Can someone explain the point of iPhoto on iOS

[SgtP3pp3r]

I bought iPhoto for iOS way back when it had just come out, used it for a week and gave up on it. Decided there were a lot of things Apple still had to figure out, and I would wait for them to get to it. However now, more than a year later I come to iPhoto and find that though it's easier to control, it's still not very useful.

I'm a Mac user, and I use both iPhoto and Aperture on my Mac. iPhoto I use to organize, and Aperture I use to retouch. I have a library of about 120Gb. I do this because I find that iPhoto is simple enough to manage for organising and creating albums, but Aperture gives me the real freedom to retouch and enhance photos to exactly how I want them.

Enter the iOS version of iPhoto. This seemed like a good idea because I figured it would let me edit photos on the fly, and then simply sync them back to my library. This is far from the truth, however. Granted, the current version of iPhoto for iPad works marvellously, I can edit photos about twice as fast as I could on the Mac, and the small tweaks I do are streamlined in the iPhoto for iOS controls making my life easier. However, I can't for the life of me, figure out how to sync the photos back to the corresponding albums in iPhoto for Mac. This creates a rather stupid situation. I'm left with two versions of the photos, one on my iPad (tweaked) and another on my Mac (untweaked). Why don't the tweaks sync? Is this intentional? What is the point of tweaking these photos if the tweaks won't sync back to the Mac?

Can someone please explain what is the point of iPhoto for iOS if you cannot sync the tweaks back to your main library? Can it really be designed to simply edit photos that will only be seen on my iPad?

And exporting these photos via photo stream is not acceptable. Why would I want to duplicate my photos? Why can't iPhoto for Mac simply read the edits on the iPad and attach them to the corresponding image files?

Why? why? why?

I'm hoping maybe it's just I'm missing something. Which is why im posting this, hoping someone can show me the way.

 

[jonnyb098]

I agree that the duplicates thing is annoying and probably will never be figured out. The system will never know what you want and not want to keep. But full res edits should sync through photo stream once you re save back to the camera roll. Works perfect for me.

The REALLLLY cool but annoying thing is that iPhoto can now overwrite your original photo with your new edits in the photos app. Sounds great right? No more duplicates. EXCEPT it saves a retarded downsized 1mp (iPhone) or 3mp(ipad) version instead of saving the edits on the native version. It's so annoying and pointless why they added this and hampered it with low res saves.

However, iPhoto on my ipad is my go to photo editor and is waaaay more powerful than the mac version. The editing, effects, and sharing are way more powerful. I've edited very nice photos taken on my DSLR and it's simply stunning. The fact that it integrates with your library on iPhone or ipad much better than snapseed since you have to edit one at a time. However snapseed is great for editing one or two at a time.

I see how some things can be frustrating but if you actually try a workflow to edit in iPhoto I think you would find it works really well and there's nothing in the App Store that can compare. It's kinda the best of all worlds as it can get right now.

 

[ayres]

Great thread, as I was just thinking about this... I recently got the 5s, and I use iPhoto on my Mac mainly for iPhone pic & video storage. I use lr4 for editing.

I tried iPhoto on the phone while at the apple store and liked it, but I wonder what the practical purpose of it is if one's not going to edit pics on the phone...

 

[sawah]

I actually only use iPhoto on my phone to delete my camera roll since they save to iCloud. There is currently no way to delete more than one photo at a time from the phone.

 

[ayres]

I actually only use iPhoto on my phone to delete my camera roll since they save to iCloud. There is currently no way to delete more than one photo at a time from the phone.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post, but you can delete more than one photo at a time in the camera roll... Is that what you meant?

 

[Abazigal]

I agree. iPhoto seems like the sort of app which should simply be combined with the current photos app (now that's its free, you can't cite loss of revenue as a reason).

It's also baffling how iPhoto has way fewer sharing options on IOS. I mean, I can't even send photos via shared photostream; I have to go back to the photos app for that.

It's like they had a great idea, but never really got around to fully implementing them.

 

[sawah]

You didn't misunderstand. What I mean is, you can only select one photo at a time. With iPhoto I can select them all at once.

 

[j4zb4]

I agree. iPhoto seems like the sort of app which should simply be combined with the current photos app (now that's its free, you can't cite loss of revenue as a reason).

It's also baffling how iPhoto has way fewer sharing options on IOS. I mean, I can't even send photos via shared photostream; I have to go back to the photos app for that.

It's like they had a great idea, but never really got around to fully implementing them.

Since it is free now anyways they should combine it into the base app... Hopefully in ios 8...

 

[JonHimself]

Aside from editing photos, I never really saw the benefit of using iPhoto in iOS. I also was never entirely sure if it was saving photos at full resolution, making copies, etc and it bothered me not knowing (though not enough to actually investigate).

I recently bought my mom a 64GB iPad to be used as her only (not main, not secondary) computer. She had an older macbook so I synched her music (the non-iTunes purchased songs) to the iPad and also synched her iPhoto library. Going forward when she takes pics on her camera, she'll use the camera kit and import them to the Photos.app/iPhoto.app. For her, that will be her photo library.

