[Gee4orce]

Has anyone played with iPhoto 4 at Macworld then ? Are the claims of improved speed to be believed ?

Sure, the Keynote demo was slick, but aren't they always - Steve uses a Quad 4 GHz G6 for all his demos

If it's anything like as fast as iView Multimedia I'll be a happy bunny.

[chabig]

I don't know about iView but iPhoto 4 was fast. I didn't play with it much but I did scroll up and down the library...fast.

Chris

[bmedina]

It already scrolls fast if you turn off shadows on the thumbnails. Perhaps the shadows are now QE accelerated? They do look nice.

I think the bigger complaint is the sudden drop-off in performance when you have a couple thousand or more photos in the library. How many photos are on the demo machines?

[Westfoto]

Part of the problem now is if any of the photos are of high quality (= large size) then every thing slows down.

There are a lot of nice features in iPhoto, but the speed is way to slow to use it at all. I use a Nikon D100 and the NikonView software is nice too but each is not the king of the hill. There might be something beter out there...

West

[JLL]

If iPhoto 4 is faster I think that some (or most) of the gain comes from dropping Mac OS X 10.1.x support since the interface doesn't have to be a hack now, and QE can be utilized.

[DannyVTim]

Originally posted by Westfoto:
Part of the problem now is if any of the photos are of high quality (= large size) then every thing slows down.

There are a lot of nice features in iPhoto, but the speed is way to slow to use it at all. I use a Nikon D100 and the NikonView software is nice too but each is not the king of the hill. There might be something beter out there...

West

The speed is not why to slow to use at all. I have around 15k in photos and using all the little tricks, a.k.a. close all rolls, it can be used.

I would guess that it's almost as fast and iView now.

[mitchell_pgh]

I have a Canon S400 with around 3000 photos in my iPhoto library.

It's dog slow.

I love the program, but hate the speed.

I can't wait to get my hands on iPhoto 04' edition.

[BZ]

Same boat.... about 4000 photos, all of the shadows etc turned off and it is VERY slow. This is on a 1GH G4, 2 GB ram and a Radeon 8500.

Can't wait for iTunes 3+++

BZ

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
I have a Canon S400 with around 3000 photos in my iPhoto library.

It's dog slow.

I love the program, but hate the speed.

I can't wait to get my hands on iPhoto 04' edition.

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by JLL:
If iPhoto 4 is faster I think that some (or most) of the gain comes from dropping Mac OS X 10.1.x support since the interface doesn't have to be a hack now, and QE can be utilized.

Good point!

-Owl

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by JLL:
If iPhoto 4 is faster I think that some (or most) of the gain comes from dropping Mac OS X 10.1.x support since the interface doesn't have to be a hack now, and QE can be utilized.

QE doesn't actually have to be explicitly used in the program. Anything using [NSImage compositeToPoint:] (among others, I would assume) will be QE accelerated. Since that is (afaik) the standard way of drawing images in OSX, most programs that draw images use QE. That said, I would imagine that dropping 10.1.x does allow for some optimizations, although I can't think offhand what they would be.

[Toyin]

What about iPhoto Library management? This seems to be a major complaint. Is iPhoto managing files more like iTunes now or is it still in the cryptic iPhoto Library as before?

[swiz]

Originally posted by Toyin:
What about iPhoto Library management? This seems to be a major complaint. Is iPhoto managing files more like iTunes now or is it still in the cryptic iPhoto Library as before?

Here Here!!

[Rickster]

Anything using [NSImage compositeToPoint:] (among others, I would assume) will be QE accelerated.

Um, no. There are some 10.3-only tricks that let you take advantage of the GPU to speed up drawing of window content, but that's not one of them. Otherwise, all Quartz Extreme can do for you is speed up compositing of windows (and under some circumstances, scrolling in scroll views). QE certainly wouldn't account for library load time speedups or some of the other performance enhancements.

More likely they just sat down and did some good old-fashioned performance optimizations... eliminating unnecessary memory allocation and deallocation, short-circuiting functions when they do nothing useful, taking out all the calls to sleep() they put in the last version (kidding ), etc.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by swiz:
Here Here!!

Pet peeve #12: it's "Hear hear!" Not "Here here!"

[johnpg]

So, any more "real world" experience from Macworld visitors?

[typ993]

Originally posted by johnpg:
So, any more "real world" experience from Macworld visitors?

I played with iP 4 a little at Macworld. The demo machine (AlPB 17) had 3800 photos in the library.

I'm currently using iP3 on a TiBook 1GHz and have about 700 photos in the library and performance is excruciating, so I was very interested in speed.

Scrolling through photos and resizing thumbnails was very quick. The time it took for a photo to go from pixelated to sharply rendered was well under a second for every photo I brought up at maximum zoom.

Overall, performance is considerably improved, even Snappy�. Is that worth $49 to you? To me it is, especially with GarageBand.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Two things
-When does the expo end (so Steve can do his "one more thing" line.)
-Will Apple have another Keynote/iLife education pack for $19? That was great.

