Open Letter To Apple iPhoto '11 Dev Team
January 22, 2011 || Filed under: Original
Material
Hey
Apple. Remember when you wrote an excellent photo
management and retouching application? What were you
thinking with iPhoto '11?!?
I understand how software iterates. I even understand that progress is progress and after a while, your next version of software usually turns out to be the right step to take everyone to the next level of graceful software workflow, but here you got it wrong.
MY LIST OF ISSUES
1) What is going on with the iPhoto Help? It is simple enough to pop up a help window, but iPhoto fails to do so! I get a blank window with a 'wait animation' and then nothing. I believe it is trying to download content but it never works. In order to exit, I need to go to Activity Monitor and Force Quit the Process. Certainly not graceful for the average user. Awesome for the Help part of an app to be one of the largest problems.
2) Remember when the ESC key would move you back up the window stack from editing to viewing to event to library? Why did this disappear? You didn't do anything graceful with the key, you just removed functionality!
3) Faces. What happened?! Apple lost their way on this one. I suggest you just pull this functionality right from Picasa. It works and makes sense. iPhoto Faces is lots of work and little bang for the buck.
4) How many more times are you going to change the methodology for how photos are stored in the library bundle? The worst of which is they changed Original and Modified folders to be Masters and Previews. You actually took perfectly valid tags that made sense and obfuscated what is contained within those folders.
5) Where did the extremely handy image orientation button go? It used to be easy to take several incorrectly oriented photos in the event/album viewing screen, see incorrectly rotated pictures, select them all and click one button to fix them. Now, although I understand why it was moved to the editing screens, I can't orient more than one at a time. Instead of moving it, you should have COPIED the button and had in in BOTH places. UI wins out over functionality and common sense. Yuck!
6) Correct me if I'm wrong, but editing a photo in an external editor (in my case, Photoshop) is a replacement for the iPhoto editor. If you edit in either one, it should be treated as a modified photo with a way to revert to original. Why would iPhoto '11 start making copies of photos if you chose to use an external editor?! That is so counter-intuitive. Further, the edited photo gets saved into the Masters folder. Yuck! That is not Apple quality thinking...
FEATURE REQUEST
Since the first version of iPhoto, I understood the "dummy proof" idea behind revert to original. However, I also know how much extra space is wasted storing these images when you KNOW that your modified version are the only ones you want to keep.
After every iPhoto session, I have to go into the Original and Modified folders and pull the originals out and put them in the trash. Why?
Please consider an expert feature that would be a preference explaining that upon closing iPhoto you would lose your Revert To Original feature. A simple checkbox and a one-time educational message box would save me (and countless others) hours upon hours of digging through the library bundle.
I understand how software iterates. I even understand that progress is progress and after a while, your next version of software usually turns out to be the right step to take everyone to the next level of graceful software workflow, but here you got it wrong.
MY LIST OF ISSUES
1) What is going on with the iPhoto Help? It is simple enough to pop up a help window, but iPhoto fails to do so! I get a blank window with a 'wait animation' and then nothing. I believe it is trying to download content but it never works. In order to exit, I need to go to Activity Monitor and Force Quit the Process. Certainly not graceful for the average user. Awesome for the Help part of an app to be one of the largest problems.
2) Remember when the ESC key would move you back up the window stack from editing to viewing to event to library? Why did this disappear? You didn't do anything graceful with the key, you just removed functionality!
3) Faces. What happened?! Apple lost their way on this one. I suggest you just pull this functionality right from Picasa. It works and makes sense. iPhoto Faces is lots of work and little bang for the buck.
4) How many more times are you going to change the methodology for how photos are stored in the library bundle? The worst of which is they changed Original and Modified folders to be Masters and Previews. You actually took perfectly valid tags that made sense and obfuscated what is contained within those folders.
5) Where did the extremely handy image orientation button go? It used to be easy to take several incorrectly oriented photos in the event/album viewing screen, see incorrectly rotated pictures, select them all and click one button to fix them. Now, although I understand why it was moved to the editing screens, I can't orient more than one at a time. Instead of moving it, you should have COPIED the button and had in in BOTH places. UI wins out over functionality and common sense. Yuck!
6) Correct me if I'm wrong, but editing a photo in an external editor (in my case, Photoshop) is a replacement for the iPhoto editor. If you edit in either one, it should be treated as a modified photo with a way to revert to original. Why would iPhoto '11 start making copies of photos if you chose to use an external editor?! That is so counter-intuitive. Further, the edited photo gets saved into the Masters folder. Yuck! That is not Apple quality thinking...
FEATURE REQUEST
Since the first version of iPhoto, I understood the "dummy proof" idea behind revert to original. However, I also know how much extra space is wasted storing these images when you KNOW that your modified version are the only ones you want to keep.
After every iPhoto session, I have to go into the Original and Modified folders and pull the originals out and put them in the trash. Why?
Please consider an expert feature that would be a preference explaining that upon closing iPhoto you would lose your Revert To Original feature. A simple checkbox and a one-time educational message box would save me (and countless others) hours upon hours of digging through the library bundle.
|