iLife '05: iPhoto 5 Review
Organize your iLife
28 January 2005 Justin Williams Skip to comments
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It has become a yearly event around Macworld San Francisco for speculation to begin on what the latest versions of the iLife suite of applications will include. When we reviewed iPhoto 4 last year, Apple added the ability to load 25,000 photos with no loss of speed, improved slideshows, ratings, smart albums, and Rendezvous photo sharing. Along with those new features, they added a price tag to iPhoto which seemed to overshadow the announcement somewhat. This year, Apple enhanced many of the features introduced last year, and added a plethora of new features as well.iPhoto is Apple's photo management utility that lets you share, edit, and organize all of your digital photos. This year iPhoto moved closer to being a photo manipulation application as well as an organizer. Find out what's new.
What's Changed
The importing experience is different in iPhoto 5. Now when you connect your camera, iPhoto opens a new view that shows an image of a camera, a list of what items you are going to import, and the ability to add a name and description to the picture set. This seems like a waste of space to me. I was hoping for the ability to selectively add photos to iPhoto like in Image Capture instead of having to click a single button. Having all of the photos on my camera listed would be ideal.
The main interface of iPhoto has had a makeover. Apple has shied away from the four panes metaphor: Import, Organize, Edit, Share. Your albums and photos now take greater precedence since the data about each photo has been pushed into a hide-able view. The controls at the bottom of iPhoto's window are now packed closer together to allow more room for your photos and a search field. When created, slideshows and books are now added to the Albums list along with your regular and smart albums. Apple did this so that you can group all three of them into a project folder; another new feature of iPhoto 5. This is a similar feature that I have been begging for in iTunes for years. Once you have so many albums, it is difficult to keep them all organized. By grouping them with subgroups, it has become much easier.
Apple also included a new Calendar view that lets you find pictures by date. If, for instance, you knew you took a decent picture of your daughter in October, but don't want to dig through your entire library, you can use the calendar to go to that month.
The biggest addition this year is the advanced editing ability. Before, users would only be able to edit the brightness or contrast of a photo. With iPhoto 5, Apple added the ability to alter exposure, temperature, sharpness, saturation, tint, and a straightening tool for all of those pictures you took at an odd angle. The controls now appear in a Dashboard. Dashboards are translucent panels that first began appearing in Apple's Motion. The name is somewhat confusing with Apple's Dashboard feature in Mac OS X Tiger. The editing features are simple enough for a novice photographer to use, and may even be of use to the professional for a quick edit. Many will still opt to open their images in a more powerful application such a Photoshop however.
One feature that professional photographers will appreciate is iPhoto 5's support for the RAW format. Most cameras save JPEG images to your memory card. The problem with JPEG is that it compresses similar pixels in order to save on file size. With RAW, the camera does not compress and pixels and gives you ever little bit of detail in the picture. This gives photographers an even greater level of detail than before. iPhoto also imports the short videos your camera shoots now as well.
Share Alike
In the sharing category, Apple has taken great strides to improve its slideshows and books. Each picture in your slideshow has the ability to have one of twelve different transitions. The transitions are similar to those found in Keynote 2 and iMovie. You can also apply the Ken Burns effect from iMovie on your pictures while they run through a slideshow. Probably the neatest feature of the new slideshow editor is its ability to sync the speed of the show to the song that is playing using the new “Fit to Play” feature.
When you first create a new slideshow, it will take your currently selected pictures and place them at the top of the slideshow's view. From there, you can select each one, apply a transition, effect, and adjust its play time. You can also set global options such as a default transition, the music you want to play, and whether or not to show the ratings, titles, and slideshow controls. If you create a great slideshow, you can now easily drag it into iDVD 5 and burnt it for all your family and friends.
Assuming you can get your family and friends to sit through one of your slideshows of the family Christmas, they will appreciate the attention to detail you can now put in them. The page curl transition alone is reason enough to sit through a slideshow of baby Nick's first birthday party.
Along with the in program improvements, Apple improved its book and photo printing services. Books are now available in nine themes, four different sizes, and in hard or soft cover. 
The book layout tools have also seen improvements. There is an option to have iPhoto automatically layout your book, or give you the ultimate in control and do the entire thing yourself. Books are limited to one hundred pages. If your picture count exceeds that, iPhoto puts your excess in an Unplaced photos view. From there you can replace photos you may not want in your book. I have never purchased a book from iPhoto, so I can't talk about quality personally, but from the books at the Apple store, they look very professional. I am very excited about the soft-cover editions now available as well.