[spiky_dog]

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
Two things
-When does the expo end (so Steve can do his "one more thing" line.)
-Will Apple have another Keynote/iLife education pack for $19? That was great.

iLife is $29 through edu store. "one more thing" is at the end of the _keynote_ typically.

[C.J. Moof]

Originally posted by typ993:
I played with iP 4 a little at Macworld. The demo machine (AlPB 17) had 3800 photos in the library.

I'm currently using iP3 on a TiBook 1GHz and have about 700 photos in the library and performance is excruciating, so I was very interested in speed.

Scrolling through photos and resizing thumbnails was very quick. The time it took for a photo to go from pixelated to sharply rendered was well under a second for every photo I brought up at maximum zoom.

Overall, performance is considerably improved, even Snappy�. Is that worth $49 to you? To me it is, especially with GarageBand.

This is reassuring. I have a 3800 pic library on my 800Mhz Cube, and using iPhoto makes me want to scream. "Supercomputer" my.... foot.

[alex720l]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
I have a Canon S400 with around 3000 photos in my iPhoto library.

It's dog slow.

I love the program, but hate the speed.

I can't wait to get my hands on iPhoto 04' edition.

Has anyone tried iphoto library manager to break up their libraries into smaller files? I have and it seems to work pretty well though may not be needed anymore with iphoto 4.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by spiky_dog:
iLife is $29 through edu store. "one more thing" is at the end of the _keynote_ typically.

Wasn't OS 9 released at the end of the Expo though? Just some afterthought kinda deal?

[ed phelan]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Pet peeve #12: it's "Hear hear!" Not "Here here!"

would hear here do?

[SAgent0068]

Does anybody know if iPhoto stores its data in the same format as before? i.e. the nice AlbumData.xml file in ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/

[iDriveX]

I was able to test out iPhoto 4 on my own 867 12" PowerBook Rev. A and with the shadows on the pictures, when you move that little thing that resizes the pictures, it's zippy, I mean F A S T! I couldn't believe it! Scrolling up and down the library window is nice and fast as well. I was also pleased to see that you can turn off the "Last Roll" and "Last 12 Months" or photos album in the album list. Finally my last "YEAH!" goes to when you press the slideshow button, and you go to the iTunes Playlists, they are in alphabetical order!!!!! Before my 200 + Playlists were in some sort of random order, now they look like how I wanted them to look! Unfortunately iMovie 2004 doesn't follow this trend You will all like it, I promise!

[iamnotmad]

can you move pics between rolls now?

[fg]

Originally posted by iamnotmad:
can you move pics between rolls now?

Yes, it is possible to move pictures between rolls.

/Frippe

[driven]

Unfortunately I moved all of my pictures to a PC and started using the $99 Digitial Image Pro from Microsoft. (Very iPhoto like: Good editing features, but not as many sharing features ... notably missing are the "create book" and "Share on web" options.)

I moved them because iPhoto was too gosh darn slow on my 500Mhz G4 Cube.

I'm looking forward to iPhoto 4 so I can move my photos back to my mac where they belong. (Hopefully iMovie will be faster too as I've been doing my video editing with Windows Movie Maker 2).

I *might* upgrade to a G5 in February so I'm holding off on ordering software that I'll otherwise get for free with a new Mac. (But I'm excited about what I see!)

[chabig]

can you move pics between rolls now?

I doubt it. iPhoto models real-life photography. And in real life, you can't move a shot from one roll of negatives to another.

The film roll view is not for organizing photos. It shows which pictures were taken together. The album features of iPhoto are for organizing pictures into your own groups.

EDIT: Apparently, I'm wrong.

Chris

[fg]

I only have about 1200 photos in my library but it is very fast. Takes some time to load iPhoto in the beginning. Sitting on 1 ghz iMac. Switching between albums is instantaneous.

/F

[jessejlt]

iPhoto 4 has leaked to the web. I've installed it on my 17" iMac 1.25 GHz w/ 768mb RAM and imported all my photos. Needless to say it's nearly instantaneous to navigate through it, and the new screening process in slideshows is long overdue. Wonderful app and a most welcomed upgrade.
jesse ;-)

[Eug]

Has anyone got any comments with reference to this thread? I REALLY want to use iPhoto but it just seems that iPhoto can't do what I want it to.

All I really is some way to organize albums, because if we use iPhoto we'd need over a thousand albums, even if the pictures are only several thousand.

I'm not sure moving pictures between film rolls would help at all either.

[Chris Grande]

Thats one thing I was hoping in the next version of iPhoto and iTunes for that fact. The ability to nest iPhoto Albums and iTunes Playlists. I've sent feedback and it (at-least to me) seems like a logical feature. I for example have all the pictures for the Trail of Terror and I currently have a album for each year back to '95. This inability makes my iPhoto album list very..very long.

But the current reports about iMovie and iPhoto 4 being very fast and responsive is a breathe of fresh air, I remember last year when mostly all posts were pained at the slowness of iMovie and the lack of significant speed in iPhoto. Seems Apple listened in the speed department.

