It is definitely not worth $200.

Another good OSX program for features and price $30 is Graphic Converter by Lemkesoft. It is almost like a combination of Photoshop and Picasa without the bells and whistles. It also has IPTC support for people who like to embed metadata (like captions/keywords etc.) into their actual images. This program is no doubt worth the $30 price tag.

Of course you could go get a Mac version of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) and use a freeware browser with it but I don't like how they ported GIMP to the mac. It requires x11 to run.

Adobe Bridge makes iPhoto look fast in terms of load time. iPhoto starts fairly quickly but chokes if you overload it with files. The directory structure that it uses is geared towards digital photographers (mostly hobbyists) who like to organize by date. I hate that it won't let you organize your own photos. Sure, it uses keywords but that is a very proprietary method of organizing.

I've tested well over twenty leading macOSX image browsers/organizers/editors ($30-$200 apps, shareware, freeware, etc.) and the fastest one I've seen is Photogrid. The best feature is that you can choose to "go deep" and view the images in the subfolders.

I suppose I'm going to continue to use a combination of Graphic Converter, Photogrid, iPhoto and Preview until Google wakes up and starts giving Mac users a little more support. I will always use Photoshop regardless. It is a completely different animal than Picasa.

iPhoto is for RETARDS, exactly as the article says above:

"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"

the application's proprietary image-files folder management system is totally retarded, i'm a both platform user and i know what i say. If you ever decide to move your whole 'iPhoto' album images files manually, i wish you good luck at it! How can you pretend it is the better of the two! the shit has not even easy to use functions such as an ability to print a grid like / contact sheet page out of a selected set of pictures ! I have tried many times to get used to it as hard as i could, unfortunately i gave up. The whole mac/os X platform is great, the only what it is missing is a decent image browser, i WISH google will do the step and make Picasa2 available for OS X !!! PLEASE