iPhoto '09
I've got my mitts on a copy of the latest version of iPhoto - Apple's photo management software, and I'm loving it. It's got three great new bonus features: Maps, Syncing and Faces.
Geotagging has been picking up momentum for a while now - and with more and more phones and cameras coming with built-in GPS, it's only going to get bigger. Geotagged photos are now all pulled together on a map, with the co-ordinates reverse coded to show location names, allowing you to search for places and find photos taken there. Pretty nifty. Adding locations isn't a big feature yet, but any locations added in Flickr can be synced using the next new feature.
Just when PhotoCopy had launched their excellent Flickr syncing program, Apple have added Flickr-syncing to the mothership - and it works perfectly. Any set of photos can be used to create a Flickr set, which then uploads to your chosen account. Any changes made to the set or the photos (adding tags, changing title etc) are automatically updated online, and even more impressively any changes made online are synced back to the program.
With more and more services becoming available to run sophisticated photo sites using Flickr (1, 2, 3), anyone can now manage a detailed photo site using just iPhoto.
Here's an example using the Chimp surveillance data.
Finally, iPhoto now uses facial recognition. If you saw this on CSI you would dismiss it as implausible, but it actually works incredibly well. As you first set it up, it scans through your library and marks any faces it thinks it has found. You can then click these and add a name - and as the names build up, the program quickly suggests other photos with that person in. It's right maybe 70% of the time, which makes tagging these photos super easy. You can then search your library for a name, and bingo - all the photos of one person in one place. The tagged photos work pretty much like Facebook's photo tagging, so as expected you can now upload directly to Facebook, keeping all that data in place.
I wasn't intending this to sound like a software review, but there's no denying how it's turned out. The best photo management album out there just got way better.
CSF - 4.5 Stars
2nd Feb 2009 - Tumblr