iPhoto in iLife 09

Is anyone using this latest version of iPhoto ?

I've had 3 e-mails from MacFriar on the subject of iPhoto - and it's putting it very mildly to say he's a tad irritated by it.

Anyone else trying it ? please would you post your comments and he can compare them with his .

Hi Goldie, it's pretty much the same iPhoto we know but with a few extra features namely: Faces, Places, Facebook and Flickr. I've been busy geotagging with Houdah Geo before importing (not necessary but more accurate) and have had quite a few laughs already organising Faces - one member of the family was unfortunately associated with a sack of potatoes! I've found both Places and Faces simple to get onto, in typical Apple style. iPhoto is still a fun tool designed for speed rather than industrial precision. Publishing to a MobileMe gallery is finally using my available bandwidth instead of drip feeding through the night.

So far, all I've done is installed it, let it convert my library (I do run Time Machine, so I can revert ), and then played with the Places and Faces features. The former demonstrates what I knew already - that my iPhone doesn't always know where the heck it is to within a mile or two; and the latter was quite erratic at spotting matching faces.

It looks as if it's possible to drag the pin for an image to the right Place; and/or to add other photos that were not geo-tagged to the same, or a new Place. Haven't got to grips with that yet, though.

Sometimes Faces was remarkably good. Other times it seemed to be making random guesses. So I suspect the times it worked well were also random. I don't think it likes it when you don't name a face it's found because you don't know who that stranger at the next table was. So it keeps on offering the face in the "XXX might also be in this picture" part of the sequence, even though it looks nothing like XXX, and may not even be the same gender as XXX!

I haven't tried the new editing or sharing facilities.

Thanks guys - I've alerted him to this thread .

He's obviously slowly 'getting there' now . Much of his Gallery is back up AND it's now visible in FF3 which it wasn't before - so clearly Apple sorted that wee problem out.

Oh, I don't use MobileMe. It sounds as if that's where his problems lie, rather than with iPhoto itself.

No, the problem was with the iLife '09 suite and it freezing up and having constant errors. Don't even get me going on it. The way I feel right now is to pitch the whole Apple nonsense, and go back to a PC were at least I know what to expect. I never had so many hours spent sorting out what an application has caused (almost two days). I nearly had two years work on a project ruined because of the iLife '09 rubbish. To me it was the worst purchase I have ever made in almost twenty years of working with computers. Apparently from what I could read on other support sites tonight, I am not the only one to have these issues. So I don't want to hear it.

If this sounds angry, that is putting it mildly.

MacFriar

Whoops! Sorry to hear about your bad experience; and to have hit a raw nerve. I was just going on the evidence we had.

I find Faces to be pretty good, and I'm pretty sure it "learns" as you go, so initially it isn't so great, but over time it does improve. That said, it's got plenty of time to - I've got around 8,000 photos in my library - primarily portraits/people shots taken in the last year (I bought a DSLR in April and a new compact last month for when I'm out somewhere I can't carry a big camera - so I tend to shoot a lot)!

The Facebook and Flickr upload tools are awful. Create new albums/sets with no option to choose existing albums or sets - very frustrating. The third-party apps are far better in that regard. If your use of Flickr is casual I imagine it's not a problem; as you can guess from my library size above, my usage isn't casual.

P.