iLife '09: Real-world test

iPhoto continued
Faces is an exciting addition to iPhoto, despite the issues with its automation. But it's not all that's new. Places is a feature that groups your photos by the location they were taken. If you have a GPS camera that geotags your photographs -- such as the Nikon P6000, or even the iPhone -- iPhoto can pin those locations on a map (provided by Google Maps). It's then easy to browse the photos you took on holiday in France, when you visited your parents in the Peak District or crashed with your brother in Lincoln.

Searching for and assigning places to any other photo in your library is as simple as finding them on Google Maps, then pressing 'Assign to photo'. Probably not the greatest feature in the world if you never leave the house, or only take photos of your cat. But if you enjoy trotting the globe, it'll undoubtedly become one of your favourite additions to iPhoto.

Integrated uploading to Facebook and Flickr has also been added, and it's tagtastic. We had it working in seconds. Select the photos or album you want to upload to either service, hit the Facebook or Flickr button. Seriously, that's it. Friends you've tagged in iPhoto will have their tags transferred up to Facebook, and any untagged images your Facebook friends tag for you will be synced back down to the application. Unfortunately it's not possible to browse your Facebook libraries within iPhoto, or download them from the Web.

Finally, there are more advanced photo-editing features at your disposal now, some of which have been borrowed from Apple's flagship professional editing package Aperture, and by incorporating the tongue face-detection technology, red-eye reduction is just a one-click job.

A new 'Smart Saturation' tool instantly enriches photos with more vivid colours and brighter tones, without influencing the skin tones of your subjects -- another use for iPhoto's face recognition. 'Highlights and shadows' effectively brings hidden subjects out of their inky penumbra and into a radically more visible state -- this is a feature taken from Aperture.

All in all, iPhoto '09 has some compelling new features that make it far more exciting than anything else out there. On its own it might not sway you to spend money to upgrade, but iPhoto is just one of many apps in the iLife suite. Next, iMovie '09.