my thoughts of iPhoto 09

[mrgreeneyes]

hi, i wanting to throw out my thoughts to you all.

1) i love the places feature, but i wish there was a option to add a pin on my own, or to edit the placement of the pins, why you ask? i noticed that some of the pictures that i took with my iphone do not appear where they were actually taken.

2) in the faces feature, i wish it was smarter and stopped selecting various things, such as door knobs or random things in the background of the pictures, instead of the people.

3) i would love to see an option to hide the faces or places feature from the side menu, if i do not want to use those features.

just my opinions.


EDIT:

is there a way to find the coordinates of places? like go to google earth, and say i type in the empire state building, and then copy those coordinates, and input them into iphoto, and have all the empire state pictures show on the map?

 

[FreeState]

hi, i wanting to throw out my thoughts to you all.

1) i love the places feature, but i wish there was a option to add a pin on my own, or to edit the placement of the pins, why you ask? i noticed that some of the pictures that i took with my iphone do not appear where they were actually taken.

Thats there - you can see how to do it here: http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#iphoto-places

2) in the faces feature, i wish it was smarter and stopped selecting various things, such as door knobs or random things in the background of the pictures, instead of the the people.

Give it time - all technology gets better with time and in this case I can see it being more accurate in the near future as well (its workable but still has some issues IMO).

3) i would love to see an option to hide the faces or places feature from the side menu, if i do not want to use those features.

just my opinions.

Thats a great idea (and Id add to to it a view by roll option that was used before iPhoto 8).

 

[Rivix]

My big problem is when you're trying to attach a location to a photo and iPhoto's search feature doesn't come up with a result, EVEN WHEN the location is on the world map page!!!

Its seams that everything big and small in the USA is available, but nowhere else.

 

[mrgreeneyes]

My big problem is when you're trying to attach a location to a photo and iPhoto's search feature doesn't come up with a result, EVEN WHEN the location is on the world map page!!!

Its seams that everything big and small in the USA is available, but nowhere else.

exactly how i feel, i can't even find the little town that is near my uncle's cottage, i have close to 300 pictures of family and friends on the beach and i cant place it on the map....which is annoying.

 

[Rivix]

exactly how i feel, i can't even find the little town that is near my uncle's cottage, i have close to 300 pictures of family and friends on the beach and i cant place it on the map....which is annoying.

You can always drop a pin yourself, but it still sucks. Why can't iPhoto just search the Google database right away?

 

[vansouza]

Feeling very stupid here, but can anyone help me find how to Name a photo. The help file says select the Add Name button... I guess I have gone blind because I can not find it or figure out where it is hiding ... thanks...

 

[Rivix]

Feeling very stupid here, but can anyone help me find how to Name a photo. The help file says select the Add Name button... I guess I have gone blind because I can not find it or figure out where it is hiding ... thanks...

If you have iPhoto 09 you can click on the little 'i' on the bottom right corner of any picture.

 

[vansouza]

If you have iPhoto 09 you can click on the little 'i' on the bottom right corner of any picture.

Thank you that helps me to name the location but I need to name a face. Thank you...

 

[juanster]

Thank you that helps me to name the location but I need to name a face. Thank you...

didi iphoto finish doing the scan of all your photos yet, if so then there should be an icon on the left button that says names, that will display the face and you can ads teh name there at least thats how i think it is, it has not finished scaning so i can't try mine yet

 

[vansouza]

Thanks

I did not mean to hijack this thread... and I found the flipping Name button finally... and it is working quite well....

 

[Michael CM1]

Has anybody else noticed the AWESOME auto red-eye fixer? I don't recall having the "auto" option on '08. There were a lot of post-wedding ceremony photos with about 8 sets of red eyes. I hit the auto button and BAM! Gone! I had been using Photoshop to do this since it did a better job, but iPhoto '09 really stepped up with this.

 

[mrkgoo]

Things I like:

Auto enhance button in iPhoto now stores edits as non-destructive changes that you can see. Previously, it just 'enhances', and the only way to get rid of it was to completely remove all changes or 'undo' the moment you did it. Now, when you hit it, you see the exact changes it makes in the adjust panel. This is great.

Definition slider: looks great!

I think images look sharper when you have them fit to a window too. I wonder if the rotation algorithms and stuff have been improved, or whether they look better after rotation in the window.

Faces and Places: obviously new. Great stuff and works well enough.

