iPhoto - It's a bit rubbish

[liamski]

Hey

I've been a long-time user of Google's Picasa when managing high volumes of photos on my old PC. It does the simple things well - importing them, storing them, allowing bulk resizing, touching them up etc..

One of the issues when I moved to a MBP earlier this year was that I couldnt find something as easy to use

I've tried to use iPhoto, but for me, it just doesnt cut it. Why?

-- The file management system is terrible. Why does it copy photos from one folder to another, eating up disk space? I understand it's trying to help by allowing non-destructive editing of photos, but what if I actually want to quickly update my pics in their current location?

-- You cannot mass update pics - sizing, effects, etc..

-- Dynamic folder updates - Picasa detects when new photos are saved on the machine and adds them to your library.

-- Photo names and properties can be updated in Picasa and they are directly applied to the underlying photos on your computer

I guess the thing is... maybe iPhoto has some of these features, but I'm damned if I can find them.

Can anyone suggest a similar product to Picasa for the Mac?

cheers

 

[Mekgek]

Picasa is a great piece of software indeed, let's just hope Google will port it to the Mac someday.

However the new iPhoto from iLife '08 looks promising, haven't tried it yet but it seems like they have solved a lot of the usability problems...

 

[rhoydotp]

i love picasa and still do. everytime someone comes up to me, i recommend picasa for windows. when i first switch (about 1 1/2 years), i missed picasa on my desktop. but now i am so used to iphoto that i forgot about the other features of picasa that i liked before. it's just a matter of getting used to

btw, the dynamic update is one thing that i hate in picasa. it slows down the machine due to the agent. it's like running another anti-virus with active scanning all-over again. point is, not everybody thinks that is great

 

[skybolt]

You'll like iPhoto a lot better if you just allow it to do its thing, and not try to micromanage the files like you do in Windows. Stay out of the finder library, do all your editing (yes, there is a batch change feature under the "Photos" in the menubar), emailing, exporting, etc. from within the app itself. You can have folders and albums to organize your photos, you can automatically add photos to your library (check under preferences), etc. No, the underlying photo name (in the library in finder) does not change, but there is no need for it to change. The photos in the app will have whatever name you apply to them, and you never need to go into the finder library.

Give iPhoto a chance, use it the mac way, not the windows way, and you will learn to love it! And, stay out of the library in finder -- havoc will ensue if you make changes there!!

I am looking forward to getting iLife '08 this weekend -- seems like iPhoto has some really neat new features.

 

[polycat33]

You do not have to have iPhoto copy all your pictures again (which doubles the amount of memory your photos eat up, so if you have a lot that's no good) you can have them stay where they are. However, when you edit a picture it doesn't edit the original in your folder, it adds a new one to the Modified folder in iPhoto.

I tried letting iPhoto do its thing but I like to manage my files within Finder and am not willing to change that. Having things nicely organized within the Finder and also within a program is a logical thing for people to want. Plus, if you let iPhoto do what it wants it'll eat up so much space if you do a lot with it. For example, I took 100+ pictures on a recent trip, and most are of people, most with redeye. So I went through and edited the red eye. Unfortunately now I have a set of red eye, and set of no red eye. All I want is the no red eye pictures. So I edited them in iPhoto, copied the edited ones from the Modified folder into the folder I wanted them in, and reimported. I like iPhoto for its organizing and such within the program, but I want to organize myself outside of the program as well and not have issues. It can be done, but it's kinda a pain in the ass.

Plus I find that iPhoto sometimes messes up my thumbnail pictures... everything will be fine and then a few days later I'll scroll through and find that the thumbnail versions are somehow gone for some sets of pictures (that I did not touch within Finder). Causing me to have to go in and reimport those files and have the thumbnails remade. I don't know if there is a faster way of fixing that, but it is kinda a pain in the ass. I'd probably be open to an alternative program but for now, iPhoto is what I'll use.

 

[quigleybc]

You'll like iPhoto a lot better if you just allow it to do its thing, and not try to micromanage the files like you do in Windows. Stay out of the finder library, do all your editing (yes, there is a batch change feature under the "Photos" in the menubar), emailing, exporting, etc. from within the app itself. You can have folders and albums to organize your photos, you can automatically add photos to your library (check under preferences), etc. No, the underlying photo name (in the library in finder) does not change, but there is no need for it to change. The photos in the app will have whatever name you apply to them, and you never need to go into the finder library.

Give iPhoto a chance, use it the mac way, not the windows way, and you will learn to love it! And, stay out of the library in finder -- havoc will ensue if you make changes there!!

I am looking forward to getting iLife '08 this weekend -- seems like iPhoto has some really neat new features.

This is a great post, and is spot on.

For a lot of the Mac apps in iLife, you need to just sit back and work in the app itself....

and iPhoto 08 is really really nice IMO

 

[netnothing]

Plus I find that iPhoto sometimes messes up my thumbnail pictures... everything will be fine and then a few days later I'll scroll through and find that the thumbnail versions are somehow gone for some sets of pictures (that I did not touch within Finder). Causing me to have to go in and reimport those files and have the thumbnails remade. I don't know if there is a faster way of fixing that, but it is kinda a pain in the ass. I'd probably be open to an alternative program but for now, iPhoto is what I'll use.

Hold down Command + Option + Shift when starting iPhoto 06. It should prompt you with options....one being to rebuild the thumbnails.

-Kevin

 

[iBunny]

Hold down Command + Option + Shift when starting iPhoto 06. It should prompt you with options....one being to rebuild the thumbnails.

-Kevin

So how did you learn about this little trick? This is great.

See makes this too simple, and needs to put info like this out there for us Powerusers.

 

[netnothing]

So how did you learn about this little trick? This is great.

See makes this too simple, and needs to put info like this out there for us Powerusers.

Ah...the wonders of the internet. I think I was just searching on rebuilding thumbnails and found out 2 things.....1) iPhoto will periodically ask this and 2) you can force it to by using the key combo.

Apple does have a cool pro tips page at http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

-Kevin

 

[pianoman]

it seems that iPhoto more than any other iLife app (and possibly more than any other Mac app) forces people to drop their Windows-based perception of how to organize files.

once you copy your photos to iPhoto, you can (and should) delete them from their original location. there is a feature in iPhoto 6 that enables this "feature" to be turned on/off - i haven't checked to see if it's available in iPhoto '08 but i imagine it is.

 

[skybolt]

Polycat, you really are making your life much more difficult than it should be. All that copying and deleting -- makes my head hurt thinking about it. That's one of the reasons I switched from Windows -- much easier the Mac way. There is never any need to use any of the photos from within the finder, so there is no need to organize there -- double work! iPhoto does it all for you!

Anyway, if you want to get rid of originals of photos that you have modified, try a little app called iPhoto Diet. It gives many options, one being to delete the originals of modified photos. Do carefully read what it says, and make sure you understand what you are telling the app to do, and you can really clean up your library. It's available at VersionTracker.

 

[liamski]

some brilliant responses guys... cheers for your input

will give iPhoto another chance!

 

[Killyp]

I can't agree more strongly with the others.

iPhoto + iTunes, should BOTH do ALL the file managing themselves. I've set both to manage the folders + automatically copy content to the right place when I add it.

The result is that I've never had ANY issues with missing files since I started using them like this, and my hard drive is much cleaner...