Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 07 January 2009 06:56
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
If you select photos featuring Aunty Jean (or whoever) and iPhoto doesn't include the snap you really wanted, you won't think much of it. Sensibly, the program works by generating an initial set of possible matches which you can individually select or reject. The revised information is then used to refine the search.
iPhoto's Faces view presents a 'corkboard' displaying images of all named individuals. Clicking on one of those pictures reveals all confirmed and suggested photos showing that individual. Faces can also be used as a criterion for a smart album that's automatically kept up to date.
Furthermore, names assigned in iPhoto can be automatically synchronised with Facebook, and name tags applied in Facebook are brought back into iPhoto. iPhoto also includes Flickr integration.
The growth of GPS-enabled cameras (especially those in mobile phones) makes location-awareness an important feature of a photo manager. The clever part of iPhoto's implementation is that it automatically converts co-ordinates to real-life names. One example given by Apple is that photos taken at the Eiffel Tower could be found by searching for "Eiffel Tower", "Paris" or "France". C'est magnifique!
That also works in reverse, in that photos without GPS co-ordinates can be tagged with the name of the place or an address. Alternatively, you can stick a pin in a Google map to geotag the photo.
Other changes to iPhoto include new themed slideshows that also use face detection to position the photos and to keep the faces onscreen, improved editing tools (eg saturation adjustment without affecting skin tones, a better retouch brush, and automatic red-eye removal that takes advantage of face detection), and custom travel maps to illustrate photo albums.
iMovie '08 wasn't the best received piece of software that Apple released, but iMovie '09 may help restore the program's reputation as an easy to use yet flexible movie editor.
While the emphasis is still on quickly and easily turning raw footage into a reasonably polished production, iMovie '09's Precision Editor does restore some of the fine control that was available in versions prior to '08. For example, its filmstrip view allows you to trim the beginning and end of a clip. while other tools allow the separate editing of audio and video, and adjustments made to the position and duration of transitions and titles.
iMovie's drag-and-drop editing capabilities have also been beefed up with the ability to do replace or insert edits, cutaways, picture-in-picture, and green screen effects.
If you're editing to music, iMovie now allows you to place markers on specific music beats, then automatically aligns clips to them.
Although digital or optical stabilisation is a fairly common feature on camcorders, iMovie now has its own stabilisation feature to reduce the effects of camera shake.
The package includes dynamic themes, animated travel maps, a full-screen library browser that takes advantage of Cover Flow, improved support for external drives, the ability to archive AVCHD and other file-based video clips, and new titles, transitions and effects.
What about GarageBand, iWeb and iDVD? See
page 3.
