Of the three apps that got significant overhauls in iLife ’11, none is more widely used than iPhoto, Apple’s application for managing and editing digital photos. The newest iteration of iPhoto builds on what’s familiar and presents the most refined, tightly integrated consumer photo editing experience on the Mac to date.
Edge to edge
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]While iPhoto ’11 is immediately familiar the first time you fire up the application, interface refinements grace the application throughout — some subtle, some more significant. Full Screen Mode is probably the biggest change. In some ways it’s a preview of things to come: during its Back to the Mac event in October, Apple noted that Mac OS X Lion, due out in 2011, will feature Full Screen Mode throughout.
In Full Screen Mode, you don’t have to shuffle windows to get to what you need — this iOS-style interface lets you more easily browse thumbnails, enlarge images and more, all using key commands or trackpad/Magic Mouse gestures. Navigating in Full Screen Mode does take some adjustment, so be prepared to be a bit frustrated at first — but you’ll get used to it quickly, I expect.
iPhoto ’11 doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to actually editing your photos — this application’s first strengths are in helping you keep track of them and sharing them. So changes to iPhoto’s editing functions are pretty mild in this new release. Photo editing features are grouped into tabs: Quick Fixes, Effects and Adjust. Each tab presents you with a palette of tools that help you with simple to complex changes — from casting your photos with old-time sepia glows to correcting red-eye, cropping, straightening or making more detailed adjustments to exposure, contrast, saturation and other elements of the photo.
Output options improved
iPhoto ’11 offers better ways to get photos to your friends and family than ever before. An all-new e-mail feature lets you create photo galleries using gorgeous templates that offer plenty of flexibility for layout and tweaks. Of course, iPhoto uses your Mac Address Book for contact information. iPhoto’s smart enough to optimize the photos to get past pesky file size limitations imposed by many e-mail servers, though you can also make sure the original resolutions are maintained.
The previous version of iPhoto included support for Facebook, but iPhoto ’11 improves integration. You can link your Facebook and Flickr accounts in iPhoto’s preferences; iPhoto then lets you see all of the photo galleries you’ve posted to those services. If you’ve lost or deleted those photos — or if they were never in iPhoto to begin with — you can import them back into iPhoto. You can also synchronize the photo albums in iPhoto with what’s on Facebook and Flickr. And Apple’s MobileMe galleries are also supported, of course.
Slideshows feature new animated themes with built-in soundtracks that provide viewers with the ability to enhance the dramatic flair of your photo presentations, and iPhoto ’11 leverages face detection to help center and frame photos better. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of producing slideshows to show off family events, vacations and so on.
Amazing books and cards
Some photos are worth turning into keepsakes. Many of my friends and family have collected photo books produced in iPhoto and Apple’s pro photo cataloging app Aperture over the past few years, and iPhoto ’11 sports some real improvements here, too. Taking a page from Cover Flow, you now select themes for your book using what Apple calls a “dynamic Theme browser” that spins like a carousel. Each theme sports different matting and framing for the photos, different text elements and different layouts. You also have different choices of background matte colors.
iPhoto’s “Autoflow” functionality has been improved in this release so images are placed on photo book pages more intelligently. Photos taken on the same day, for example, will be grouped together. And as with slideshows, iPhoto leverages Face Detection here to more effectively center and frame shots of people to take some of the grunt work of page layout for you. Obviously you’re left to decide how ultimately to lay out your book, but you’ll be pleasantly surprised at just how good a job iPhoto does on its own. Photo books also feature full-bleed, two-page spreads. I haven’t had a chance to print out my own yet, but judging from a sample that Apple sent me, using what they indicated were unretouched photos taken from an iPhone 4 — you can produce some amazing books.
Letterpress cards are an all-new feature of iPhoto ’11, and according to Apple, an industry first. Let’s say you have a big reason to celebrate — announcing a new arrival to the family, for example, or inviting friends and family to celebrate the engagement of one of your children — you may want to send customized cards complete with a photo of the subject. Now you can, directly from within iPhoto, without having to send out proofs to a printing shop.
Letterpress, for the uninitiated, was the “original” method for working a printing press, just like Gutenberg — paper was pressed onto raised type or etching to produce printed material. It’s been updated for the 21st century, obviously, but the system Apple uses now mates letterpress cards available in more than a dozen different layouts with your text and photos. Just set it up using templates built into iPhoto ’11, then order your cards, and they’ll be delivered with matching envelopes, ready to be addressed and mailed.
A solid upgrade
All told, iPhoto ’11 is a solid improvement that makes the $49 cost of an iLife ’11 upgrade worth the cost of admission on its own. Admittedly, this is an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, improvement to Apple’s cornerstone iLife app. Despite the interface changes and the output improvements and numerous other enhancements, iPhoto remains, at its core, a photo cataloging and sharing app squarely aimed at consumers. So if you’re expecting a lot of professional photo or image editing features, you’re barking up the wrong tree. But I challenge you to find another consumer photo app on the Mac or any other platform with anything close to the features and ease of use of iPhoto.
One last point — iPhoto ’11 got off to a bit of a rocky start when it debuted in October. Some users complained that the upgrade process corrupted their older iPhoto libraries (I had no problems with mine). So make sure to visit the Software Update system preference as soon as you’ve installed iLife ’11, to help make sure you’ve got the latest and greatest version on your Mac.
