“Have you ever wondered where all those gigabytes went between the moment you bought a new Mac and the moment you looked at the amount of free disk space after using the computer for a while? Sure, formatting wastes some space, and it’s only natural that some more is lost when translating new and improved gigabytes back to classic gigabytes. But the real culprit is iPhoto. This application uses such an unbelievable amount of disk space, that we can only conclude Apple’s iPhoto group is receiving kickbacks from the hard drive manufacturing industry,” Iljitsch van Beijnum reports for Ars Technica.
Full article here.
and its slooow
This is absolutely true. Worst program out of the iBunch.
Uhhhh… my 4500 photos averaging 1.24mb’s apiece is gonna take some space. Let alone keeping track of edits, thumbnails and photo information. I never thought it took that much space.
Slow and not so intuitive like most of Apple software.
Has anyone here tried Monolingual (http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/) to trim out the unneeded foreign languange fat?
look where the most of iPhoto’s usage is….
It’s in the cache that it makes of iPod sized photos. Every pic, big or small, gets made into a 176k image that iTunes downloads to the iPod. This pre-digested image is just the right size for a 4g iPod to display efficently and scroll through quickly.
Does the 5g iPod make a bigger image? I might because it has a bigger screen.
Or “language” for that matter?
Of all the iProducts, iPhoto is the worst hands down. It’s slow, not nearly as intuitive as the rest of the apps, and bloated. I hope the next revision of the iLife suite offers a massive overhaul of iPhoto.
Who cares? HD space is cheap.
My iMac has a 250GB drive, my iPhoto has about 8,000 current pictures in it. In total, I have about 190GB available. Not going to fill that up anytime soon.
I have also gotten into the habit of archiving older photographs to CD (or DVD), but iPhoto can handle up to 250,000 photos.
So other photo management apps on the market don’t take up a lot of space either? Do they have some magic compression scheme or something?
Oh, and a dedicated spreadsheet app with PIVOT TABLES and other advanced analysis tools (are you listening Apple?) would be nice as well.
http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-195896.html
It is one Apple’s best apps. Why do you think Google has a plug-in for it? They decided to not create a Picase for Mac, since iPhoto is so good.
Hey, what’s wrong with you guys? I find iPhoto to work perfectly well with the thousands of images that I have scaled to 1024×768 jpeg high quality (~400k a piece max). iPhoto lets me take my pix with me on the road, etc. It’s great for what it’s made for: consumer-grade, small camera, low megapixel images.
I use Aperture (at home) and Lightroom (on the go) to manage my main photo libraries off my boot drives.
iPhoto is not meant to handle thousands of RAW or high megapixel images – no wonder HD space is going to fill up fast and poor iPhoto acts like it’s a sloth on the run.
As far as I am concerned, all Apple apps are slow and consume enormous amount of disc space. Is that a plot from teh Steve to make us upgrade faster? I wish not.
Add to that, the fact that some people transfer hundreds of photos from their cameras from which maybe one or two are even worth keeping.
Isn’t part of the issue is that iPhoto keeps two copies of every photo, your current edited version and the original so you can go back to it at any time?
Also if you don’t empty the iPhoto trash things can get ugly after a while.
What an amazingly, unecessarily biased piece! Every word has been chosen to be ‘accurate’, yet negatve, for no real gain. I’m surprised ars have hosted this sensationalist piece.
My main beef is that it saves originals when you simply rotate the image. This is a lossless process, and it’s completely reversible. They should save originals for all other kinds of edits, but saving 2 photos for every photo that needs to be rotated is overkill.
funny. iPhoto is my favorite of the iLife bunch.
Come on there!
The iPhoto on my MBPro has 4015 pix, averaging 20+ mb each when opened.
It takes just 8 seconds to fire up!!!
For me, it’s a simple and elegant way to store stuff, prior to PShop work.
No problems with iPhoto.
Use iPhoto Manager, and every 6 months/1 year create a new Library, and archive the current one to external HD/DVD.
Easy.
