__Note: iLife ’09 has started shipping, and we’re eagerly putting it through its paces. This week we have an overview of iPhoto ’09. Next week, our focus will be on iMovie ’09.__
Along with iTunes, iPhoto is an essential part my daily digital life. For the past few days I’ve been testing the newest version, iPhoto ’09, and so far I’ve been impressed with the upgrade. iPhoto is still easy to use, but it now has smarter tools, faster response, and some great new features that truly make interacting with digital photos fun again.
The biggest features of iPhoto ’09 include Faces (nearly automatic, seamless facial recognition and tagging of your photos), new built-in uploaders to Flickr and Facebook, Places, and over-all speed and stability enhancements. There are also new editing tools, printing options, and themed slideshows.
After installation, iPhoto ’09 scans your photo library for faces. This can take over an hour if you have thousands of photos. It’s then up to you to go through your library to actually name the Faces identified by iPhoto. It’s very easy to do this, and actually rather fun. When you later add new photos of these people, iPhoto will automatically sort them by name in a new “Faces” tab. In this new Faces tab, you can also enter their email addresses and Facebook information.
In my testing, Faces worked well but didn’t always automatically detect people. Still, it worked better than expected, and was fun to use as mentioned. I tried to make Faces automatically recognize my dog, Spy, but it didn’t work. That would actually be a useful feature for me, as I must have thousands of photos of that darn dog. Some people report success in getting iPhoto to recognize feline faces. Interesting bias or limit of the software? You decide.
Places is the other highly-touted feature of iPhoto ’09, and like Faces, it’s surprisingly fun and easy to use. This feature can use data from GPS-enabled cameras or the camera on iPhone to categorize photos by location. This information can also easily be manually added by place name or zip code. iPhoto will connect to Google Maps to locate your photo on a global map, which you can view on your computer. I’m not sure how much I’ll use this, but it’s intriguing to categorize and search photos by location. I did appreciate Places’ highly detailed maps, which even included the option to view topographical features. Location information can optionally be added for photos uploaded to the Internet.
There are also new editing features. For example, it’s now possible to increase the saturation of a photo without over-saturating skin tones. There is a new Definition slider which improves image clarity and focuses detail with better results than the old Sharpness tool (which usually resulted in grainy/digital-blah looking photos).
I welcome the built-in Facebook and Flickr uploading tools in iPhoto ’09. I tested both, and they were fast and very easy to use. As I use both Flickr and Facebook daily, I definitely appreciate the uploader integration.
iPhoto ’09 blends familiar features with new fun and useful features. My iPhoto library will be better organized then ever. I would pay $79 (the cost of iLife ’09) for iPhoto alone. It’s a killer app.
We’ll offer iPhoto ’09 tips, tricks, and gotchas as we spend more time with the application. Also, please send us your reviews and thoughts of iPhoto ’09!
