I got a copy of iLife and although I used the iWeb and iMovie, I am amazed by the iPhoto, the flagship application. There are three main features, that can amaze you as they did me.
- Faces
- Places
Faces: This was one of the wow things on the past (and last, unfortunately) Macworld Keynote presentation. It utilizes the best face recognition software to locate the features of the face, and immediately puts a square around it. Once done it will ask you to name the face and thereafter it will do it itself. Although a first attempt this works pretty well, it is still not perfect. It will pick many random people among your pictures as suggestions. However, I see certain pattern repeated. I see for instance that suggests as my my mother and my father, that I look like anyway. It can be an alternative for a DNA test... I have to say, however, that Although over the years I lost 20 lbs it could still recognize me.
Places: This is the very long awaiting feature. Many sites like flickr already implemented it in their features. I was using a combination of programs to do it in my library for a bout a year now. I was doing with Geottager a Applescript software and Google earth. You center the location on Google Eaths and then you drag and drop the image on the geotagger app and includes in the exif data the latitude and longitude. Exif data is an small text file that is saved along side the image file and stores information as, the camera model, the lens, the aperture size and speed, etc. Now it can store GPS information. However, when I started the new iPhoto it did not import this information. I looked around and I did find many users reporting this as major issue. A work around is to re-import the pictures, which will force iPhoto to read this information. It is not practical though. So I just used the build in geotagging tool that is ok. Not the greatest, but pretty good. And then one more bummer... The iPhoto does not save the location as exif data but only in its internal database... Meaning? You cannot have the pictures exported with the GPS data included.
Facebook: Being a big facebook fan, I loved this feature until I realized that it is not very functional. So I tag people here, then I upload the pictures, but the names are not actual tags. You cannot click on them to see the friends profile. So you have to retag the pictures, which is a bummer and on top of that, when the iPhoto syncs the info, will re-import the new names on top of the previous... It just becomes a mess.
So the new iPhoto has some great features, that need some work to become even greater. The face recognition is great, and honestly I could not ask for more. The Places has two major bummers; does not read the GPS info of the pictures in the library and if you geotag pictures in does not translate the information to GPS exif data.
Places: This is the very long awaiting feature. Many sites like flickr already implemented it in their features. I was using a combination of programs to do it in my library for a bout a year now. I was doing with Geottager a Applescript software and Google earth. You center the location on Google Eaths and then you drag and drop the image on the geotagger app and includes in the exif data the latitude and longitude. Exif data is an small text file that is saved along side the image file and stores information as, the camera model, the lens, the aperture size and speed, etc. Now it can store GPS information. However, when I started the new iPhoto it did not import this information. I looked around and I did find many users reporting this as major issue. A work around is to re-import the pictures, which will force iPhoto to read this information. It is not practical though. So I just used the build in geotagging tool that is ok. Not the greatest, but pretty good. And then one more bummer... The iPhoto does not save the location as exif data but only in its internal database... Meaning? You cannot have the pictures exported with the GPS data included.
Facebook: Being a big facebook fan, I loved this feature until I realized that it is not very functional. So I tag people here, then I upload the pictures, but the names are not actual tags. You cannot click on them to see the friends profile. So you have to retag the pictures, which is a bummer and on top of that, when the iPhoto syncs the info, will re-import the new names on top of the previous... It just becomes a mess.
So the new iPhoto has some great features, that need some work to become even greater. The face recognition is great, and honestly I could not ask for more. The Places has two major bummers; does not read the GPS info of the pictures in the library and if you geotag pictures in does not translate the information to GPS exif data.
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