I think many of Apple’s apps are A-Ok, but iPhoto does need help. I used the first versions of it and it was unuseably slow with several hundred photos – my understanding is that later versions were measurably improved with regard to speed, but I never went back and I keep getting reminded by those that continue to use iPhoto with relatively large photo libraries how slow it still is compared to other things. Over the last several years I’ve used both iView (now a MS subsidiary), and more recently MediaOne. With both programs I can manage many thousands of pictures and movie clips on even a moderately fast Mac, without much trouble with regard to speed or reliability. iView is not as intuitive as iPhoto or MediaOne, but its no slouch for speed, and its way too expensive, I think – but it works. My daughter uses iView to manage about 5000+ photos on a strawberry iMac, and my wife and I manage over 10,000 photos with MediaOne on a G4 dual 450 and a CoreDuo iMac. One thing I like about MediaOne is that it has several different levels of usage to accomodate even very large industrial online libraries – its more scalable. The basic version costs about $50 bucks.
No, I think iPhoto needs quite a bit of work, and my personal problem with it still puts proprietary headers on the photo files so that they can not be opened with anything except iPhoto, unless you want to be exporting evertime you want to get a picture or groups of pictures out of it – don’t like that. There are several very good photo management tools out there for the Mac besides iPhoto, and I would say all them are better than iPhoto for speed, and for ease of getting photos in and out.
I have 3,410 photos, mostly RAW images..it took 9 seconds to start up and get working in ipHoto.
iPhoto sucks…….atleast the initial version. i dumped it and haven’t looked back.
iMedia Pro rocks
Yip, iphoto is sluggish and a hog. It sux at redeye too, apple needs to put a little more work into it.
Actually, i think Picassa for the PC is much better, wish Google would come out with a mac version.
4716 photos, iPhoto Library = 8.16GB.
Opened in 8 or 9 seconds.
iMac G5 17″ 1.9GHz, 1.5GB RAM, 4 of 6 user accounts active.
No problems here.
I looked. Nine gigs. Big deal.
“iPhoto sucks…….atleast the initial version. i dumped it and haven’t looked back.”
hmmm… then maybe you have no f’n idea what you’re talking about.
iPhoto is worth every dollar I paid for it. If you wanna spend money used Aperture or Lightroom. And tclash you’re so right about the trash. I dunno why iPhoto doesn’t work like iTunes and use the system trash can.
I think it’s funny when people with first- or second-generation programs complain about a program that’s up to Version 6.
I also have heard that early versions were slow with large libraries, but that isn’t the case with later versions. I have nearly 9,000 images, and it takes my G5 less than five seconds to open the program and get ready for work. And there are only two versions kept for those that are modified — I have 11.6 GB in my Originals folder, and only 2GB in my modified. And even though I’m a pro user, I find having all my images in a single, searchable database incredible convenient.
I use iView MediaPro to look through specific folders, but I actually prefer iPhoto for archiving, slideshows, etc.
I don’t find it slow AT ALL, and I’m pretty sure those who do are running very old versions of the software, or running new software on very old hardware (G3s)
The only application I miss from windows, is Picasa,
and if you take a look at the google group “mac inside google” you will see I am not alone in wishing their was a Mac version of Picasa
So what if apps are big? You install them once and disk space is cheap. We’re not booting off 5.25 floppies anymore, people…
What Apple DOES need, though, is to trim the size of their updates! Not all of us have broadband. And 30 to 300 megs for an UPDATE? You gotta be kidding. Do that many changes really need to be made each time? I don’t see it.
BTW, Apple, I’d happily pay an Apple Store a few bucks to get the updates on DVD. HEY why not an option to order update disks right off Software Update?
Nope! I think iMovie is the by far the WORST of Apple’s appications. It’s terribly slow and is bloated. I took on a projest for a friend insisting that her PC Roxio program for creating DVD’s was inferior, she was with me through the whole iMovie project and I was so embarassed when iMovie would take so long to perform easy tasks such as adding a Ken Burn’s affect and encoding. It crashed a couple of times too. IT SUCKS!!!! I was using it on a 20 inch Intel iMac Core Duo with 2GB Kingston ram and a superdrive with no other applications running even closed Mail!
iPhoto is stupid, because even checking the option to NOT duplicate photos in its library, it creates a copy of itw own. So if I have 10GB of photos in a folder, it creates another 10GB folder in its library. STUPID. iTunes doesn’t do that when you check the option to not copy files to its own library.