How It Rates
Other than iTunes, iPhoto is the iLife application that I use most. Almost everyday I am importing photos into it and then exporting them to my Flickr account using the FlickrExport plugin. If you have iPhoto 4 and merely use it to import your photos and email them to friends, there isn't much incentive for you to upgrade. If, however, you take advantage of books, slideshows, and do minor editing to your photos, you will most definitely want to pay for this upgrade. I am glad I did.
iPhoto 5 is part of the iLife '05 suite that is now available for $79 or for free with any new Mac purchase.
Justin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn't looked back since. When not blogging or coding, you can find him watching copious amounts of TV. Justin can be reached at
Reader Comments (20)
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#1) On January 29, 2005 10:59 AM
Quoting what you said, “One feature that professional photographers will appreciate is iPhoto 5’s support for the RAW format. Most cameras save JPEG images to your memory card. The problem with JPEG is that it compresses similar pixels in order to save on file size. With RAW, the camera does not compress and pixels and gives you ever little bit of detail in the picture.”
You must not shoot in the RAW format or tried the improtation in the new iPhoto 5 . Anyone shooting in the RAW format will achieve much better results using their cameras RAW conversion plug-in and then bringing a properly corrected Jpeg over to iPhoto 5, rather than letting iPhoto do the conversion process. And heres why; iPhoto 5 does not support the RAW format. All it does is take the original RAW photo and make a Jpeg compressed copy of the photo. This Jpeg copy is used by IPhoto for any editing. The RAW photo is imported and kept in an originals file drilled deep in the cryptic iPhoto library. The really bad thing is that every RAW conversion plugin I have used allows for user adjustment for white balance, tone, exposure, etc. BEFORE the conversion process starts. IPhoto 5 DOES NOT. It makes decisions and you are left with what it thinks the converted photo should look like. My camera, and the proprietary software the manufacture designed for my camera, do a much better job at processing the RAW conversion than the universal, one fits all camera approach iPhoto takes. In my opinion Apple has misled photographers by claiming RAW support.
The iPhoto User can open the original RAW in Photoshop and its Adovbe Camera RAW plug-in will start. But what’s the point? When choosing this option to open photos for editing in another program EVERY photos opens this way, not just the RAW ones.
#2) On January 29, 2005 1:37 PM
Of all of iLife, I only use iPhoto and iTunes. All of the iLife applications have entries in their main menus for “shop for [iLife App] products”. iPhoto has buttons that only work if you subscribe ($100/year) to .MAC. As a Mac noob, I find it very disapointing that this package—that I bought and paid for—acts like unregistered shareware. Stuck using it though, there is not another Mac app for organizing photos.
#3) On January 29, 2005 2:41 PM
John:
The only two buttons in iPhoto that require a .mac account, are ‘homepage’ and ‘.mac slides’. That’s only because they utlize space on Apple’s servers to store the web pages and pictures.
You can order pictures or books, print, send by email, and use your iPhoto pictures as your desktop without a .mac account. You can even remove the offending buttons from view by going to the Share menu and selecting ‘View In Toolbar’. Once there just deselect the homepage and .mac slides options.
Also, if iPhoto and iTunes are the primary pieces of iLife you use, you might look at how they integrate with the other parts of iLife to see if there are some capabilities you may like to try out. Using iPhoto pictures in iMovie gives you more control over slideshows, and iDVD is a great way to share your creations with friends and family.
Not everyone wants or needs all components of iLife, but for those that do, I think it’s an excellent package and well worth the upgrade.
If you are looking for an iPhoto alternative for organizing your photos, you might take a look at Adobe’s Photoshop Album 2.0. You can also go to the Apple site and click on the OS X tab. Once you’re there, select the ‘downloads’ submenu. I think there are several shareware titles that might give you other options.
#4) On January 31, 2005 10:39 AM
iPhoto 5
I received iLife 5 on Wednesday 19 Jan 2005…. I proceeded to install it on my wife’s Emac 700mhz system… This system has 1.5gb ram and a 80gb HD…
It also has iPhoto 4 with over 12,000 photos on it… A lot of photos!!!… Good thing I have a back up!!!
Installing iLife from the DVD was easy, 20 minutes later if was done…
I started up iPhoto 5, it told me that it needed to update the iPhoto database… 26 hr later it was still “hung” and I killed the task. restarting iPhoto 5 it againg told me that the database needed to be updated and this time it was only 4 minutes…
BUT, when I looked at the library, all the structure of the library was there with the correct number of photos in each album, the correct name under each photo, but each photo was replaced by a gray box… NO PHOTO’S!!! clicking on the photo caused iPhoto 5 to crash…..
WARNING iPhoto 5 is NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME…. It has BUG’s and you may lose all of your photos!!!!!
