If you get to the Expo floor early enough in the morning, you can actually play with the new toys. I decided to give iPhoto 2.0 a complete tour using an iMac G4 (800 MHz) with 512 MB RAM.
First thing I noticed was that the performance was about the same as with iPhoto 1.1.1 — that surprised me a little because I thought that a speed bump would certainly be part of the upgrade. So I’m sticking with my current advice concerning library size: Keep them to 650 MBs, archive them on CD, and use iPhoto Library Manger to switch between libraries. That way you’ll have snappy performance as you dash around the application.
Both the Enhance and Retouch tools work great. You can’t set any parameters with either of them, but you don’t really need to because they’re so effective as is.
One of my favorite features, sending email attachments directly from iPhoto, now allows you to use Entourage, Eudora, and AOL as well as the .Mail client. Good move!
The entire search function, including Keywords, has now been moved to a submenu beneath Edit. At first I didn’t like this, but the new search function is so much more powerful, it won me over.
iPhoto 2.0 has added some new printing templates, including “Sampler” and “N-up,” that are welcome features for those who like to dash off prints from their ink jets. “Sampler” allows you to create those mixed-sized pages like we used to get from the school photographer.
The “Burn” function is a biggie and simplifies the archiving of iPhoto data. And with Jaguar, you can use 3rd party DVD burners as well as SuperDrives. Yaay! CD-Rs work as expected.
Lots of other little improvements, such as easier access to your iTunes library, make iPhoto 2.0 a worthy download. I’m hoping to see a little better performance and a sharpening filter in the next version. But until then, it remains my digital shoebox of choice.
iPhoto will be available as a free download, or part of the iLife shrinkwrap, on Jan. 25th.
Arghhh!!!! Performance still sucks!
I can't believe they didn't fix the performance problem. Keeping my Libraries below 680MB is a severe limitation. The beauty of iPhoto is the ability to create a "view" (album) that can include photos taken at any time.
Does anyone have any idea how we can put pressure on Apple to fix this. Is the cause of the performance problem well understood?
I am SOOO disappointed by iPhoto 2.
I think we need a coordinated attack on Apple to get them to fix this. Maybe boycott their photo printing services until they fix performance?
Ordering prints
Will Apple now let non-US owners of iPhoto order prints online?
That would be a worthwhile enhancement for those of us in the rest of the world!!
iPhoto fails customer expecations
With all the nice features, the repeated freezing up represents false advertising. I have used Macs since the first one came out. They should fix this.
iPhoto fails customer expecations
I don't know your situation, but I have iPhoto running on three different Macs, and I haven't had any "freezing up" problems.
Ordering prints (outside the US)
I couldn't agree more!
Arghhh!!!! Performance still sucks! -- Where did you get 2.0?
I'm curious, how did you get version 2.0? I had to do my testing on a computer at Macworld. Sounds like you have a copy and are using your own photos. Spill the beans here.
Important New Feature in 2.0
http://www.apple.com/applescript/iphoto/
iPhoto 2.0 can now be used in workflow automations. Very cool!
email delegation?
"One of my favorite features, sending email attachments directly from iPhoto, now allows you to use Entourage, Eudora, and AOL as well as the .Mail client. Good move!"
How does iPhoto manage this? Does it use its own setting or does it use the setting dictated in system preferences? I'm not a big fan of features like this being hacked into an application when they should be handled at the operating system level. I would think OS X Services would be the perfect plumbing for this sort of thing.
Kodak Print Aspect Ratios
I'm not sure where else to post this, so here goes.
My digital camera shoots in 4x3 aspect ratio, which would produce a 5.333 x 4 print full frame. This is not an option on any of the online services I have seen. (The standard is 6x4) If I send the complete file uncropped, the service arbitrarily crops for me, but I don't want it cropped. It would be nice to know of an alternative way to get full frame prints without a lot of manual pre-processing to put blank white space into the file. This option doesn't seem to be offered in iPhoto.........
iphoto web sharing
I noticed that iphoto will generate webpages for publication within the .mac framework..
my question is this..
Does iphoto generate the html code so that you can move it to another folder and have your personal web sharing share that html code (i.e. local apache web server serve the page)
email delegation?
As I recall, and I still don't have a pre-release of iPhoto 2, it's a preference you set in iPhoto itself. We'll test it when we have the application in hand ... :)
Kodak Print Aspect Ratios
Easy, just set the constrain setting of the cropping tool to 4 x 6" and crop the images the way you want them to be printed.
iphoto web sharing
Yes it does. And if you use the free "Better HTML" plug in, you have even more options for the code iPhoto writes for you. I use this to create the menus for the picture CDs I deliver to clients.
iPhoto fails customer expecations
I and many other iPhoto users have had freezing problems with this app. The Support forums on Apple.com are full of complaints. While I would hope that iPhoto 2 would improve the performance of the app and eliminate the need to use things like iPhoto Library Manager, here's the advice I can give you.
My freezing problems got so bad that I couldn't even launch iPhoto without it crashing within 5 seconds. The solution I used to get around the problem was to move the current iPhoto library out of the Pictures folder, launch iPhoto (in effect, creating a new, blank iPhoto library folder within the Pictures folder), and then importing my old libraries back into the new folder.
