[funkboy]

After just playing around a bit, it seems much faster than before. Of course, that may just be new software syndrome.

The Image Enhance and Retouching does just as advertised, which will be good enough for 90% of iPhoto's users (I think). In essence, this makes me forget about Photoshop for the minor retouching of photos I do. When I want to do a heavy cut and paste job, then obviously Photoshop will still factor into the equation: but iPhoto is like my family photo album, I just want my photos in there, I don't want to be all complicated with my family photos. Take the picture, label it, file it away. I don't even have to write dates on the back anymore

The integration with iMovie is great, though you only see the integration when you're on the iMovie side of things, which is a different thread altogether.

The Slideshow Settings dialog is similar to the weird photo order form dialog - it seems to want to float over other windows, too, though I did get it to go behind the Safari window here. The one-click ordering window doesn't go behind any window, it seems.

I'm happy with the speed of iTunes Music Library displaying in the Slideshow Settings dialog. I thought it would be horrible to have a big list like that get loaded up, but, although it's a bit slow to load it all up the first time you bring up the Slideshow settings dialog, after that it comes up right away.

On my first slideshow, hitting the left arrow key paused it and brought up two arrows in the bottom right of the slideshow, and it proceeded to fade to the previous photo. However, it messed up then, and showed a stretched out version of the photo it was just on (it looks like it stretched the image to fill my widescreen).

I don't think there were any decent contextual menus in iPhoto 1, so if not, then this one blows the original out of the water in that respect. Cut, copy, paste, duplicate, rotate, and more. Good polishing there.

So... what are your thoughts/experiences/revelations?

[me17213]

It is sluggish just like iMovie is.

Try what I posted in the iMovie thread:

To fix this sluggishness I have found that this works great:
Remove all other language packs that you don't use within iPhoto's package contents.
It has significantly sped up start time and overall responsiveness to it.

[TiSteve]

Definately faster on start-up

Seems faster when scrolling thru Albums and Library

Good responsiveness with editing...as it was for me before.

About the same sluggish application shutdown.

[TiSteve]

Originally posted by me17213:

Remove all other language packs that you don't use within iPhoto's package contents.
It has significantly sped up start time and overall responsiveness to it.

Is it just a matter of deleting the various .lproj files in the resource directory? Is this safe? Could there be any negative knock-on effects by doing this?

[funkboy]

Originally posted by TiSteve:
Is it just a matter of deleting the various .lproj files in the resource directory? Is this safe? Could there be any negative knock-on effects by doing this?

If you Get Info on it, there's a "Languages" arrow that lets you delete language packs. I don't know how safe it is, but I did it to iApps on my iBook to save disk space... now on my iMac, I'm not planning to until my drive is more filled up. I'll wait until, like, iPhoto 2.0.3 until that

[macrophyllum]

Well I don't know what they did, but my Fuji Finepix S602 is longer recognized by iPhoto . Before I would plug in my camera turn it to transfer mode and iPhoto would launch up, now it doesn't and I have to go to File>Import and select the photos from the cameras mounted drive. That sucks.

Other than that, I like the new features.

[I Bent My Wookiee]

MUCH faster. I love it.

[TiSteve]

Originally posted by funkboy:
If you Get Info on it, there's a "Languages" arrow that lets you delete language packs. I don't know how safe it is, but I did it to iApps on my iBook to save disk space... now on my iMac, I'm not planning to until my drive is more filled up. I'll wait until, like, iPhoto 2.0.3 until that

OK...thanks for that...first time I have noticed that in the get info.

I unchecked all those languages except for the 4 that i keep on my system...and also finally removing them (which just seems to delete the .lproj files). I did not notice much more of a speed difference on my TiSD in either case. If it was faster, it was not noticeable.

I also want to say the I was a bit harsh before with my comment on the app shutdown...that also appears to be a bit faster (whether it matters there or not).

So...overall...with 4000+ fotos, for me iPhoto 2 runs much faster then the first version.

[DannyVTim]

Originally posted by TiSteve:
OK...thanks for that...first time I have noticed that in the get info.

I unchecked all those languages except for the 4 that i keep on my system...and also finally removing them (which just seems to delete the .lproj files). I did not notice much more of a speed difference on my TiSD in either case. If it was faster, it was not noticeable.

I also want to say the I was a bit harsh before with my comment on the app shutdown...that also appears to be a bit faster (whether it matters there or not).

So...overall...with 4000+ fotos, for me iPhoto 2 runs much faster then the first version.

