iPhoto is what it is, and can do a lot in the hands of someone who understands it. That being said, it is not Lightroom or Aperture or a professional content-management solution. Folks who complain about this remind me of people who used to complain that AppleWorks was not PageMaker or Excel, which is true. So what?

The target audience for iPhoto is the basic home user or an average person who wants to manage a fairly small number of images in a fairly simple way. Not every car needs to be a Mazeratti, Prius or BMW.

I don't think you can rename the actual file from within iPhoto. One way around that is to rename your pics before you dump them into iPhoto.
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If you rename your photos within iPhoto - you don't have to deal with the original arcane names anymore. You don't have to dig around in your folders to find photos - use the iPhoto interface for that.

If you use keywords - you can search and select through them. I highly recommend the plug-in, Keyword Assistant

www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14092

That's firmware, we're talking software%^).

1) You want to create a data CD that has a collection of some photos, and mp3s, and some important documents of some other type. You can't in iPhoto. You can with the Finder's built-in CD burning utility, but that requires that you can find your all your files in the Finder. For reasons I describe earlier in this discussion this is usually an impossible task. So you would have to burn 2 disks, one of just the photos using iPhoto, and another for everything else using the Finder.

2) You already own Photoshop (or Graphic Converter, Gimp, etc.) and want to use it for all your photo needs, previewing photo shoots, opening pictures individually and touching up. If photos are stored in iPhoto, you are required to have iPhoto running concurrently with Photoshop and required to use it to preview and select files, to "send" to the other program. You can't use Photoshop's image preview utility because it shows the Finder's real folder structure.

3) Friends who recently migrated from Windows are sensitive to problems they have on a Mac that they didn't on the PC, and I this caused buyers remorse with more than one friend. "I want to burn a CD with photos and other stuff, I'm using the Burn Utility. Where are my photos?" I can't help them. Should I care? I tell them about good graphics programs to use as an alternative.

Enjoy the workarounds, I'm happy people love the program.

</rant>

I can find my photos by date. I name the folder according to the day I took them. Oh I forgot, some people don't organize their files in the Finder. In that case iPhoto is an elegant solution because it organizes them for you. You won't be able to re-organize later but that doesn't matter. I think I understand now. How presumptuous of me to expect that people consider it desirable to organize one's files in the Finder. Sorry.

I joined whatever the hell this Tribe thing is just to post up on this topic. I'm using Aperture right now, and it shares a LOT with iPhoto. If you didn't like iPhoto then getting used to aperture is really, really going to wind you up. It has me.

I tried to use iPhoto when it first came out, I punted it and used Graphic Converter exactly for the reasons stated by the anti iPhotoers above--iPhoto is a nightmare if you want a nice orderly file structure that plays nice with any other program out there. I wanted to be able to work in Photoshop and have exactly the same folder structure in both iPhoto (organize) and Photoshop (tweak). Years later I'm still finding photos that Iphoto stashed somewhere... Yes, there are solutions to any and all problems with iPhoto, but for a person who wants clean file structure outside of the program it's a frigging nightmare. I too have had at least a half-dozen switchers ask me how to use iPhoto. I can help, but most of them ended up using Graphic Converter. iPhoto was the first program other than some sharware BS that I ever gave up on. I run FCP and some other "Pro" applications, I can honestly say none of them ever gave me as bad a headache as iPhoto. I failed...

Enter Aperture. It gives much more control over importing photos and file structure, but at its core seems to work with a very similar attitude as iPhoto. I am determined not to be beaten down by this program and WILL learn it, but it is taking a very different attitude. You have to let the program do the organizing and then control the files with metadata. As someone said, it's like valet parking where you hand in a tag when you want your car/photo back, and self-parking where you have to remember what level and in what space your car is in. It's a database vs. a spreadsheet kinda dilemma. It feels totally natural to let Address Book organize our contacts without ever referencing the finder, but we want our photos "right there" on the drive.

Apple seems to be trying to get away from folders etc. not only in iPhoto but in Leopard. Those of us who are older learned early on to keep our data nicely organized or lose it. Now Apple is asking us to lose it and let Apple deal with it. Old habits die hard.

In the end this is going to be like texting and voicemail. None of my friends over 40 did texts until QWERTY keyboards happened, and even then they are prone to using voicemail. None of my friends under 30 ever leave a voicemail, it's all text, and they can text in T9 faster than I can type.

Obviously iPhoto works, but it's a right btich to get your head around. Next we'll not even be organizing our data on the hard drives, just relying on smart folders etc. to make it all work. Horrors!

Back to Aperture. I'll keep an eye on this tribe thing.

W

... ... ha ha! </b>

He said "hammer"


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