Dear Mr. Peabody, the first part of your posting was good; but then you lambast iPhoto without having a clue as to 1) how to use it properly; and 2) without having used any recent version.
Please do us a favor and don’t write reviews about software which you do not use. It’s like saying that OS 10.4 is not good at setting up printers because when you used the Chooser in System 7.5.3 the experience sucked. Know what I mean?
Well, theres alwasy iPhotoDiet…(Google it…)
I have no issues with iPhoto and use it all the time. Photos, especially high quality photos are going to take up drive space, that’s just a fact of life. Anyone who ever works in Photoshop could tell you that.
emptying the trash, the iPhoto application internal trash that is, really improved things here. I just did it first time ever when I read it above. However, there seems to be no obvious way to do it. So I selected all the photos in the trash and pressed [cmd]-delete. Do I miss anything? (I’m using iPhoto 5)
AAAARRRGGGGHHH again!!!!
For those of you suddenly pissed off at iPhoto for the alleged bloat this sensationalistic blog convinced you of. This official Apple Ars Technica blogger (with a wee bit of responsibility, I might add) failed to mention that THREE HUNDRED TWO – 302 MEGABYTES of the supposed bloat IS IN ONE SINGLE ‘THEMES’ FOLDER, easily removed in literally 15 seconds!
This same blogger just managed to get 719 Diggs for his (unless Iljitsch is a girl’s name) previous article, “Apple may have trouble selling 10 million Phones in 2008” — which must’a just been exciting for the lad. This time around he fails to mention hundreds of MEGAbytes of files having nothing to do with software code (just for those who want to create, then order albums from Apple online) and instead instructs his readers to delete bytes —sans MEGA— of paltry language files right next to said Themes folder!
Here’s how to get rid of it:
• Right click on iPhoto.app
• Select Show Package Contents
• Navigate to Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/Themes
• Delete it, burn it to disk, or offload it to external drive (if you might ever order albums printed from Apple)
This blogger should, in good faith, append the post because the code in iPhoto is actually quite a lot better than one would expect for pre-installed software that doesn’t have to compete out in the pay-for shareware market. And it really seems like he’s pandering for hits, though I really hope I’m wrong, considering he writes the frickin’ Mac blog @ Ars Technica, of all places! Hopefully, he’s just an AOK Mac user who simply made an oversight, but is sorely in need of a lesson in (i)Life.
Sorry, bit anyone criticising iPhoto and who are not on Version 6 are truly insane, stupid or both.
6 IS stable, fast reliable and as good as any app anywhere. There is an app called iPhoto diet which will for example remove originals where you want only to keep the modified version..
Control click or right button click ‘Trash’ for the submenu to find the option Delete.
It comsumes more disk space as it is the underlying framework for iLife’s iPhoto integration system. Be careful before you remove it; besides, it’s not a ton of memory it consumes.
iPhoto has been a real disappointment to me. Does anyone know of a good alternative to iPhoto on the Mac? I really love ACDSee in Windows (especially its photo management capabilities), but their Mac version seems lame by comparison.
I dunno why iPhoto doesn’t work like iTunes and use the system trash can.
How about Preview, where command-Delete closes the window AND puts the file in the Trash?
Of course Delete is right next to – and + for scaling, so easy to hit accidently. And no menu item or warning dialog for the function either. Ack.
It’s why I switched to Aperture. Versions instead of duplicates.
I use iPhoto on my G4 Mac mini with 20,000 photos and it is almost impossibly slow…… then again… it is a G4 mac mini. Not the Speediest of Machines.
