iPhoto...

I mentioned in my last post that I'd be blogging about iPhoto. I realize that the majority of those reading this blog are not Mac users, but this is worth some discussion in my humble opinion.

Every new Mac comes with a suite of software called iLife. This software package is meant to help people document and share their memories. It has a video editor called iMovie, a music creation app called Garageband, and last but not least, a photo manager called iPhoto. These are all tightly integrated and allow you to get creative with you photos and your music.

iPhoto offers a lot of truly compelling features to let you manage and make great things with your photos. Like Picasa, iPhoto has a feature called faces that will scan through the photos you add to your library and  analyze them. It comes back with suggestions based on your feedback and will get "smarter" every time you use it. This is a really neat way to sort your images and allows you to looks back over time and almost have time flash before your eyes. It also has the standard features of albums, keywords and events to help you keep track of your photos. If your camera shoots video, those clips will automatically be added alongside the photos you add.

If you go for weeks or months before you import your photos off your camera you have the option to split the events as they come into your computer by the date they were shot. iPhoto also looks for information about the location where the photo was taken. Many smartphones and some of the newer cameras on the market embed this information in the file. iPhoto will bring up pins on a Google map and show you where your photos were taken.

iPhoto sports a full spread of image editing tools all of which are non-destuctive, meaning you cannot accidentally edit the original. You may not know that every time a JPG image is opened, edited and saved it loses quality much like photo copying a photocopy.

For being a piece of bundled software this is a really nice image manager and editor. If you have a Mac you should give this a look.