[driven]

I think Apple has an issue with nesting.

You can't even nest bookmarks in Surfari. (At least not easilly)

[GENERAL_SMILEY]

Very fast with my 5000 pictures on 17 AL - before IPhoto 4 I'd basically given up with 3, was actually not taking pictures so I didn't have to open it up.

It's cool - Imovie 4 is cool too. =]

[handras]

I'm already using iPhoto4, and it's so cool. Everything is fast, very very fast. iPhoto 3? No way! iPhoto 4 rule!

[Eug]

No option to categorize albums, so albums become difficult to manage once you have more than about 20 or so.

You can't sort or categorize the keywords. eg If you have 25 keywords they're just listed in the order you created them.

eg.
Zoe
Phil
Prescott
Work
Power Mac
School
Sports
Dog
Apple
Music
Anniversary
Steve Jobs
Computer pix
G5
Homer Simpson
Butterflies
G4
Grandma Sue
Fruit
Spider
Stamps
Receipts
iPod
Godzilla
Mouse
Horse
etc.

The Smart Albums are good - long overdue, but it would still be impossible to manage Apple's number of 25000 pictures with such limited categorization and sorting options.

Thus, it's still not usable for me, for either my personal photos (of which I have thousands), or my photos at work (of which we also have thousands).

See my thread here.

BTW, I can confirm that you can move pictures between rolls. And each separate directory in a folder that you import gets seen as a separate roll too. ie. If you import a directory with 5 folders in it, you get 5 separate rolls created.

[Old Toad]

I have an iView catalog with 12,281 files with thumbnails at 256x256 that opens up fully in less than 4 seconds, thumbnails and all. I hope iPhoto can do half as good but I doubt it. Will just have to wait till my iLife upgrade comes in.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by chabig:
I doubt it. iPhoto models real-life photography. And in real life, you can't move a shot from one roll of negatives to another.

The film roll view is not for organizing photos. It shows which pictures were taken together. The album features of iPhoto are for organizing pictures into your own groups.

EDIT: Apparently, I'm wrong.

Chris

I assume u mean the entirety of what you said was wrong.

In real life, you have rolls of film which contain a fixed number of photos. Very few people take less or more than the stated number of photos on a film.

In the digital arena, however, things are not so simple. There are plenty times I have taken 40, 50 or more photos, imported them into iPhoto and then decided that I want one more photo of something. It is really irritating to have that one photo lying around in my photo library in a roll of its own.

People can't always be bothered creating albums. Allowing finer-grained control of rolls is a good move.

[jfischetti]

Originally posted by SAgent0068:
Does anybody know if iPhoto stores its data in the same format as before? i.e. the nice AlbumData.xml file in ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/

Yes it does, and the pics are organized by year

[Mediaman_12]

Originally posted by SAgent0068:
Does anybody know if iPhoto stores its data in the same format as before? i.e. the nice AlbumData.xml file in ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/

I think it may be slightly different. When you open iPhoto4 for the first time it asks if you want to update the iPhoto Libruary, and warns that if you do it will be unusable by older versions of iPhoto.

[mishap]

for those interested... iPhoto 4 runs really fast on a iBook G3 800 with around 3500 photos imported.

impressed.

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Apple "cheats" a bit for the speed improvement; all they've done is disable thumbnail rendering until you've stopped scrolling/scaling.

[mishap]

Originally posted by Silky Voice of The Gorn:
Apple "cheats" a bit for the speed improvement; all they've done is disable thumbnail rendering until you've stopped scrolling/scaling.

Exactly.

Perfect Idea.

Illustrator does this even in the latest version--just render what i'm looking at--otherwise give me a lower res preview as i'm quickly scrolling

takes about half a second to look clear again on my outdated iceBook.

[driven]

Originally posted by mishap:
Exactly.

Perfect Idea.

Illustrator does this even in the latest version--just render what i'm looking at--otherwise give me a lower res preview as i'm quickly scrolling

takes about half a second to look clear again on my outdated iceBook.

Makes sense to me.

I think this is how Windows Explorer "thumbnail" view does it as well.

It ain't cheatin', it's smart design.

[Gee4orce]

Now maybe Apple will employ somebody with a clue to fix window resizine in OS X....

[driven]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
Now maybe Apple will employ somebody with a clue to fix window resizine in OS X....

What I find somewhat humorous is that iTunes in Windows resizes nearly as badly (if not worse) than it does in OSX.

[HOMBRESINIESTRO]

Originally posted by GENERAL_SMILEY:
Very fast with my 5000 pictures on 17 AL - before IPhoto 4 I'd basically given up with 3, was actually not taking pictures so I didn't have to open it up.

Originally posted by handras:
iPhoto 3? No way! iPhoto 4 rule!

I suppose you both mean iPhoto 2. iPhoto 3 has never existed.

I guess it's a side effect of the reality distortion field!