There may be some sort of indexing going on when you first use it, so it may not be as fast in the beginning as it will be when the indexing is done. That's just a guess. Also, after the thumbnails are cached it will speed up. This also happens in iView. Although, iview is much better than iPhoto1 at indexing.

[emil]

what's the deal iwth the cd burning feature? can anyone actually get an iPhoto cd to show up like this:



i haven't been able to, which pretty much makes the cd-burning feature about as useful as the idiotic way in which iphoto's 'library' folder works.

[Colonel Panic]

Originally posted by emil:
what's the deal iwth the cd burning feature? can anyone actually get an iPhoto cd to show up like this:



i haven't been able to, which pretty much makes the cd-burning feature about as useful as the idiotic way in which iphoto's 'library' folder works.

sure - burn a disc and then mount it. iphoto will "open" it like in your picture. works for me.

can't drag and drop the CD folders into your HD based library in that window, though, for some reason.

[emil]

hmm. yeah, burn it then mount it, that was the first thing i tried. didn't work. maybe i'm the only one. oh well. go apple!

[OAW]

I am using iPhoto 2 on a G4 iMac 800 with a library of about 700+ photos.

Having said that ....

I'm not sure what's up with those who are claiming that it is still slow ... but on my system iPhoto 2 is waaaaay faster than before! The Enhance button is simply awesome! It simply "fixes" 90+% of my photos ... and the ones that it doesn't are generally too screwed up from poor lighting to be helped. Scrolling through the photo library is just blazing! Switching between "Import", "Organize", "Edit", and "Book" modes is now instant. No more beachballs!. The integration with iTunes is top notch!

The bottom line is that I'm very pleased with this update!

OAW

[kman42]

MUCH faster on my G4/867 w/ 768MB RAM. No question. I like the enhance feature.

Before:


After:


kman

[emil]

even after, it's still MOLEN HOT MAGMA!! RUN!!!

btw, i forgot to read the part of the read me file that said "Your first iPhoto CD can be used as a complimentary coaster, all subsequent ones will work just fine." ... so, all's well in the land of iphoto land .. thanks for your help everyone.

[kman42]

This one really blew me away.

Before:



After:



I promise I won't post any more. I'm just really impressed with the enhance feature and what it did for all of my incredibly washed out underwater photos taken with my Canon S100 through a piece of plastic (the Aquapac was definitely worth the $25 now!)

kman

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by I Bent My Wookiee:
MUCH faster. I love it.

post some benchmarks

[kcmac]

Awesome photos kman!

[clod]

I love the enhance feature. It does wonders for winter shots. My Canon PowerShot S200 never captured snow right but when I enhance them, the pictures look perfect. BTW what does enhance do exactly?

[OAW]

Kman,

That's exactly what I'm talking about! The Enhance button is just off the chain!! It really improves the photos much better than I could "manually".

OAW

[OAW]

Originally posted by clod:
I love the enhance feature. It does wonders for winter shots. My Canon PowerShot S200 never captured snow right but when I enhance them, the pictures look perfect. BTW what does enhance do exactly?

I'm not sure exactly ... but it seems to adjust brightness, contrast, and color saturation to their optimum levels. But I can't say for sure since I'm just an IT consultant ... not a graphic artist. All I know is that my pictures look a helluva lot better after I click the Enhance button!

OAW

[kman42]

Originally posted by OAW:
Kman,

That's exactly what I'm talking about! The Enhance button is just off the chain!! It really improves the photos much better than I could "manually".

OAW

Yeah. All of my underwater photos had that nasty green tint to them even though the water was crystal-clear. It was just a lack of light making it through the plastic case. The Enhance feature brings out all of the original colors just as I remember them. Really quire impressive.

Trying to enhance photos that I already manually screwed around with led to mixed results. But these photos were already fairly hopeless.

Anyone else have any cool 'success photos' to post?

kman

[kman42]

BTW, I dig the new manual feature on the slideshow (that wasn't there before, right?). The fade of the icons is a nice touch.

kman

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

cool tip: when you do an effect, the CTRL key will toggle the "before" state so you can compare

[BTP]

I was impressed with the speed, but there were some familair slowdowns in starting and quiting, but even those were faster.

Overall, this is a solid update and a much improved app. The integration with iTunes is nice. Try a slide show and you get your iTunes library for the background music. Nice. So many refinements. I am quite pleased.

Enhance is nice, but it has had a few misses with me. Overall, it is on the money.