I have been an Apple developer for over 20 years and am not please to see a product released that has not been real world tested… Apple should be ashamed of it self for releasing a product that people put there trust in to save their lifes photos……..
tom lafleur
#5) On January 31, 2005 8:43 PM
Photoxtra from Microspot is supposed to be real good according to the folks at iCreate magazine
#6) On February 4, 2005 5:59 PM
Tom:
how did you solve your problem if at all? I just tried installing iphoto 5. I have just under 2,000 photos. it was updating the thumbnails and, same as you, hung. I had to do a hard restart and now iphoto will not start at all. I erased it and re-installed, re-named the iphoto library, and rebooted a number of times but still no luck. I have a full backup of the photos, but just cannot open the app. suggestions?
#7) On February 9, 2005 8:48 AM
I’m all ears on the gray thumbs issue: I installed iPhoto ‘05, did the upgrade to 5.0.1, followed, on launch, the suggestion to rebuild the iPhoto library. That was the end of the iPhoto library in any usable fashion. 5224 gray thumbs result. G4 tiBook, 512Mb ram, 40Gb HD, so - who knows how to fix this one?
#8) On February 15, 2005 1:43 PM
I just bought a new Powerbook 12” 80Gigs and transfer all my files from my 12” iBook G3 900GHz. Then I receive my up grade iLife 05’ for 19.95 and install the DVD software. Everything went fine. No hang ups, all my albums in tack. (I did back them up just in case.) Also I up dated to 10.3.8 before i did this. Now I notice two things, one is it takes one and a half minutes to open iPhotos and just as long if not longer to close iPhotos. I do have about 2400 photos on file but my iBook can open 3 seconds. The second thing I notice is when i have both computers next to each other open in iPhoto (iBook in iPhoto04’) and (Powerbook in iPhoto05’) having the same file (photo) the Powerbook image is not as sharp, rather soft looking. So then I open the image in Photoshop CS an it look fine, sharp like it should look. So now
I’m getting little concern. Even the wall paper is not as sharp as the iBook. (The same pic.) so then I called Apple Support and they put me though
a bunch of task for two hours and still nothing.
Then I went on this web site MacInTouch.com where people write in about Mac related problems and there was someone with the same problem. Its a BUG
in the software. Is anybody out there having this
same problem.
#9) On February 16, 2005 9:21 AM
Rett - Check the iPhoto5 board over at Apple for more info, but I fixed mine by deleting the iPhoto plist file, with iPhoto closed. When I next opened it, no more grey thumbnails.
#10) On March 1, 2005 1:19 PM
I just returned from Thailand where I shot a tribal village of Hmong people in the Northern part of Thailand. Our mission is to help these people. I created a 45 min slideshow assuming that I could export from iphoto 5 to a quicktime movie.I took a lot of time piecing the music into the different parts about 600 images and 10 songs. But it appears that the framerate for iphoto and quicktime are vastly different. I don’
t have a superdrive so I can’t use IDVD Does anyone know how I can salvage this show without starting over. I suppose to show it in 2 days to about 50 people.
#11) On March 1, 2005 1:21 PM
I just returned from Thailand where I shot a tribal village of Hmong people in the Northern part of Thailand. Our mission is to help these people. I created a 45 min slideshow assuming that I could export from iphoto 5 to a quicktime movie.I took a lot of time piecing the music into the different parts about 600 images and 10 songs. But it appears that the framerate for iphoto and quicktime are vastly different. The music doesn’t synch up after the conversion. I don’t have a superdrive so I can’t use IDVD Does anyone know how I can salvage this show without starting over. I suppose to show it in 2 days to about 50 people.
#12) On March 19, 2005 10:44 PM
How many pictures can be added to a slide show in iphoto5? Can you add captions to individual slides? Can you fade songs or parts of songs together? Thanks!
#13) On August 2, 2005 1:22 PM
I too, as Marcus with his Thailand pictures, spent too much time setting up my slideshow only to find out that exporting a slideshow trashes the timing between the music and slide transitions. I’ve searched the net endlessly to find a solution and have yet to find one.
I think this is an inherant flaw to their software. I guess for a free software package, you can’t expect much. It would be nice, however, to know about this problem BEFORE commiting so much time for something that won’t work.
I take back all the wonderful things I’ve said about iPhoto since getting my MAC earlier this year.
ALSO! I found that if I purchased a song on the iTunes store and use it in a slideshow, I cannot export the Quicktime file and play the slideshow with music on other computers. I get an error message stating the computer is not authorized to play the song. If I embed it into a quicktime slideshow, I would think I could play that anywhere. NOT FAIR!
