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<< Even just as an image storage program, iPhoto has a long way to go. All of your pix are in the same parent screen. Very irritating. >>
huh? thats what creating different albums is for though or am i not understanding what you mean. >>
All pix are in the main top folder in iPhoto. Then you can create folders which have "copies" of the original pix.
If you have hundreds or definitely if you have thousands of photos, iPhoto becomes completely unworkable. Ie. You can't have just subfolders of pix categorized. You MUST have all photos in that main top directory. Imagine trying to scroll through 2000 pix in the same directory.
Moreover, if you change anything in an album subfolder it changes it in the main top folder as well. So, if you screw up your working photo, you don't have the original to go back to.
But then again, it only allows stuff like rotation and cropping. You can't even adjust the brightness or colour levels. Even the most basic user needs these. ie. iPhoto is so limited people have to use another program like Photoshop LE before using iPhoto.
Oh, in iPhoto, there is NO WAY TO MAKE A BACKUP OF ANYTHING. If you want to back up the pix, you have to manually copy the entire folder. However, the folder not user friendly, partially because it renames all of your pix to cryptic numbers. Furthermore, EXIF data is lost I believe after edits. (Not sure on this one.)
And, there is NO DIRECT WAY OF SAVING YOUR WORK. If you have done some edits, the only way of forcing a save of your work is to exit the program. There is no "save" button. So say if iPhoto crashes (and it does crash) before it autosaves or before you exit, your last few minutes of work is lost. Also, if you create a book, you can't save it as a separate file either. You can output the .pdf file, but that's useless, because you can't edit the .pdf file later on a different computer (or even on the same computer), and you can't send the .pdf file to Apple for printing.
BTW, the book preview function of iPhoto is screwed up. With non-4:3 images, it does NOT display what the final book will look like. You have to output it to .pdf first to make sure, but most people don't know this. It only works fine with 4:3 images in my experience.
Or, if you change a book page from 3 pix to 2 pix, it will change the rest of the pages too, to "compensate". ie. Page 1 has 3 photos of cats. Page 2 has 3 photos of dogs. If you remove one cat pic from Page 1, it "steals" a pic from Page 2 so now Page 1 has 2 cats and 1 dog, and Page 2 has 2 dogs and an empty space. How bizarre. In other words, you don't design the book page by page easily. To correct this scenario, you either have to insert another cat pic, or else manually change the page format to a 2 page format.
And of course, it's slow as molasses.
Hate to say it, but iPhoto is really a mediocrely (is this a word?) designed program. It looks good on the outside, and that's what the reporters see when they give it good reviews, but if you look anywhere else, including on the photo and Mac forums, iPhoto is not very well regarded.
I think all of this is lost on the reporters, because they don't play with it enough. iPhoto is great if you have 35 pix and don't print a book. However, I have hundreds of photos, many carefully named and all catalogued in appropriately named subdirectories. iPhoto can't use any of this organization and info. And I have now submitted 3 books (at US$30 a shot, plus $$$ for shipping), so I have gotten to know full well the huge limitations of the program in real work. iPhoto doesn't just need a bug fix, it needs a complete redesign or else a lot of missing features need to be incorporated.
I love my iBook, iTunes, etc. etc., but I don't think Apple should brag about iPhoto at all at this point.