Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPhoto Alternative?

M

m15t3r 8L4Ck

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 15, 2004
12
0
What alternatives do I have to iPhoto?
I have 2000+ photos and iPhoto SLOW SLOW SLOW. At this point its almost unusable. I am looking for a program that I can use to get pics off my camera and organize them. I don't like the software that came with my camera (canon powershot g3) and I am desperate to find something worth my time.
 
m15t3r 8L4Ck said:
What alternatives do I have to iPhoto?
I have 2000+ photos and iPhoto SLOW SLOW SLOW. At this point its almost unusable. I am looking for a program that I can use to get pics off my camera and organize them. I don't like the software that came with my camera (canon powershot g3) and I am desperate to find something worth my time.
Click to expand...

Are you using iPhoto 4? It is much better than iPhoto 2 for my use (about 1500 pictures).
 
Freg3000 said:
Are you using iPhoto 4? It is much better than iPhoto 2 for my use (about 1500 pictures).
Click to expand...
Yes I have iPhoto 4. I think my problem has more to do with the fact that I have an iMac G3 600 w. 256mb ram. I just need a photo prog that doesn't load ALL of my pics into memory by thumbnailing the whole library.
 
I think most picture apps are going to be slow on that computer. But I might be wrong, I also would like an alternative. (not that I need one but...)
-Ted
 
m15t3r 8L4Ck said:
What alternatives do I have to iPhoto?
I have 2000+ photos and iPhoto SLOW SLOW SLOW. At this point its almost unusable. I am looking for a program that I can use to get pics off my camera and organize them. I don't like the software that came with my camera (canon powershot g3) and I am desperate to find something worth my time.
Click to expand...

I use the iPhoto Library Manager software from here in order to break my library down to something manageable. It is extremely simple to set up and use but I'm not sure if you are willing to divvy up you photos. I have iPhoto 2 and am leaning towards making the jump to iPhoto 4. Something else I did about 2 months ago was purge my photos of excess - who needs 25 shots atop Table Mountain in the Tetons?

On a side note, I've had the Canon G1 since March 2001 and the thing is rock-steady.
 
iview media pro is much much faster than iphoto 2 or 4 but it costs over 100$.

its so much faster that if you use it right after iphoto it makes your system seem like a supercomputer in comparison.
 
i personally organize my pics in different folders, i use thumbnail pro to produce thumbnails and i view them with slides! which is a fantastic and simple slide program

if only they would change some things around in iphoto i would use it...but the biggest thing is where it places...by the day and year...it makes thousands of folders...what a pain..i wish it had a feature like itunes where it wouln't reorganize your photos.
 
iPhoto 4 is a big improvement in terms of speed and functionality. The look on my friends' faces seeing the cube transition and multiple music tracks in slideshow (so quickly after taking pics) was much more impressed than the old slideshow.

What I hate about iPhoto is that if you burn an iPhoto CD or backup the iPhoto library and reinstall it, then you lose all your roll information and end up with one huge photo library again which slows things down and makes things very hard to find.

Is there any way to retain that roll information?

Dom
 
iView Media Pro

iView Media Pro is a great app for this. I am still on OS9 and have not used iPhoto yet, but iView is great and they have an OSX version. I believe they have demo versions:

iview-multimedia.com

check it out and judge for yourself.
 
Wow thanks for all the input. I'm going to demo iView MP when I get home today, I like the looks of that.

javabear90 said:
I think most picture apps are going to be slow on that computer.
Click to expand...
Yes and no. My iMac will run slower than a g4 or g5 of course, but I'm used to how long it takes to do things and iPhoto is just unusable. I can run photoshop while listening to itunes, switching tasks between photoshop and safari with multiple windows and multiple tabs just fine. But as soon as I open iPhoto, even with nothing else running, the system hits the brakes.
 
m15t3r 8L4Ck said:
Yes I have iPhoto 4. I think my problem has more to do with the fact that I have an iMac G3 600 w. 256mb ram. I just need a photo prog that doesn't load ALL of my pics into memory by thumbnailing the whole library.
Click to expand...

Upgrade your RAM. It's the same price as iView Media Pro and will speed up ALL your apps, not just iPhoto. Also, are you maxing out your HD space? That might be the problem. If you only have 1 GB or so of HD space remaining, your system will slow to a crawl. I'm using iPhoto 2 on a Ti400 and I don't have any speed problems, even with 1,500+ photos.
 
wordmunger said:
Upgrade your RAM. It's the same price as iView Media Pro and will speed up ALL your apps, not just iPhoto. Also, are you maxing out your HD space? That might be the problem. If you only have 1 GB or so of HD space remaining, your system will slow to a crawl. I'm using iPhoto 2 on a Ti400 and I don't have any speed problems, even with 1,500+ photos.
Click to expand...

just my 2 cents... it's not quite the number of pictures that's relevant. size of each picture matters as well. so your Ti handling 1,500 photos may not be quite the same as o.p.'s iMac handling 2,000 photos...

