[DM-MUG] early iPhoto 08 impressions

[Darcy Baston]

Since "Events" are created automatically, and they REPLACE Film  
Rolls, you're left with many date named events (the default for  
"Untitled" rolls, I mean Events) from when you may have imported one  
photo your mother sent ya of a craft she made. I never got in the  
habit of naming these single photo Film rolls, I mean Events, (iPhoto  
07 creates a film roll per import incident.) So now I have  hundreds  
of 1 photo events that destroy the whole concept of browsing events.

To me, Events are just Film Rolls with album covers, and a left side  
library selection called Events to switch to Rolls-With-Album-Covers  
view.

You can't delete an event without deleting the photos within them  
(ie: get moved to the iPhoto trash), just like film rolls.

So I've had to create an event called "Unsorted", put all the  
floaters in there, and have begun splitting off patterns of pictures.  
After a couple hours of command clicking events to open then all  
simultaneously to allow drag n dropping between them, I now have a  
"Mom made a craft" roll/event.

It's much easier just using albums, unless you only ever import 30+  
pictures from a digital camera any time you import.

The web gallery publishing feature is supposed to allow multiple  
login accounts. It does, but it only allows one login account per web  
gallery. So, you can't let's say create a l:momdad/p:aloha and  
l:mybrother/p:aloha2 login system for a gallery. Instead you have to  
make a l:myfamily/p:password account for a particular gallery. You  
can re-use that account for other galleries.

My first web gallery, 400 photos or so uploaded in about 12 minutes,  
which was nice. At the top of the gallery when viewed in iPhoto, is  
its url. When you click on the url, safari opens and points you to an  
error page that the gallery doesn't exist. :) iDisk shows that the  
gallery was made in /Web/Sites/_gallery/##### , which creates the  
supposed url http://gallery.mac.com/mydotmacusername/##### , but all  
I get is an error page saying, "We're sorry but we can't find the  
Homepage you've requested. It's possible that..." etc.

You can create new keywords on the fly by first enabling View- 
 >Keywords, and then clicking below photos to get a text edit box  
that creates keywords based on words you separate by Enter key  
presses (meaning you can have spaces and write things like, "cool  
dudes".

There's a new adjustment tool called "Straighten" which lets you do  
in-matte rotations, and it auto-crops using an algorithmically  
powered grid. Very interesting. I need to get used to this. It has  
some intelligence.

Image adjustments can only be done in full screen view now. You can  
no longer click twice on an image to adjust it. That just zooms it as  
large as the right pane happens to be sized.

When you've done that, clicked twice to enlarge a photo, you can't  
resize the iPhoto app's window using the bottom right corner drag  
gadget without waiting for  iPhoto to unzoom the photo. So you end up  
clicking twice. *GUI annoyance*

Similarly, if you've zoomed in on a photo by clicking twice on it,  
clicking on the 'full screen' button doesn't go to full screen the  
first time you click it. The first click causes the zoomed photo to  
shrink, and then you can click it again to go full screen. *GUI  
annoyance*

You also can't use the resize slider when you've clicked twice on an  
image. Clicking once on the slider unzooms the picture, and then you  
can use to resize thumbnails in Library view. *GUI annoyance*

They really need to grey stuff out.

OH WAIT, if you click twice to zoom, you can then click the Pencil  
icon in the lower left to get to edit view without going full screen.  
Ok, I take that all back. I also just found in iPhoto->Preferences  
the option to make double clicking go to edit mode automatically.  
Phew! Saved!

When you command click or shift click a bunch of photos in the  
library, they highlight with a yellow border. While in that state, if  
you click in the Information panel to do a group edit on attributes,  
the yellow highlight turns a grey color. I wasn't expecting this and  
thought I had accidentally done something related to how images are  
displayed, with a raised edge or something. They look like picture  
frames when they turn grey like that. :)

There's a new keyword derivative called "Flag", and at first I  
thought that would let me flag photos, and then switch to a "show  
flagged only" view, but nope. So far all flagging does is enables the  
menu item "Create event from flagged". Flagging photos uses the  
Command + period sequence, so let go of the old habit of halting an  
app's current operation with it.

Oh, if you switch to Events view while some photos are flagged, and  
highlight an Event, an extra menu is enabled called "Add flagged  
photos to selected event".

When in Events view, and you can see the thumbnails for your events,  
if you do left to right mouse hover movement on top of an event, the  
event cover image cycles through the images contained inside. This is  
a neat way to preview what's in there.

If you give two Events the same name, they don't merge. They remain  
distinct. I was hoping they would, so now I have a bunch of Events  
all named JPZK (Jason, Paula, Zack, Katelyn) for my brother's new  
family. I'll have to sort alphabetically and merge manually. This  
happened because of the hundreds of one or two attachment emails I've  
received from them throughout 2007. It's hard to figure out an event  
name when it's just different days of the same "sitting on a couch"  
posing y'know? So I've just been tossing them into an album called  
JPZK. Now it's litter in the event view and I have to manage them a  
second time to keep that view useful.

So right now I'm not feeling a "wow" sensation. It's more of a, "and  
this helps how exactly?" I mean, iPhoto has that nifty "set Desktop"  
button, which led me from the beginning to managing hundreds of  
desktop background images within iPhoto. What shall I call an event  
where I found two Full Metal Alchemist backgrounds, and one  
illuminated Apple on the same day? Do I leave it vaguely named as  
"August 7, 2007"?

I now have an event called "I imported wallpaper".

Darcy