I am going to remove the languages and see if that help. I really don't think so, but I'll try it. I can use the space too.

For those that are squeemish about doing this go get Monolingual.

[AKcrab]

Originally posted by Silky Voice of The Gorn:
cool tip: when you do an effect, the CTRL key will toggle the "before" state so you can compare

I don't understand.

[BTP]

He's saying that if you use the CTRL key, you can see the picture before and after the effect. You know, toggle back and forth. It's like doing "undo" and "redo" to see changes.

[AKcrab]

Now I see... If you open the picture in a new window (like when I double-click) and then enhance the photo, that feature doesn't work.

[Eug]

Hmmm... So they moved the Export feature from the icon bar to the menu. Irritating, since it was one of the few features I actually consistently used.

[cenutrio]

I really hate the way iPhoto (wherever version) handles the photo files.

Also, I do not way it produces more than one copy when importing but reducing quality.

I must say that the only application mature enough in the iLive package is iTunes.

That must say a lot to the people that daily reads posts around here...

[cenutrio]

Sorry, I guess is too late...

Also, I do not understand why it produces more than one copy when importing and also reducing quality in one of them. very frustrating overall.

Originally posted by cenutrio:
I really hate the way iPhoto (wherever version) handles the photo files.

Also, I do not way it produces more than one copy when importing but reducing quality.

I must say that the only application mature enough in the iLive package is iTunes.

That must say a lot to the people that daily reads posts around here...

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Kman that pict looked better before.

The first pict looked like Molten Lava, the second pict looks like Mercury.

This is the same thing as Photoshops Auto Levels, and it doesn't always get everything right.

[Nathan Adams]

It's more than just 'auto levels'
enhance would be a combine 'auto-levels, auto-contrast, and auto-colours'

[mattmarshall]

Originally posted by cenutrio:
I really hate the way iPhoto (wherever version) handles the photo files.

Also, I do not way it produces more than one copy when importing but reducing quality.

I must say that the only application mature enough in the iLive package is iTunes.

That must say a lot to the people that daily reads posts around here...

what do you mean it reduces the quality?

-matt

[darcybaston]

iPhoto is slow for me, because it's a ram hog. My vritual memory crunches like crazy when this app is on. I get 10+ second beachballs just by creating a new album. I never saw 154 thousand pageouts until I used this puppy.

I have 256 MB ram (10.1.5, iMac DV SE 1999) though. I think I'll have to upgrade that.

Bugs noticed:
-manual slide show flip flop problem. You try to advance, it flashes like a one frame animation the next photo, but keeps showing the first one.

-music prefs in slideshow settings won't stick. I select different songs from my iTunes playlists and Minuet in G just keeps playing anyway. Tried save settings and all that, it just won't play what I tell it to.

-Assuming you have enough rolls to have to scroll the library view even with all of them collapsed: Sometimes in film roll view, when you expand a film roll at the top of the list, it scrolls to the very bottom of the list and you have to scroll back up to see what you've expanded. Same thing when collapsing, it jumps all the way down and you can't see what you just did. Doesn't do it all the time though and I can't figure out why it's happening.

-Maybe not a bug, just a timing issue, but it seems that the slide show will go to a blank screen and start playing music before it's done loading the first image so you sit there staring at a blank screen with music playing for way too long (5+ seconds even if you set the show to advance in 2 second intervals). I blame not having enough ram and the virtual memory goes nuts, stalling timed events.

[kman42]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Kman that pict looked better before.

The first pict looked like Molten Lava, the second pict looks like Mercury.

This is the same thing as Photoshops Auto Levels, and it doesn't always get everything right.

I'm basing it more on how I actually remember the scene. The lava rocks were black, not blue and the flowing lava had a definite white-hot/silver tint to it. In this case, I think the enhance feature corrected the picture for my ineptitude or the cameras inability to deal with bright red lava at dusk.

But your opinion raises an important point. No automated enhancement feature is going to improve every picture for everyone. I, for one, am glad that beauty is still in the eye of the beholder.

kman

[Nathan Adams]

has anyone tried dragging the window around? eep - that's some nasty stuff. (slow, staggers, and has some weird border stuff around it.... very odd). Also, the sunken metal style crop button, badly resized, on pin stripes, very very ugly (when you set images to open in their own window, you'll see it)

[kman42]

Turning off the border in Preferences shaved about 10% off of my scrolling time.