that said, upgrading the RAM is an excellent idea. o.p.'s iMac is barely handling OS X, imo.

iphoto 2, unfortunately, was designed back in the day when digital camera was expensive and didn't have too many pixels. iPhoto4 addressed it to some degree, but by design, iPhoto is very RAM hungry...
 
wordmunger said:
Upgrade your RAM.
Click to expand...
True that. Although I don't really want to put any cash into this box as I am upgrading/replacing in a month or two. My imac takes different ram than the powermac that I want so I wouldn't be able to switch the ram into the new machine. I would however be able to use any software that I got now in the new computer.

jxyama said:
your Ti handling 1,500 photos may not be quite the same as o.p.'s iMac handling 2,000 photos...
Click to expand...
My ~2000 photos are 4 megapixels, between 1 and 2mb each. So iPhoto is thumbnailing 3 gigs of photos when it loads my library.
 
m15t3r 8L4Ck said:
True that. Although I don't really want to put any cash into this box as I am upgrading/replacing in a month or two. My imac takes different ram than the powermac that I want so I wouldn't be able to switch the ram into the new machine. I would however be able to use any software that I got now in the new computer.
Click to expand...
Good point. But $100 saved now is $100 you could spend on RAM for the *new* machine... can you survive w/iPhoto for just another month or so?

My ~2000 photos are 4 megapixels, between 1 and 2mb each. So iPhoto is thumbnailing 3 gigs of photos when it loads my library.
Click to expand...
Ahhh... Yep, that's probably the key difference. My photos are around 700K each; my library's less than half the size of yours. But still, I think more RAM would solve your problem on the iBook (if you were keeping it). You've got a faster computer and a faster version of iPhoto--it's got to be the RAM holding you back.
 
m15t3r 8L4Ck said:
My ~2000 photos are 4 megapixels, between 1 and 2mb each. So iPhoto is thumbnailing 3 gigs of photos when it loads my library.
Click to expand...

yep, that will do it...

back in iPhoto2, i had split my library so that none of them was greater than half of my RAM, ~300 MB. i have a 3 mpx camera so that was about 300 pictures.

ever since i got iPhoto4, i've consolidated those libraries into much bigger ones, iPhoto4 can handle them very well. i think mine are all below a gig for sure, though.

yeah, save your money... the update will be that much sweeter for you when you do it...
 
We're now in the year 2009. I have a pretty fast MacBookPro with more than enough RAM and HD. Still.... iPhoto is still S L O O O O W.

What a piece of crap actually. Usefull if you have 50 photo's but as soon as you have a respectable amount of photo's, iPhoto just won't do.:mad:
 
moshim said:
We're now in the year 2009. I have a pretty fast MacBookPro with more than enough RAM and HD. Still.... iPhoto is still S L O O O O W.

What a piece of crap actually. Usefull if you have 50 photo's but as soon as you have a respectable amount of photo's, iPhoto just won't do.:mad:
Click to expand...

Hmmm, I have thousands of photos in iPhoto '08 and it runs fine.
 
moshim said:
We're now in the year 2009. I have a pretty fast MacBookPro with more than enough RAM and HD. Still.... iPhoto is still S L O O O O W.

What a piece of crap actually. Usefull if you have 50 photo's but as soon as you have a respectable amount of photo's, iPhoto just won't do.:mad:
Click to expand...


1) Way to resurrect a 5 YEAR OLD THREAD :eek:
2) I manage 28,000+ photos on both my MacPro and a iMac G4...big difference in machine perfromance, but the real limiting thing on the iMac is the max RAM. Is iPhoto for professionals...no. But for most consumers, it's a damned fine product.
 
Inspector Lee said:
I use the iPhoto Library Manager software from here in order to break my library down to something manageable. It is extremely simple to set up and use but I'm not sure if you are willing to divvy up you photos. I have iPhoto 2 and am leaning towards making the jump to iPhoto 4. Something else I did about 2 months ago was purge my photos of excess - who needs 25 shots atop Table Mountain in the Tetons?

On a side note, I've had the Canon G1 since March 2001 and the thing is rock-steady.
Click to expand...

same here with the canon powershot g1! still love it.
 
eawmp1 said:
1) Way to resurrect a 5 YEAR OLD THREAD :eek:
2) I manage 28,000+ photos on both my MacPro and a iMac G4...big difference in machine perfromance, but the real limiting thing on the iMac is the max RAM. Is iPhoto for professionals...no. But for most consumers, it's a damned fine product.
Click to expand...

Odd that this thread was resurected today - the day I'm pondering moving from iPhoto 9. I'm tired of the faces "feature" and it's sluggishness (not slow just sluggish). I have a free copy of Lightroom 2.5 through my university (free license to just about all Adobe apps). I'm not so much for the UI and it does have a steep learning curve. I just free I want a little more flexibility than iPhoto has. but, the laziness in me does vote to keep iPhoto. Plus, iPhoto is tied into iTunes for my iPhone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back