I can’t believe so many people here think iPhoto is slow. Are all of you running Intel Macs? I have a 1.5 GHz. Powerbook and well over a thousand photos in iPhoto and it opens fast, scrolls like butter, and is very responsive in general. I don’t understand the problems others seem to be having unless it’s related to the new Intel chips, and that will be solved once Leopard comes out. Leopard is going to fly on an Intel Mac!
It sounds like people need more memory. A fully gig’d out Mac is a completely different experience.
If you haven’t maxed out your ram yet, I highly suggest you to do that…it’s worth every penny.
DC,
You need to get a refund on that Kingston RAM, mate.
No, seriously.
I’m running an older iBook G4 and after the initial startup while I let everything load, it’s nice and smooth. I upgraded to iPhoto 6.0.5 and I have no complaints. In fact the past swim meet I was at, the professional photographer was using iPhoto as his main photo management while at an event. He was using 3 separate Nikon DSLR (idk which bodies or lenses) with 4GB CF cards. When he’d fill one, he’d just dock the card into his MacBook pro and let it whirr away at 4gb of imports. At the end of the meet I stopped over to ask him about his opinion on iPhoto (and to see what amazing shots he got). He says he uses it 99% of the time for his management, unless he’s shooting a ton in raw (Aperture) and he uses PS for editing and such.
I really don’t see what the big fuss is all about, digital photos will take up space no matter what program you use to manage them. I like the fact that iPhoto has an original pre backed up for me, that way I’m not afraid to lose anything.
It’s a chore to have to load the entire picture catalog every time the program boots. Whose bright idea was this?
I wish iPhoto were more like the older versions of ACDSee…
– fast loading
– fast viewing of directories
– easy navigation (Windows-style/Explorer navigation)
– quick full-screen view, quick zoom
– fast operation (doesn’t bog down as you the photo catalog builds up)
– easy management (simple to move photo locations around)
—–
Better yet… I wish ACDSee were written for Macs again.
previous versions of iPhoto were indeed slow, but not newer versions, especially on the new Intel Macs
5000 photos, 16.4GB opens in 2sec on iMac Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz 2GB RAM, iPhoto 6.0.5
Hardly what you would call slow…
even on my previous iMac G4 1.25GHz, performance was reasonable with latest iPhoto (but admittedly painfully slow with iPhoto 5 and prior)
As soon as I bought iLife ’06 for my 15″ powerbook a year ago I deleted iPhoto and Garageband as I have no use for either. Aperture is definitely the way to go. I’m sure it takes up just as much space but the options and organizing are so much nicer. I’m not really a photo-book editor or theme-needer so iPhoto just had nothing to offer. I don’t know how normal this is but I only have 1417 images and that takes up 2.16GB in one neat, cute white block.
>bc wrote: 2sec on iMac Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz 2GB RAM, iPhoto 6.0.5
I’m using iPhoto v 6.0.5 (316) on a MBP 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo 2GB RAM … and I get nowhere near that speed.
Bootup measurement using 1-1000-2-1000 method took 12 seconds to loaad 4700 pictures. Clicking on a menu item (FILE) took about 2 seconds to respond. Double-clicking on a photo to edit takes another 10 seconds before the operation is released.
Maybe iPhoto works better for lower-res files – Mine are generally 8MP, low-compression jpegs.
My iPhoto is quick on my MBP 2GHz, 2MB ram, BUT it is also quite fast on my old PB 550MHz, 512MB. When I notice a slowdown, I run AppleJack (for cache cleaning and permissions) and SystemOptimizer (for the prebindings and rotating of log files). It’s important that AppleJack cleans the cache files for all users, as well as the system cache.
Usually I do this once a month or so, and it keeps the applications happy.
Wow I am surprised so many people dislike iPhoto. I always felt it was the best of the iApps. It does do much better with lots of RAM but it really isn’t that slow. My 1Ghz PB runs iPhoto 5 just fine, and really it only uses what space it needs for my photos.
Mr. Peabody
“Over the last several years I’ve used both iView (now a MS subsidiary), and more recently MediaOne.”
Where do I find ‘MediaOne’. I Googled it but still couldn’t find it. Anyone with a link to their site?
I recommend iView Media, or iView Media Pro.