I get the impression that the iPhoto iOS app is aimed more at a "normal" user who uses the iPad as their main computer than it is at someone looking to sync with iPhoto on the desktop or have to manage two libraries.

 

[aristobrat]

Can someone please explain what is the point of iPhoto for iOS if you cannot sync the tweaks back to your main library? Can it really be designed to simply edit photos that will only be seen on my iPad?

I think the iOS versions of all of the iLife/iWork applications were designed for people whose iOS devices are their "computer".

Although that's not my setup (my iOS devices are extensions of my real computer), when I go on long weekend trips, I'll bring my iPad, not my computer. If I take pics on my Sony camera, I'll use the iPad camera connector kit to upload the pictures to the iPad, and then use iPhoto to do first-level edits. When I get back home and plug my iPad into the computer, it imports all of the Sony pictures. I do the same thing with videos from the Sony camera and iMovie.

Anyhow, those apps def don't support the workflow you mentioned, but I see them as being very useful in others!

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Since it is free now anyways they should combine it into the base app... Hopefully in ios 8...

Base apps only get updated when iOS does. I kind of like how iOS iLife/iWork apps are separate so they can be updated whenever. Not that Apple updates them frequently, but they could. Lol

 

[SgtP3pp3r]

when I go on long weekend trips, I'll bring my iPad, not my computer. If I take pics on my Sony camera, I'll use the iPad camera connector kit to upload the pictures to the iPad, and then use iPhoto to do first-level edits.

Now this I can understand perfectly. This is a situation where iPhoto on the iPad is perfect for the job, because you sync first to the iPad then to the computer.

Maybe I should experiment doing just that. Instead of downloading my camera's photos to my Mac, I should go thru the iPad directly using the camera kit. It just hadn't occurred to me to upload directly to the iPad, and THEN uploading from my iPad to the Mac. All this time i've always gone Camera>Mac>iPad , though Camera>iPad>Mac could make sense. It would mean I could edit while on vacation with just my iPad.

This would change up my workflow, as I would essentially have to edit before I organise. Edit on the iPad, organise and refine on the Mac. Mmmm the only thing that would worry me would be losing my RAW files :S I guess i'll try it out and see how it might work.

But at least one thing has become clear to me: iPhoto for iOS is meant for the iPhone camera enthusiast This is the reason it exists.

I'm a camera geek, so no matter how good they make the iPhone camera (and it's pretty good) I probably won't use it unless I have to. Since I prefer to use a dslr, i'd have to use the camera kit to "cut out the middle man" and get my photos onto the iPad without going thru my mac. So this is why this app hasn't been as useful to me yet.

Do Eye-fi cards work well with iPads? Maybe I can work around getting the camera kit.

 

[jonnyb098]

Now this I can understand perfectly. This is a situation where iPhoto on the iPad is perfect for the job, because you sync first to the iPad then to the computer.

Maybe I should experiment doing just that. Instead of downloading my camera's photos to my Mac, I should go thru the iPad directly using the camera kit. It just hadn't occurred to me to upload directly to the iPad, and THEN uploading from my iPad to the Mac. All this time i've always gone Camera>Mac>iPad , though Camera>iPad>Mac could make sense. It would mean I could edit while on vacation with just my iPad.

This would change up my workflow, as I would essentially have to edit before I organise. Edit on the iPad, organise and refine on the Mac. Mmmm the only thing that would worry me would be losing my RAW files :S I guess i'll try it out and see how it might work.

But at least one thing has become clear to me: iPhoto for iOS is meant for the iPhone camera enthusiast This is the reason it exists.

I'm a camera geek, so no matter how good they make the iPhone camera (and it's pretty good) I probably won't use it unless I have to. Since I prefer to use a dslr, i'd have to use the camera kit to "cut out the middle man" and get my photos onto the iPad without going thru my mac. So this is why this app hasn't been as useful to me yet.

Do Eye-fi cards work well with iPads? Maybe I can work around getting the camera kit.

Thats how I work. All DSLR photos go first to my iPad then photo stream saves the full res edit on my Aperture library.

 

[minimo3]

Aside from editing photos, I never really saw the benefit of using iPhoto in iOS. I also was never entirely sure if it was saving photos at full resolution, making copies, etc and it bothered me not knowing (though not enough to actually investigate).

I recently bought my mom a 64GB iPad to be used as her only (not main, not secondary) computer. She had an older macbook so I synched her music (the non-iTunes purchased songs) to the iPad and also synched her iPhoto library. Going forward when she takes pics on her camera, she'll use the camera kit and import them to the Photos.app/iPhoto.app. For her, that will be her photo library.

I get the impression that the iPhoto iOS app is aimed more at a "normal" user who uses the iPad as their main computer than it is at someone looking to sync with iPhoto on the desktop or have to manage two libraries.

Just a word of warning. My parents use iPads as their only computers and use the camera kit to import photos from a camera. There is a glitch in the photos app that occasionally prevents you from deleting photos you've imported. That means the photos are stuck there forever. No way to get rid of them unless you wipe the iPad and setup as a new one. We've tried third party apps, plugging it into my PC, taking it to An Apple store, no dice. And in case anyone is wondering these photos definitely weren't imported thru iTunes because as I mentioned they don't own a computer.