 

[urkel]

20k Photo Library
New Macbook Pro (4GB / Using 6400 GPU)

Okay, Face-Finding was fun at first, but after taking turns with my wife in some tedious face-confirming for the last few days then we hit a roadblock. I really hope these features get updated/fixed soon:

1) "Not _______" Should have more options:
When iPhoto suggests 200 photos of John then it's great to batch confirm them. But if 100 of those are Jimmy then it should give you an option of saying "Not John, it's Jimmy". A context menu would really help because there's it would be easier to pick the right name rather than toss it back in the pile and pray it shows up in the Jimmy search.

2) S-L-O-W:
I'm not sure if it's our library being too big, too much tagging or what but iPhoto absolutely CRAWLS now. Is anyone else having this problem because it's to the point where iPhoto is almost unusable.

3) Refresh Suggestions:
We're at a point where it's just not suggesting anymore for some people. But we still see a person we're looking for show up in other people's results. So they're definitely out there, but just not in the suggestions for the right person.

4) Accuracy:
60-70% accuracy is actually pretty amazing. BUT, that also leaves 30-40% unrecognized photos. So if you're dealing with 400 suggestions then you're stuck plucking out the 150 that are wrong and it's very time consuming.


Okay, well I'm not bashing the software. It's a very exciting tool but it's got a lot more maturing to do and I hope we don't have to wait for iLife '10 to get some updates.

 

[mrkgoo]

20k Photo Library
New Macbook Pro (4GB / Using 6400 GPU)

Okay, Face-Finding was fun at first, but after taking turns with my wife in some tedious face-confirming for the last few days then we hit a roadblock. I really hope these features get updated/fixed soon:

1) "Not _______" Should have more options:
When iPhoto suggests 200 photos of John then it's great to batch confirm them. But if 100 of those are Jimmy then it should give you an option of saying "Not John, it's Jimmy". A context menu would really help because there's it would be easier to pick the right name rather than toss it back in the pile and pray it shows up in the Jimmy search.

2) S-L-O-W:
I'm not sure if it's our library being too big, too much tagging or what but iPhoto absolutely CRAWLS now. Is anyone else having this problem because it's to the point where iPhoto is almost unusable.

3) Refresh Suggestions:
We're at a point where it's just not suggesting anymore for some people. But we still see a person we're looking for show up in other people's results. So they're definitely out there, but just not in the suggestions for the right person.

4) Accuracy:
60-70% accuracy is actually pretty amazing. BUT, that also leaves 30-40% unrecognized photos. So if you're dealing with 400 suggestions then you're stuck plucking out the 150 that are wrong and it's very time consuming.


Okay, well I'm not bashing the software. It's a very exciting tool but it's got a lot more maturing to do and I hope we don't have to wait for iLife '10 to get some updates.

For the record, I have an early 08 macbook pro and and over 20,000 photos in my library which I have been incrementally upgrading since iPhoto 5. While it us slower I don't find it unbearably so. I think thumbnails may even be faster. Try rebuilding your library.

The accuracy of my faces so far approaches 90% or higher of the ones it identifies. About refreshing suggestions - how do you know it is not refreshing and simply thinks that person is more accurate? That us what the reject feature is for, so you can train the ai. I'm not downplaying your very valid complaints, but maybe the software is just working at its limits. Hopefully it does get some performance boosts.

 

[urkel]

About refreshing suggestions - how do you know it is not refreshing and simply thinks that person is more accurate? That us what the reject feature is for, so you can train the ai.

We're at a point where, for example, picking Mom off the corkboard has 1800 tagged photos and zero suggestions. But when pulling up her sister's corkboard card (Aunt Lina) then my mom is showing up in Aunt Lina's suggested results. Even though I'm saying "That's not my Aunt", it isn't tossing those pictures back in the pool or anything and I end up needing to hunt down those mom photos manually.

Anyway, after days of tagging my iPhoto library then here's a tip that's really helped me since iPhoto gave up on suggestions.

Smart Album for Unknown Faces:
Make a "Smart Album" with the following condition: Name - Does Not Contain - [Leave Blank]

It's depressing because that pulled up yet another 12,000+ pictures but it does make it easier to just go tag a few names then move to the next photo. What really gets me is that so many of those have extremely clear pictures of well-tagged individuals yet it still considers them "Unknown".

 

[kepardue]

Has anybody else noticed the AWESOME auto red-eye fixer? I don't recall having the "auto" option on '08. There were a lot of post-wedding ceremony photos with about 8 sets of red eyes. I hit the auto button and BAM! Gone! I had been using Photoshop to do this since it did a better job, but iPhoto '09 really stepped up with this.

Hadn't thought to check this out. I need to do so when I get home. I was sadly frustrated with the red-eye repair in iPhoto '08. It never got all the red out (queue Ben Stein) and in some cases wouldn't recognize the red eye at all.

