iLife ‘08-iPhoto Review

Most consumers are moving towards the digital life, so it only makes since to create programs for the lifestyle. iLife is one of those programs. And iLife isn’t one giant program as some may think; iLife is composed of five applications - iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD and Garage Band. These applications are designed to help you and your digital lifestyle, and they do so with Apple style—beauty and simplicity. I will give you a five part iLife ‘08 review, so be sure to check back often.

Let’s start with one of my favorite programs—iPhoto. If you have used iPhoto before, you might have noticed the major improvement in the iPhoto software, which is the use of “Events”. The idea is to group photos together by time. This is a great idea. This new feature allows you to group photos together by events. I use this quite often and I find my library of photos to be much more manageable. iPhoto uses time to mark out where one event ends and another event begins. When you are looking at your collection of events, you can skim through the photos as you mouse hovers over the photo.

There are also some incredible new printing options also. iPhoto gives you the option of a portraits studio right on your Mac. You can print mats, multi-picture layouts, and more with just a few clicks. There are also some enhanced tools for making your images look as good as possible. Some are easy, and some are very advanced. Like Photoshop, you’ll have to play around with the options and get a good feel of what you can do.

If you’re a .Mac subscriber ($99.00/Year), there is another major component that you’ll want to know about - .Mac Web Gallery. You select an event, and then click “Web Gallery”. You are given options to make the gallery private or public and once you have uploaded the gallery, you can click a link in iPhoto to view the gallery in almost the exact same way you view your photos in iPhoto, even with event skimming. You can also have collaborative galleries that allow users to get an email address to submit their own photos, and submit photos from the iPhone as well as any other phone that can send pictures it takes.

iPhoto‘08 has received a pretty significant upgrade over the ‘06 version of the software that I once owned. You’ll definitely love the new features added. The iLife suite has always been a top-notch product, especially for the $79 price of admission. That includes five programs! Not bad at all. Be sure to check back for the four remaining iLife ’08 application reviews.

Check out these related products from amazon.com:

• Apple iLife ‘08
• Apple iLife ‘08 Family Pack
  
• iMovie 08 & iDVD: The Missing Manual
  
• iPhoto 08: The Missing Manual