iPhoto Improvement Ideas

[esaleris]

I am a recent switcher. Actually, I'm a switcher-in-waiting, because I'm currently using a Sawtooth G4, and waiting the painful months for the MacBook. I'm already in love with Macs and love this site. However, I think iPhoto can really be improved, ironically, by learning from the Windows program Picasa. If you haven't played with a Windows PC, Picasa is an iPhoto-type freeware program for the PC.

The main benefit of Picasa is that it is a real-time editor. Once you import your photos, your pictures are not touched at all. Stamped as modified the day you took them. Picasa uses a real-time engine to apply your changes. For example, if you crop the files, it writes a *.ini file that says "this image was cropped from pixel here to pixel here." The same applies for all the effects, including auto contrast, auto color, exposure control, and a host of other effects. Then you can export the photos in the edited state to use elsewhere.

I'm not sure why iPhoto hasn't moved in this direction. For one, it copies every photo you ever had to two locations - your library and the "backup" location. Secondly, iPhoto's effects themselves are fairly slow - apply them dynamically through an engine like Picasa would be faster.

I'm not here to start a PC vs. Mac war. I just think it makes sense to keep only one copy of your photos, edit them dynamically and never touch the originals. I understand that a lot of people would want backups, but having 9GB of pictures shouldn't necessitate 18GB of HD space - that's a choice the end-user should be given to make. Plus, if you're editing dynamically, you've got another level of protection there.

What do you think?

 

[robbieduncan]

What you ae describing is basically how Aperture works. I imagine as it grows and newer versions are released some of it's older features will trickle down to iPhoto...

 

[esaleris]

Oh, didn't know that! Sorry for the ignorance - I hadn't looked into Aperture.

So Aperture works off of just the one set of photos - that it? Too bad it's "professional-grade" - at least the price!

 

[Applespider]

This is what Aperture does. and I agree that it's a good idea. My concern with it - is that it means that you're dependent on whatever file is keeping track of the changes. What happens if it becomes corrupted? Or if you go into a picture via the Finder/Explorer rather than through iPhoto/Picasa? Will it still see the changes that you made or not?

iPhoto 6 doesn't necessarily make 2 copies of your pictures - unless you choose to import them into iPhoto. You can leave them in any filing system now if you prefer.

It will only duplicate the image if you make an amendment to it - and it only keeps track of the original version and the current version. If you only load image into iPhoto once you've finished editing them, then 9GB of pics would be 9GB of pictuers. If you load all your pics in and then edit half of them, it would be 13.5 GB.

Another point is how many people make multiple, continual edits to pictures. I've used iPhoto Diet in the past to clear out some of my originals where I knew I'd never use the originals but only the edited shots. I suspect many people make a single pass at correcting images and then leave them alone - at which point, leaving the original is indeed just a waste of space.