My copy of iLife 2005 came yesterday. I quickly installed it to see all the wondrous improvements since the original version of iPhoto/iMovie that came with my power book in 2002. The motivating factor behind spending the $79.00 for iLife '05 was the updated iPhoto and iDVD. iLife also comes with GarageBand and iMovie.
It took over an hour for iLife to import my iPhoto library. I have 1,756 photos in my library. However, once the import was complete, I found the new iPhoto to be a lot faster. I haven't yet played with iPhoto's advanced features, but will take a closer look the next time I import pictures from my digital camera. iPhoto is only the first stop in my photo archive workflow. Everything lives in my web-based photo-album, powered by Gallery. I use iPhoto to get pictures from my digital devices and touch them up before importing into Gallery. I use the iPhotoToGallery export plugin to upload the pictures into Gallery. (I wish there were some way to sync. gallery with iPhoto.) I like iPhoto's new keyword feature, but I'm dissappointed it still only supports one library of photos and does not support sub-albums. iDVD did not install by default because I don't have a super drive. I have a Lacie DVD writer which Roxio Toast identifies as a "Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-106D." I believe this is the same model as the super drive. Even if it isn't, iDVD now supports writing a DVD image which I can then burn using Toast. The CaptyDVD software that came with the Lacie drive is pretty basic. It will still take nearly 24 hours to encode a DVD using my little 800 MHz powerbook! I still have 60+ Gig of digital video from our wedding TWO years ago that needs to be compiled and burned to DVD. When I get motivated to actually do this, iLife will help.- A RAW Look at iPhoto 5
- Output Like a Pro with iPhoto 5
- iPhoto Library Manager - allows switching between multiple iPhoto libraries