Apple Updates iPhoto '11

Yesterday, Apple released iPhoto 9.1.1 which contained a series of bug fixes and a slew of minor enhancements for the company’s popular photo application. Following the launch of iLife ’11 earlier in the Fall, many early adopters griped over the seemingly reduced email functionality introduced in the software.

Though email themes were one of the main features highlighted during the iPhoto portion of the ‘Back to the Mac’ keynote, the latest iteration of Apple’s longstanding application omitted support for third-party email clients—which seemed, to some, a step backwards. Thankfully with version 9.1.1, Apple has responded to user feedback and enabled support for third-party clients in addition to several other improvements.

While tuning up the email portion of the application, Apple has also included several new themes as well as the ability to easily resize photos within email. While other changes are fairly minor, they are listed as follows in the support document accompanying the software update.

  • Adds a preference allowing photos to be emailed using an external email application
  • Adds “Classic” and “Journal” themes to email.
  • Photos attached to an email can now be sized to Small, Medium or Large
  • Improves reliability when upgrading a library from an earlier version of iPhoto
  • iPhoto now correctly preserves the sort order of Events after upgrading a library
  • Event titles displayed in headers can now be edited in Photos view
  • Addresses a problem that could cause duplicate photos to be added to a MobileMe album
  • Scrolling overlay now correctly displays ratings when photos are sorted by rating
  • Photos are now sorted correctly when a rating is changed and photos are sorted by rating
  • Fixes a problem that could cause text formatting controls to become inaccessible when editing a calendar

Apple recommends the update for all users of iPhoto ’11 and has made it available both on their download page and through Software Update.

Please note this update requires Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later, weighs in at 62.09 MB, and requires a copy of the iLife ’11 software suite. Per usual, we recommend running a Time Machine backup prior to installing any updates. If iPhoto ’11 has taught us anything so far, it’s that you can never be too careful with your data.