iPhoto ‘09 initial compatibility report
Posted on January 27, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, iPhoto, iPhoto Library Manager | 11 Comments
Well, I’ve had a chance to try out iPhoto ‘09 for a couple hours now, and here are the notes I have so far regarding compatibility with iPhoto Library Manager:
- Viewing and switching between existing libraries works fine. iPhoto will prompt you to upgrade your library to the new version when you first open a particular library. Note that after you upgrade a library, you will no longer be able to open it in earlier versions of iPhoto.
- New libraries created using the current version of iPhoto Library Manager won’t work the first time you open them in iPhoto. For now, hold down the option key while opening iPhoto and use its interface to create a new library if you need to create one. You can then use the “Add Library” button in iPhoto Library Manager to add the library to iPLM’s library list, after which you can use the library normally. This will be fixed in the upcoming iPLM update.
- As expected, advanced functions such as copying albums between libraries and merging do not work and will produce an error message. Rebuilding a library will also not work, although the “Extract Photos” function should still work OK. Trying to use these features won’t result in any harm, they just won’t work. Again, these issues will be fixed in the upcoming iPLM update.
- iPod Folders appear to work with no problems with iPhoto ‘09
So, that’s what I have for now, I’ll be continuing to test things out and will post any updates on this page. I’ll then be starting work on updating iPLM to fix any of the issues that come up with iPhoto ‘09. That will be a free update for all users, so if you have purchased or plan on purchasing a copy of iPLM, you will be able to update for free when it is available.
Update 1/30/09: I’ve had a chance to work with iPhoto ‘09 for a couple days now, and here’s what I’m planning on doing. Two of the big new additions to iPhoto ‘09 are the new Faces and Places features. These features attach new types of metadata to your photos to identify people in the photos and where the photos were taken. It would obviously be very nice to be able to transfer from library to library when copying albums or performing merges. It looks like this is feasible, but it also looks like it will take a fair bit of work and time to accomplish.
So, what I think I’m going to do is to get out a quick 3.4.4 update for iPLM that gets things running under iPhoto ‘09 with the same capabilities as the current version. So, you’ll be able to copy albums, merge libraries, etc. but this first update will not handle any of the new Faces/Places data. The update will basically be to get people back up and running so they can use iPLM with iPhoto ‘09, fixing various issues such as the library creation bug mentioned above, etc. and should hopefully be available sometime next week.
Then, after that’s out, I’ll start in on getting Faces/Places integration working, and once that’s done, there will be a separate 3.5 update that will include that new, iPhoto ‘09 specific functionality. That will probably take a little longer, but it should be doable. If you have photo copying or merging you want to do but want to upgrade to iPhoto ‘09 right away, I would recommend doing any photo copying/merging you want before doing the iPhoto upgrade. That way, you can get your libraries straightened out, and then go ahead and assign faces/places in the upgraded library. If you assign faces/places and then do your copying/merging, you won’t be able to do so while retaining the face/place data until iPLM 3.5 comes out.
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11 Responses to “iPhoto ‘09 initial compatibility report”
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Brian,
Thank you for your efforts and the outstanding support you provide for your customers. I’m glad (though not surprised) that you’re already tearing into iPhoto ‘09. Somehow I missed the launch of your PowerTunes app. I’ll be sure to check it out! Keep up the good work. We appreciate your efforts.
BK
Hey Brian,
First off, excellent software! It fixes a rather glaring hole in the world of iphoto. I know you are just getting started on this stuff, but I wondered if you had any thoughts about the faces and places aspects of the program? My wife and I each have a mac and I just went through the 6000 photos on my machine tagging faces…while it was fun the first time the second time seems is not looking so glamorous. Since the libraries were recently merged I’m thinking about just copying my library over to her machine, but wondering how that will work with the face and place data.
Anyways, probably should have thought it through a bit more before I jumped right in and did a merge before installing 09…ah well live and learn.
Thanks again for your software!
Nathan
@Nathan:
The Faces data seems to be an SQLite DB(or 2-3) inside the iPhoto Library.
Would be interesting to peak inside it to see if it can span multi libraries….
Wonder if the Places data is also stored that way..
I just read your blog in preparation to upgrading iPhoto 09, and was so pleased with your quick and open response to incompatibilities with iPhoto Library Manager that I was going to upgrade to the paid version, until I realized that I had already purchased it. Keep up the good work and you will always have lots of satisfied customers.
brian – tnx for the great software and looking forward to 09 capabilities. nevertheless, could you kindly look into a 10.5 size icon with perhaps more appealing look? it could take some graphic improvement…
tnx in advance!
Thanks for the great work you are doing at every iPhoto update, I am very happy to be one of your customer !
I understand that with IPLM 3.5, we should be able to copy places and faces between libraries, which is great.
But do you intend to implement also what Jakob suggested above : Faces datas shared between libraries ?
Brian,
I really appreciate your excellent software! Thanks for your quick overview of what will and won’t work. Glad there are people out there that a willing to write software to fill in the holes. Why Faces doesn’t integrate with Address Book is a big mystery to me.
@Jakob
I’ve just started poking around in the new sqlite3 databases inside the 09 library folder. Short story is that it doesn’t look like there is an easy way to share the Faces and Places info between libraries. For the longer version, click through to my website. I’ll hopefully be posting there more as a learn more.
Copying the information when moving images should be possible and look forward to the functionality coming to iPLM.
Looking forward to the new functionality. This sounds like a very good plan. Thanks for your efforts.
Very nice program. And since an update for iPhoto 09 is free I bought it and started to merge and separate libraries on my photo raid. Now I’m stuck and wait for the new version og IPLM.
I thought that it isn’t very cool to have iPhoto learn every face new in every library. It would be very very fine if the faces and places databases would also merge with the photos or just merge the places and faces database without merging fotos.
Thanks alot!
nicely done. i have sworn by your software for years. Now with the addition of faces, merging libraries seems more important. I have tens of thousands of images -and use your software to organize years of work – and of ourse iphoto can manage larger and larger numbers of images.
I have no advice, but as a major proponent of your software, I applaud your clear thinking and hard work.
PAB