iPhoto—Almost Perfect

I don't pretend to be a great photographer. I know just enough to be dangerous. However, I really enjoy manipulating the images and creating slide shows for my family. It's amazing what you can do with today's digital cameras and image editing software.

When I was still on my PC, I was using Adobe Photoshop Elements and loving it. I have never used a piece of software that so elegantly balanced power and ease-of-use. I could do just about anything I wanted. However, when I switched to the Mac, I decided to give iPhoto a whirl.

No doubt about it, you can do some very cool things with iPhoto. It is a great album organizer. It is also a wonderful tool for sharing your photos. For example, emailing photos to friends is a snap. I simply select the photos, select Share | Email and the program opens a new mail window in Entourage with all the photos attached. (You can specify your default email program.)

Last night, I wanted to upload some photos of my new two-week year old granddaughter to a Website where my family and friends could enjoy them. I opened a trial membership to .mac (pronounced “dot-mac”), selected the pictures I wanted to upload, chose a “theme” for the Web page, and clicked “Publish.” The whole process took less than 15 minutes.

As satisfying as this experience was, I am not equally happy with the image editing functions of iPhoto. The red eye tool, for example, is very weak—virtually useless. You have very little control over it. You cannot identify the area you want to change other than by clicking in the center of the subject's pupil. The program then decides what to do with the red color. If the color is orange or less than really red, the tool doesn't work. You're simply out of luck.

At first I thought it was just a particular picture. But I had nearly the same experience with every picture I tried. By contrast, I emailed a few of the photos to my wife's computer. She pulled them into Photoshop Elements for Windows and neutralized the subject's red eye with two clicks. This worked with every picture. (The worst part is that she winked at me and said, “Maybe you should switch back to a PC!”) I spent the next hour reading the iPhoto help file pertaining to red eye. I also visited the Apple iPhoto discussion group. Evidently, I wasn't the only one experiencing this problem. Bummer.

So this morning before work I downloaded the trial version of Adobe Photoshop Elements for the Mac and iView Media Pro. The latter looks particularly interesting. However, I don't know if either of them make sharing pictures as easy as iPhoto (especially in terms of emailing photos or uploading to .mac). Another option is to continue to use iPhoto for organizing and sharing and use an external image editor like Elements for image editing. Fortunately, iPhoto provides a way to use an external editor.

If there are other options I should consider, please let me know.