Test:
G4/867/896MB Ram
Open apps: iPhoto, Safari, iChat, Mail, AB, iCal, Terminal, Sys Prefs, iMovie
1417 photos in 57 film rolls
All rolls closed except for 1
Open roll has 121 photos, 2 photos/row
Scroll through entire list of film rolls and open roll.

5 trials each:
Border and align to grid on: 11.5s
Border off, align to grid on: 10.5s
Border off, align to grid off: 10.0s (not statistically different from grid on)

kman

[chabig]

Now I see... If you open the picture in a new window (like when I double-click) and then enhance the photo, that feature doesn't work.

It will work even if you open the picture in a new window. I've seen it work and not work--haven't figured out exactly what makes it work yet, but I think it helps to move the cursor over the photo (out of the toolbar.)

Chris

[sambeau]

Originally posted by clod:
BTW what does enhance do exactly?

I seems very similar to Photoshops Auto Levels feature with some of the Photoshop Auto-contrast feature thrown in.

Essentially, I think it does something a bit like this:

First it looks for the lightest stuff and sees what colour it is, it then adjusts the whole image hue until the light stuff is grey. Then it re-speads the colours out so that the lightest pixels become white and the darkest pixels become black.

This is what photoshop does:

Before:


After:


What iPhoto seems to do is a little more subtle:



But if you keep hitting enhance - it will soon look more like the photoshop one - the dark square getting blacker and blacker. However the cyan stays cyan.. why?

What I can't work out is whether it analyses the overall colour on the page and tries to spot sky picture and sea pictures or skintones. Where photoshop might toally strip the warmth out of a picture with autolevels (like firelight for instance) iPhoto often leaves it alone - behaving more like Auto Contrast. Photoshop's Auto Contrats however leaves the before image completely alone.

I'd love to know exactly what it does though..

[Eug]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Kman that pict looked better before.

The first pict looked like Molten Lava, the second pict looks like Mercury.

This is the same thing as Photoshops Auto Levels, and it doesn't always get everything right.

The first was too blue. The second had better blacks.

BUT.

The second one is too pale, as if it's trying to compensate (incorrectly) for all the black in the picture.

BTW, kman, how close were you to the lava?

[SeSawaya]

funny how they put the "Order book" dead center in the bar. I'm sure thats something people arent doing enough for them. I wish I had the $35 to make one myself!!

[Eug]

Originally posted by SeSawaya:
funny how they put the "Order book" dead center in the bar. I'm sure thats something people arent doing enough for them. I wish I had the $35 to make one myself!!

I've made two books, but I've exported to a web page about a bazillion times. Yet there is no Export to web page icon. function. Stoopid. (Not everyone wants to export only to .mac.)

[kman42]

Originally posted by Eug:
The first was too blue. The second had better blacks.

BUT.

The second one is too pale, as if it's trying to compensate (incorrectly) for all the black in the picture.

I agree with the image becoming pale, but I will give the feature the benefit of the doubt here because of the adverse lighting conditions. It was at dusk and the ambient light was much darker than it appears in the picture. I like that it was able to bring up the lighting to a level where one can see the details of the rocks.

The fish picture is most impressive in my mind as it did wonders for eliminating the 'mossy look'. The water was crystal clear and the rocks were quite vibrant, so the enhance feature really helped out.

BTW, kman, how close were you to the lava?

At the closest we walked within a foot or two of the lava (it moves pretty slowly). It was too hot to stand there long enough to get a photo from that range or to pose for a photo standing that close (and the last thing we wanted to do was to turn our backs on the flowing lava ). We do have some shots with us in them about 5-8 feet from the lava. I'll post one when I get home.

kman

[dfiler]

I'm importing my entire pictures folder right now.

I thought iPhoto had hung but looking at the output from top, it seems like it may be busy actually improting these files from disk. There's no progress feedback... off to the feedback page.

[Dale Sorel]

All I know is I'm glad iPhoto 2 works with iPhotoLibraryManager

[kman42]

It would be nice to be able to burn albums and film rolls onto the same CD/DVD. It looks to me like you have to choose between the two.

kman

[kman42]

I just noticed that burning film rolls doesn't preserve them. It just lumps all of the photos into one large library. What's up with that? I haven't tried albums yet.

kman

[Betox]

Before I burned 126 photos I had 19.61 GB available on my hard disk, now I just have 19.49 GB!!!!

Where did almost 200 MB go????

[CBoldman]

Im very happy with the new update. The enhance command is by far my favoirte. My only question is, is it possible to enhance all the photos in you library all at once rather then one by one?