[l008com]

Anyone else had it with the new iPhoto? It seems so 'thrown together'. Aside from the initial bugs, it's new behaviors are so a drag on your work flow. Like, when you make a new album, everything currently visible automatically gets added. Not selected photos, but everything that's currently in the view. What an asinine way to make new albums! I'm so disgusted by it, I may very well try to downgrade back to iPhoto 8 next time I have the chance.

Yes so that's what the poll question will be, if there was a very easy way to downgrade iPhoto to 8, are you so annoyed with iPhoto 9 that you would do it?

[mduell]

I'm switching everyone I know/support to Picasa.

[Doc HM]

The new iPhoto completes the apps journey from slick and useful lightweight photo storage app to sordid bloatware.

Its almost worth springing for Lightroom or Aperture and doing it properly.

[Spheric Harlot]

^ Oh wow, now there's somebody who doesn't remember the first few versions of iPhoto.

[l008com]

I tried downgrading to iPhoto 8, but of course:

[l008com]

So tonight I made a new album for this year's Christmas pictures, and I couldn't even add those photos to the new album. No matter what I did, they just wouldn't go. So that was the last straw, I just got through downgrading.

It wasn't too hard. I went back in my time machine to the backup before I "upgraded", which was 10/29/10. So I restored the 10/29 iphoto and iphoto library. I "kept both", for both items, and renamed them "... 8" and "... 9". Then I just switched back and forth a bunch of times, eyeing which photos were missing in iPhoto 8, and copied them out of 9, into 8. There were only 10 or so, so it wasn't very hard. But you can only open one iPhoto at a time. And you have to hold down OPTION on iPhoto every time, so you can choose the right library for each app. If I had a ton more photos, it would have been more of a pain in the ass. Also 14 additional pictures went missing in iPhoto 8, so I also had to copy those out of iPhoto 9. But everything seems to be running golden right now. So Apple, call me when iPhoto 10 comes out.

[Veltliner]

Adobe Photoshop Elements would be a good alternative. Includes Camera RAW (same module as Lightroom, but without the database for less than a third of the price of Lightroom).

[l008com]

I have full photoshop. I use iphoto for organizing, not editing. (although I do end up doing a lot of my editing in iphoto these days, it's editing tools aren't too shabby)

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

Adobe Photoshop Elements would be a good alternative. Includes Camera RAW (same module as Lightroom, but without the database for less than a third of the price of Lightroom).

I don't think Photoshop Elements is any alternative, it is exactly the omission of the database module that makes it useless as a replacement for iPhoto/Picasa or Aperture/Lightroom.

@l008
What about upgrading to iPhoto 11?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

@l008
What about upgrading to iPhoto 11?

There is no iPhoto 11.

iLife 11 includes iPhoto 9.

[OreoCookie]

@Spheric
Thanks, I confused the year with the version number, sorry about that!

[Atheist]

I'm stuck with iPhoto 8 whether I like it or not. I've spent hours trying to figure out why iPhoto 9 can't seem to work with my iPhoto library to no avail. And I'm not about to manually rebuild my entire library.

[l008com]

Originally Posted by Atheist 

I'm stuck with iPhoto 8 whether I like it or not. I've spent hours trying to figure out why iPhoto 9 can't seem to work with my iPhoto library to no avail. And I'm not about to manually rebuild my entire library.

^ blessing

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

I don't think Photoshop Elements is any alternative, it is exactly the omission of the database module that makes it useless as a replacement for iPhoto/Picasa or Aperture/Lightroom.

@l008
What about upgrading to iPhoto 11?

I use Bridge as a database application. But I guess it's not part of Elements.

And I agree, you need a good tool to view your images. Many people recommend Photo Mechanic. It's a photo browser with keywording and very distinct import features. Just a browser, but you can scan through many images quickly, which is why it's being used by reporters a lot. It costs around $160.