Yes, this is a tedious process, but it did lead to a more streamlined iPhoto library. The worse part, besides the time it took up, was that I lost all my custom titles. Luckily, I had kept the titles in iPhoto in-sync with the titles I had used for the same photos in my .Mac photo albums, so I had a backup. I know most people won't though.
Since I've done this, iPhoto's performance has been much quicker. I've had only one crash since then, and that was when I tried to delete a photo while viewing it in Edit mode. I've read accusations that deleting photos in Edit mode like I did leads to crashes and possible corruption of the iPhoto library, which would lead to more crashes and even crashes at startup - like I had before. So my recommendation here is to only delete photos in Organize mode.
I know that Apple should address this problem, or at least acknowledge it, to give us a clue that they are listening. Maybe these problems will disappear in iPhoto 2? In the meantime, I hope these tips provide some guidance to you.
My Wish: More iPhoto & .Mac Integration
One of the most useful parts of iPhoto for me is the ability to create photo albums on .Mac using from within an iPhoto album. I use to hand-code custom HTLM pages for my photos but I gave up on the customization for ease-of-use that iPhoto provided.
But I wish the iPhoto/.Mac capabilities extended further. Not only do I want to be able to create .Mac photo albums with iPhoto, I'd like to be able to update them too. For example, if I've already created a .Mac page for an iPhoto album, I wish there would be an "update" button somewhere (most likely under "Share") that would update the .Mac page with any changes I've made to my iPhoto album, such as adding or removing photos, edits I've made to photos, and, the most common for me, changing the titles and comments of photos.
Sure this would be technically challenging, but this is just the kind of digital lifestyle actions that Apple is trying to provide for its users and I believe its a logical next step to what iPhoto does already.
Go here for a great overview of iPhoto 2.0
And the other iLife programs--
http://www.iday2003.com/
iPhoto freezing: Delete the cache files
I've posted fixes about this on both usenet and the iPhoto support site. In subsequent testing deleting the cache files alone did the trick.
[http://groups.google.com/groups?q=jfaughnan+iPhoto&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=5c0dbfb4.0212010809.6a72fc64%40posting.google.com&rnum=8]
I too have been getting spinning beachballs with iPhoto, typically after importing images. This has been happening for about 10 days. My iPhoto library is 345MB and it contains about 400 images.
I saw mention on usenet of deleting the iPhoto preferences and cache files for exactly this problem.
I did the following, which may have worked (for now):
1. duplicated the folder containing my library
2. renamed the duplicate folder and then deleted the plist and cache files which are at the root level of this folder:
- com.apple.iPhoto.plist
- Library.cache
2. used iPhoto Library Manager to make the new folder an active library (Add Library) and then switched to it.
3. launched iPhoto and retested, it seemed to work. I imported a file that hand caused the earlier hang and the problem did not recur.
One could of course just delete the cache and preferences files and try, but I'm conservative about these things. I wanted to work on a
copy. If all goes well in further testing I'll delete the original.
I'll also restart and run fsck -y since I find it's best to do that
EVERY time I have to abort an iPhoto lockup. I'll also run the
Preferences repair option in Disk Utility.
It is astounding that anyone could create an application that scales
as poorly as iPhoto. iPhoto doesn't seem to reliably handle more than
few thousand records (iPhoto uses the file system to store images). My
original 8086 Panasonic 650Kb desktop could handle far larger
databases (yes, the images are huge, but the file system handles them.
The database just contains a file system reference). Any modern
computing platform should be able to handle a sensibly coded
collection of at least 100,000 records. iPhoto is limited to about
about 1/100 to 1/1000 of what it should handle. That's incompetence.
john
[meta: iPhoto, Apple, OS X, Jaguar, crash, hang, stop, not respond,
not responding, locked, lock-up, lockup, spinning beachball, defect,
bug, quality issue, jfaughnan, jgfaughnan]
How will Library Manager users upgrade
Derrick,
How are users of iPhoto Library Manager going to upgrade to iPhoto 2? I've been told iPhoto 2 has a different internal data structure. If iPhoto 2 fixes the large library performance issues, and allows subset backup, the main motivations for using Library Manager will go away. OTOH, those of us using iPhoto Library Manager may be unable to upgrade without losing all our metadata (comments, titles, keywords, etc]
How will Library Manager users upgrade
At the moment, it's "wait and see."
I asked the iPhoto product manager at Macworld (we did a session together) about iPhoto Library Manger, and he took the 5th. My guess is that we're going to have to do some testing with dummy iPhoto libraries to see what happens after the upgrade. I'm also guessing that Library Manager will be upgraded too.
In the end, I think it's going to be fine. But I recommend that you don't put your data at risk until you're confident of the outcome.
More to come once the release is out ...
Multiple photo prints this time around?
Derrick-
I have the imac G4 800mgz....with the iphoto 2 will I be able to print out multiple photos on one page of photo paper? In other words will I be able to print 2 x 4x6 photos on one page containing two different photos? (1 x 4x6 of say a building and 1 x 4x6 of my son on the same page) I was unable to accomplish this in iphoto 1.1.1
Thanks
Multiple photo prints this time around? Yes!
Printing has also improved in iPhoto 2.0. You can choose two different images (SHIFT-select), then hit the Print button. Then just choose which size you want your prints (4 x 6, 5 x 7, etc), and off you go. Works very well. While you're in there, select three prints and try the Sampler option. It's cool.