 

[dwright1974]

Smart Album for Unknown Faces:
Make a "Smart Album" with the following condition: Name - Does Not Contain - [Leave Blank]

Genius Tip - Thanks for that. It was doing-my-head-in that I must have photos that are untagged in my collection!

Gold star for you

- D

 

[Michael CM1]

Hadn't thought to check this out. I need to do so when I get home. I was sadly frustrated with the red-eye repair in iPhoto '08. It never got all the red out (queue Ben Stein) and in some cases wouldn't recognize the red eye at all.

It's not 100% perfect, but it's much improved over '08. I just wish I could zoom in to tackle some red eye like I can do with Photoshop.

In fact, I wish iPhoto could somehow "talk" to Photoshop so if I make changes in PS, iPhoto recognizes that and stores the original somewhere.

 

[kepardue]

It's not 100% perfect, but it's much improved over '08. I just wish I could zoom in to tackle some red eye like I can do with Photoshop.

In fact, I wish iPhoto could somehow "talk" to Photoshop so if I make changes in PS, iPhoto recognizes that and stores the original somewhere.

Unless I'm mistaken, you can already do this. You can set an external application to use in iPhoto preferences, and (assuming your editor is Photoshop) select Edit in External Editor, iPhoto makes a copy of the original so that you can do what needs to be done in Photoshop, and just hit save and the modified version shows up in your iPhoto library. And you have the option to revert to the original.

 

[Small White Car]

2) S-L-O-W:
I'm not sure if it's our library being too big, too much tagging or what but iPhoto absolutely CRAWLS now. Is anyone else having this problem because it's to the point where iPhoto is almost unusable.

YES. I'm on a quad-core Mac Pro with 6 GB of RAM and EVERYTHING I do in iPhoto take 3-6 seconds for the mouse click to register.

I mean, seriously, what the hell? I'm rebuilding thumbnails at the moment, but somehow I don't think it's going to do anything.

This is pretty terrible, I would actually call it all-the-way unusable.

 

[Michael CM1]

Unless I'm mistaken, you can already do this. You can set an external application to use in iPhoto preferences, and (assuming your editor is Photoshop) select Edit in External Editor, iPhoto makes a copy of the original so that you can do what needs to be done in Photoshop, and just hit save and the modified version shows up in your iPhoto library. And you have the option to revert to the original.

I'm going to feel stupid if that's the case when I check it later.

In a related story, does anybody else's library take a lunar cycle to open up? The application on my MBP opens fairly quickly, but I get the spinning beach ball for probably a minute until I can actually do anything. On my dad's iMac G5, it's even longer.

 

[mrkgoo]

We're at a point where, for example, picking Mom off the corkboard has 1800 tagged photos and zero suggestions. But when pulling up her sister's corkboard card (Aunt Lina) then my mom is showing up in Aunt Lina's suggested results. Even though I'm saying "That's not my Aunt", it isn't tossing those pictures back in the pool or anything and I end up needing to hunt down those mom photos manually.

Anyway, after days of tagging my iPhoto library then here's a tip that's really helped me since iPhoto gave up on suggestions.

Smart Album for Unknown Faces:
Make a "Smart Album" with the following condition: Name - Does Not Contain - [Leave Blank]

It's depressing because that pulled up yet another 12,000+ pictures but it does make it easier to just go tag a few names then move to the next photo. What really gets me is that so many of those have extremely clear pictures of well-tagged individuals yet it still considers them "Unknown".

I know what you mean, but what I'm suggesting is that it HAS thrown it back in the 'pool' (whether it has a pool, in that it locks out other suggestions while it's waiting for confirmation, I don't know), but that it simply doesn't think that that picture is your Mom, so it never suggests it. I don't know how it works exactly, but it's possible.

Here's the way I figure it works:

1) scans all current photos (and newly imported photos thereafter) for faces.
2) tags them all as unknown, but possibly associates 'like-with-like'
3) when you assign a name, it will first show you the other 'like' images.
4) as you confirm, it updates its 'like' database.

It would actually be very interesting to know how it works. Does it average ALL the images in a known face? Does it keep multiple records? FOr example, does it tag the individual with and without sunglasses, or just keep one generic one? (After I added a few images of my girlfriend with sunglasses on, it found the rest with sunglasses where it normally kept them out of it previously).

Does it keep a hierarchy of recognition? Like if you reject its top choice, does it then ask if it's its next choice? Or does it just leave it as unknown after that?

It obviously has some algorithms in place - for example, if it is tagged with someone, you cannot tag it as someone else. And if someone is already in the photo it won't tag them again (I have a passport image I made with multiple copies of myself in the same image, but it only tagged one).