#14) On August 10, 2005 8:33 PM
I installed iPhoto5 yesterday on an iMac G5, and today imported some shots from a Canon Powershot A510. The photos appeared fine in “Last roll” but all were dated 1/1/1980 at 1200 am. l phoned Apple Support and got a bum steer that put a lot of photos into the wrong albums, and everything slowed to a crawl with the beachball rolling for 3 mnutes whenever I clicked on anything. The second Apple technician suggested rebuilding the iPhoto library, but gave wrong instructions, so that didn’t work either. He also said that iPHoto5 doesn’t support the Canon A510. (The photo store where I bought the Canon says that can’t be true.) The third Apple tech told me to recreate the iPhoto library, but the Help instructions don’t match the options available. I’m ready to give up and uninstall iPhoto5 and live with iPhoto 4, which at least keeps photos in the right place with the right dates and handles edits much faster than iPhoto5. Any suggestions? I don’t want to reassemble all 960 shots from a back-up CD by hand!
#15) On September 7, 2005 6:47 PM
When i export my photos as a quicktime movie and add music the music does not export.
Does anyone know what the problem is
#16) On September 8, 2005 2:38 AM
After using iPhoto 4 successfully to import and catalogue RAW images from my Nikon 5700, and learning to tolerate iPhoto’s cryptic filing system on my hard drive (no match between titling in iPhoto and titling on the hard drive - doh!), I upgraded to iPhoto 5 with hopes that some of the roughness would be smoothed out in what was, essentially, a competent photo import and catalogue tool.
Big disappointment.
iPhoto 5 no longer imports RAW photos at all from my camera - it says they are in an unrecognizeable format. So it won’t even catalogue them.
Worse news to come - upon trying to remove iPhoto 5 and to reinstall iPhoto 4, I found that
1) there were no instructions for a complete uninstall (this is a shoddy but all too common practice) and
2) that the iPhoto 4 installer will not let me install iPhoto 4 even though I had deleted the iPhoto 5 app.
I have since reinstalled my system with Archive and Restore (don’t get me started on that boondoggle), so there should be no iPhoto 5 remnants left. I checked the Receipts folder and there are no iPhoto files in it.
Does anyone know how to purge this app completely?
The combined practice of issuing software without a “Complete Uninstall” function in the installer, and of preventing the replacement of new verions with old versions is an atrocious one that leads to all manner of problems.
I know when I want to remove a new app and replace it with an older one. At most, the system should say “You’re about to install and older version over a newer one - do you wish to proceed?” Then it should get the hell out of the way and let me go to work.
Any help appreciated. I’m one step away from trashing iPhoto entirely and going back to Nikon’s software.
#17) On September 22, 2005 11:02 AM
Ah, the perils of iLife 05! My sympathy to those of you who have lost photos. I haven’t had that problem, at least. But having shelled out the cash for this upgrade, as the improved editing and slideshow functions looked promising, I can now no longer publish to my .Mac homepage (hangs forever trying to “Update Themes”), and it won’t actually open pictures directly into Photoshop if I have that selected as my preference. (It opens Photoshop, but not the individual Jpeg.) I have read and tried the many suggestions on the Apple site (creating a new user, going through motions of ordering pictures, altering preferences etc etc) and all to no avail. In fact, I now seem to have messed up other preferences; and it won’t let me reinstall the older software - and I am not someone with expert computer knowledge to pull the system apart bit by bit to try and improve matters. Apple should really not have released this bug-ridden software. Did they not test the damned thing? Any other suggestions, from those many of you who know far more about this sort of thing than I do, would be most welcome. I am at the end of my rapidly shortening tether! Thank you.
#18) On November 8, 2005 11:14 AM
I’m very new to the Mac world, but am not a happy camper. I’m having the grey thumbs issue in iphoto 5 as well. It imports new photos and displays their actual thumbs, but my older photos appear as grey thumbs. I can still access them when i go into the finder-pictures. Any suggestions on viewing them in iphoto?
#19) On December 4, 2005 4:44 AM
One big disappointment for me is exporting slideshows. On version 4, you were given the choice of what size the pictures should be. Now you are forced to stay with one of 3 choices, Small, Tiny and Miniscule. I used this in the past to send screen sized slideshows on CD for my family overseas, Now I’m left with something that my aging parents can’t see… Any suggestions anybody.
#20) On March 20, 2006 4:02 PM
i’m a novice - I just intalled iphoto5 and when i went to open it it said “can’t find a libray” - so it gave me two options (i search in the my pictures folder - empty) so i created a new lirary called dummy library. I dont have a back up of my pictures - are they gone for good. i’d be grateful if someone would put me out of my misery