I strongly disagree. The full screen version no longer allows you to view photos in full screen which is more important to me than seeing menus expanded to cover the screen. The menus themselves are no longer organized tidily together but scattered all over the screen. In fact the use of corners for button locations conflicts with system wide prompts for expose and screensavers causing inadvertent trips outside the program. Emailing photos is crippled by not allowing you to simply send a photo as is. Every photo now must be altered to fit the current templates which is not always desirable. I could go on about lack of sound control if using optical audio and other problems as well. I am not pleased and the option to return to an older version is complicated by reformatting of the file structure making the new file no longer compatible with older versions.
I’ve also had some issues with the new update to iPhoto. Many of the functions I use most often have been completely turned upside down making the update a killer to my productivity.
I could rattle off a list of the problems, but I would caution anyone considering upgrading, study the new program closely as this version made radical interface changes, ones that will take time to get used.
I use iPhoto for the very basics in photo management and it suits me just fine. I don’t use full screen, but haven’t noticed any problems that slow me down.
Agreed entirely. The issues you mention drive me up the wall, in addition to two other ones:
– No “BCC:” when sending pics via e-mail.
– sent e-mails aren’t stored in the “sent” mailbox, EVEN ON MOBILEME ACCOUNTS!
I either have to send multiple emails from within iPhoto, or do the old drag-them-over-into-an-email-window deal of before iPhoto.
The second point, in particular, has me scratching my head.
WTF, Apple?
Clearly I need more friends to send pics too 🙂
They way Keywords and adding Faces have completely changed. Also, they took away the rotate button, so now the only way to get to it is in the Menu Command or right clicking the photo.
Seeing the Keywords you’ve assigned to a photo in the main library is also not an option anymore. At a glance I can’t tell if I’ve tagged a photo or not. I have to actually click it and I’ll only see if I have if the Info side pane is open.
It’s little changes like that, that have frustrated me.
The number of miles you have to ‘mouse’ around has jumped quite a bit. The commands are all over the place. I liked it better grouped. And the esc button doesn’t bring you back to your events anymore.
Weird decisions on Apple’s part. It’s like they ignored GUI enhancements as they excitedly added new features.
The worst upgrade ever. Too cumbersome to do anything. What new features did they actually add? Maybe better facebook integration but general photo editing blah it’s crap a bit with slide show yes. Unfortunately it won’t take long for Microsoft to catch up. After all those years in the lead you severly dropped the ball apple.
I entirely agree. Apple have all but ruined iPhoto and I struggle to think of anything apart from the full screen view (which is nice, but…) that they’ve added. My list of things which they’ve royally screwed up include:
1. The creation of books, cards etc, where the user interface is MUCH worse than it was. For example, previously the images you put into a project were in a line across the top of the window. Now they’re in a side bar which takes up more screen real estate but contrives to show less photos at one time. Also the UI for moving from page to page is different when you’re on the cover an on inside pages – why????
2. Another thing that really bugs me is that previously you could move back from the zoomed in mode to the thumbnail mode by hitting the escape key – now you can’t. Why change that? It doesn’t make any sense to me. I have just highlighted a few of the ways in which they’ve spoilt a previously great product.
3. Emailing might have been a bit broken before (iPhoto often crashed on me when I tried to email a photo), but when it worked it was great, apart from the fact that the emails that were created didn’t adopt my default Mail font (but always used Helvetica), and didn’t have my standard signature. But in other respects this was fine. Now for some ridiculous reason they’ve stopped the email creation from placing the photos into a blank email in Mail and introduced stupid HTML emails sent directly from within iPhoto. This is worng in so many ways I’m not going to bother going through it, but it really is awful.
Clearly the UI guy who is currently working on the product has much less intelligence than the previous guy. I rue the day I moved from the previous version to the new version, and I tell everyone I know NOT to upgrade.
Can anyone help? I have a Mac Snow Leopard and my son put iphoto (don’t know which one) on for me. No problems until I gave it permission to load straight to FAcebook. since then my Facebook dropdown menus dont’ work (e.g. can’t sign out), and at Blogspot, my icons for uploading pics etc. have vanished. Can there be any connection?
Thanks everyone for all this information for reasons not to upgrade ILife! I don’t like problems and looks like Appel has one. Billy Amato-NYC
Completely agree with the commenters … shocking “upgrade” experience. I’d have to say, my first negative experience with an Apple product, and what a stinker!
Multiple problems importing my iPhoto ’08 library (lost all the flags, etc.), email interface is brutal (blogger can’t read the emails) … really sorry I bothered with this.
Completely agree with the commenters … shocking “upgrade” experience. I’d have to say, my first negative experience with an Apple product, and what a stinker!
Multiple problems importing my iPhoto ’08 library (lost all the flags, etc.), email interface is brutal (blogger can’t read the emails) … really sorry I bothered with this.
I have also lost all my BEAUTIFUL PHOTOS .. that have taken me years to take..not only that.. I have noticed changes where there shouldn’t be atall…the main cheeze is away and the cats will play… to bad..I purchased this mac because it was a reliable MEANS..why would they do this?…When this is the one area that people love to hang out IN ‘PHOTOS..this is really disappointing.. My suggestions to all…BACK UP.BACK UP. AND BACK UP. trust me