JUst hoping to clear up some wide spread misunderstandings about iPhoto (an app which I have extremely little experience but some basic info from discussions and presentations at our MUG). iPhoto '08 does
not need to store any of your images in its own directory scheme, you do
not need to use it to import your images from your camera.
In the first instance, iPhoto '08 can keep track of your images, no matter where they are on your drive. You simply have to tell it that's what you want it to do. Likewise, it will also not need to make duplicates of those images as did the older versions of iPhoto did, thus you will saves tons of drive space. Unfortunately, I have been informed that the default settings are to use the old method of making duplicates. Probably Apple wanted to make as few changes to the way things had been done with previous versions. So you have to use the Preferences to change that behavior. The setting is in Preferences->Advanced->Importing:
UN check "Copy items to the iPhoto Library."
BTW, there are settings in that Advanced area to tell iPhoto to use RAW data, if you need it.
As for importing, again, I don't use iPhoto for that, either. Nor does anyone have to. But, once again, you must change the default setting in the prefs. General->Connecting camera opens: There are three choices, obviously it will be set to iPhoto but the second choice is the one I've always used, "Image Capture." That's a very simple Apple utility that's been around since Panther, I suspect. It recognizes any camera you might connect, even you iPhone, and it can then 'suck' out all the images to any folder you specify. It will also erase the camera card, if you want. I don't think that's wise as some cameras expect the card to be formatted as some variant of windows. But it works like a champ, very quick, no manual labor required.
Now, iPhoto '09 is the first version that is tempting me to actually use it. Mainly for one specific feature not found as well executed on any other app that I know of for the Mac (and I suspect, for Windows/Vista). The feature is called "Faces." The '09 version can, upon your request (click a button) look through all your images and find those that have faces. It will then present them to you with the face area enlarged and centered in a thumbnail and the face area bounded by a rectangle. You can now type a name for that person, assuming you know it. Now the great part happens. iPhoto '09 will now take that info and look through your images again and present you with another group that it thinks are of the same person. If he picture shown
is the same, you simply click the thumbnail. If the picture is of someone else, you have two (remember, computers are binary beasts!), double-click the thumbnail to simply say it is
not who iPhoto thinks it is
OR type in the actual name. What you are doing is 'teaching' iPhoto to better recognize the face of each name you type in. What this does is create smart lists that will make finding pictures of certain people much easier.
But what if there are many people in the picture? No problem, it can already see that and will highlight each face in the crowd, allowing you to name any and all that you know. Of course, the resolution must be high enough to make the facial features large enough to distinguish aunt pearl from uncle joe!
OK, but I have a bunch of pictures that don't even have people in them, much less people I even know! What good is "Faces" then. Well, the short answer is "None!" But as I am already on a roll here, let me mention another new feature called "Places." You know all that geotagging your camera has been doing? Well iPhoto '09 takes advantage of that EXIF info and can automatically add names of places based on that location, assuming it is somewhere that is commonly visited by people (other animals don't count!).
I'll leave it at that, for now. I just want people to realize that there are features available that we sometimes ignore because they are not well known. We sometimes dismiss some apps because their initial version was unusable or just plain bad. Most apps, including Apple's improve with time. Check them out, you might be surprised at what you already have installed!