[l008com]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

I use Bridge as a database application. But I guess it's not part of Elements.

And I agree, you need a good tool to view your images. Many people recommend Photo Mechanic. It's a photo browser with keywording and very distinct import features. Just a browser, but you can scan through many images quickly, which is why it's being used by reporters a lot. It costs around $160.

I know a lot of professional mechanics used to use photo mechanic back before iphoto was really good. I don't know how popular it remains these days. But I'm VERY happy with iPhoto 8.

[Veltliner]

Here's an excellent alternative for $129:

Capture One Express 6

Capture One 6 is one of the best RAW converters out there, and you can browse your images and compare them.

Probably the best looking interface of all RAW converters. To be sure there's no misunderstanding: it's not just a converter, it's a full sized image editor that edits RAW.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by l008com 

I know a lot of professional mechanics used to use photo mechanic back before iphoto was really good.

Love this!

I will propose my mechanic to speed up the work by using Photo Mechanic.

Just not on my car

[l008com]

Haha professional photographers. There's a lot goign on in this room right now.

[imitchellg5]

iPhoto 9 is alright to me. I didn't like iPhoto 8 at all, Faces is useless for me, as well as events. At least 9 seems to be quite a bit faster.

[reader50]

Originally Posted by Atheist 

I'm stuck with iPhoto 8 whether I like it or not. I've spent hours trying to figure out why iPhoto 9 can't seem to work with my iPhoto library to no avail. And I'm not about to manually rebuild my entire library.

The iPhoto 8 library database may have some mild corruption that iPhoto 8 is ignoring. Something it can work around, but that the iPhoto 9 import engine trips over.

Try rebuilding your library database. Hold down Option and Command while opening iPhoto 8.

[OreoCookie]

Not just view them, but sort and rough edit them. I've used iView Media Pro before switching to Aperture (this piece of software has since been renamed, perhaps it's Media expression?). At least in the version I was using last (2.8), it was nowhere near close what Aperture has had to offer (ditto for Lightroom, although my poison is Aperture).

I haven't tried Photomechanic, so I can't really comment on it, though.

[Spheric Harlot]

iView Media Pro was bought by Microsoft and renamed Microsoft Expression Media and rolled exclusively into a version of Office that nobody bought.

Rather than just add it to the Vault of Good Ideas Killed By Microsoft's Touch, they at least mercifully sold it off, and nobody's heard from it since.

[Atheist]

Originally Posted by reader50 

The iPhoto 8 library database may have some mild corruption that iPhoto 8 is ignoring. Something it can work around, but that the iPhoto 9 import engine trips over.

Try rebuilding your library database. Hold down Option and Command while opening iPhoto 8.

Thanks but I've already tried that (and a zillion other suggestions). It seems quite a few people suffered from strange file permissions within their iPhoto library that iPhoto 8 would tolerate but iPhoto 9 would choke on. I've tried running scripts that reset all the permissions and ownership on the files in the library but that didn't work. What's more frustrating is that there is not a single message in the logs to indicate what's going wrong.

[andi*pandi]

I'm content enough with 8, I like event sorting etc. I do think the editing is much more complex than it should be.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

iView Media Pro was bought by Microsoft and renamed Microsoft Expression Media and rolled exclusively into a version of Office that nobody bought.

Rather than just add it to the Vault of Good Ideas Killed By Microsoft's Touch, they at least mercifully sold it off, and nobody's heard from it since.

Got bought by Phase One (Capture One/Capture One Pro and medium format digital cameras and backs) a few months ago.

Really curious what they'll do with it.

I own Expression Media 2 and am not using it as TIFFs are not color managed and look crazy. Microsoft admitted to this flaw which made this software useless for me - which is why I'm using Bridge CS5.

[cgc]

With Aperture 3 only $79 on the AppStore I jumped to that instead of iPhoto 9... Not much else out there for Mac 'cept LightRoom which is very good as well...