[willed]

I can't believe this - with one of the most touted features of iPhoto '11 being its fullscreen beauty, I can no longer view my photos fullscreen unless I make a tedious slideshow. Am I missing something here? When viewing photos in 'full screen' mode, you are now stuck with bars above and below your picture. Are they having a laugh?? This seems to be the message:

"iPhoto '11 - a beautiful fullscreen viewing experience*
(*For our beautiful interface, not your crummy photos)"

[AKcrab]

I have not upgraded yet, and all attempts at full screen viewing fail. There is a toolbar at the bottom and a "timeline" of all the event pictures at the top.

How did you previously get true full screen pictures?

[Spheric Harlot]

By clicking on the fullscreen button, or by setting it to edit in fullscreen upon double-click.

[AKcrab]

Nothing I do gets my photos full screen. The preference is checked, but there is always "stuff" at the top and bottom.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I can't recreate the "full screen" that willed talks about. I've held off upgrading just to test this.

[willed]

A bit more explanation:

In iPhoto '09, you did get bars at the top and bottom of the screen when you went into full screen editing mode. At the top was a bar showing the photostream, at the bottom were various editing options. But crucially, these disappeared as long as you didn't mouse over them, leaving you with just the photo taking up all the pixels of your screen top to bottom (of course with black bars at the sides if the picture was 4x3 or in portrait). AKcrab - if you can't get this in iPhoto '09, you must have some different configuration to what I had, but I thought that was the default when you went into full screen editing mode.

This was good for editing of course because you could get a much better idea of the composition, colour-balance etc of the picture in full screen, without the clutter of side-bars etc. Any additional editing palettes floated over the picture rather than muscling in from the side, as now happens, again reducing real-estate for the photo.

It was also good for showing pictures to family and friends. Unlike a slideshow, this mode didn't take 30 seconds to load on a MBP, you don't have to fiddle around choosing music, transitions and other BS, and you can easily go back-and forth as you want. Generally I find when you go through a photo-album you actually talk to friends about the pictures, rather than sit in silence marvelling at Apple's latest transition effect... It was basically a one-click no-hassle way to show the pictures.

Now there is no way to show pictures full screen unless you go for a slideshow. While you can turn off music, transitions etc, this still takes longer to load, and of course there is no ability to edit in this mode. In 'fullscreen' editing mode, at the top is an iPhone-like bar with a tab to take you back to the previous screen; at the bottom is a photostream and other menu items to show editing mode, sharing etc. These don't disappear when you don't hover the mouse over them.

So, with all the fanfare about a fullscreen iPhoto, the one thing that is no longer fullscreen is, err, the photos.

Another irony is that the standard window (i.e. not fullscreen) is now less cluttered in iPhoto '11. This means that photos are actually quite large in normal mode, so clicking full screen takes the photo from a height of 765 pixels (on my screen) to just 810. There's hardly any point going into full screen for such a small difference. In '09 the photos were smaller in normal mode, so going into fullscreen meant photos expand from probably around 700 pixels to 900 pixels height, a change that really made a difference.

Not quite sure what they were thinking.

[powdR]

Yes, what happened to the full-screen functionality?
IIRC, there was an option to choose full-screen on double-click. It defaulted to
off but it made more sense to turn it on. Now it's not only default
to off, it's not possible to turn it on. Hence, a feature was removed. But you
know, it's a sign of good software design when developers decide to remove
features now or then, and not only keep adding them. Minimalism is the way to go.
Nobody likes bloated software. It's a trade-off. We'll just have to find away around it
for the time being and trust Apple gave this a real good spin with the thinker
before letting it go. OT: I'm still mourning they slashed the entire Xserve line, as I
have several customers relying on them. /Greets from Oslo

[j.4knee]

I too find it very annoying without the ability to display a full screen image. Not sure why Apple would remove that.