iPhoto Library Manager 3.4.4 released
Posted on February 5, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | 14 Comments
iPhoto Library Manager 3.4.4 is now available for download! This is the first of two updates for iPhoto ‘09 compatibility. This update allows you to copy albums between libraries and merge libraries together under iPhoto ‘09 just like with previous versions of iPhoto. 3.4.4 also contains some other miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements. What this update does not provide is support for some of the new types of data that have been introduced in iPhoto ‘09. These include:
- Places: Copying photos between libraries will not yet transfer any place tags that you’ve assigned to your photos using iPhoto ‘09. If the photos you imported were already geotagged before importing them into iPhoto, then that same data will be imported by iPhoto in the new library, but if you added the place data yourself using iPhoto, then that data will not be copied. This will be addressed in iPhoto Library Manager 3.5.
- Faces: Similarly, any faces you’ve tagged in iPhoto will also not be transferred when you copy/merge using iPLM. This will also be addressed in iPLM 3.5, though it’s not clear yet to what extent. From what I can tell, copying the actual face tags over to another library shouldn’t be too difficult. What I don’t know yet is whether iPhoto’s “learning” data can be transferred as well. For example, if you’ve tagged a whole bunch of faces in one library and iPhoto has learned how to recognize various people, I’m not sure if that training will be transferrable to another library, so any further faces added to a merged library wouldn’t benefit from the training in the original library. I’ll certainly be looking into doing this if possible, but it may prove to be too complicated to do.
- Facebook/Flickr: Right now, albums/photosets that have been created on Flickr or Facebook using iPhoto are basically ignored by iPLM. I’ll be looking into adding the ability to copy that information between libraries so that you don’t have to republish albums after copying them to another library.
You can download the 3.4.4 updates either by going to the iPLM home page or by opening iPLM on your machine and selecting the “Check For Updates” menu item. This is a free update for all users, so you can just replace your existing copy of iPLM with the new one with no additional purchase necessary.
Update: 2/12/09 An additional 3.4.5 update has now been released to address two issues introduced in 3.4.4. Updating as outlined above will now update you to version 3.4.5.
Now I’ll be starting work on iPLM 3.5, I can’t specify a hard timeline for when it will be done, but I’m hoping to be able to finish up by the end of February at the latest (and hopefully earlier).
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.
iPhoto Library Manager and iPhoto ‘09
Posted on January 6, 2009 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Apple, News, Updates, iPhoto, iPhoto Library Manager | 7 Comments
As many of you know, today Apple announced a new update to their iLife suite, iLife ‘09, which includes an update to iPhoto. iPhoto ‘09 won’t be available until the end of January, but I’d like to fill you in on the status of iPhoto Library Manager compatibility with this new version of iPhoto.
I don’t get special early releases of iPhoto or anything like that, so I’ll be working with it for the first time once I can pick up a copy from Apple. In the past, major iPhoto updates have required updating iPhoto Library manager to provide full compatibility for all its features, and I suspect things will be the same this time around. The basic functionality of iPLM (creating new libraries and switching back and forth between them) has never broken in any previous iPhoto update, so I’m pretty sure that stuff will be the same this time around. The more advanced features, such as copying albums between libraries and merging libraries together, however, require a bit more work to make sure they work properly. For iPhoto ‘07 and iPhoto ‘06, it has taken me about two weeks each time to issue an iPLM update for the new version of iPhoto, so it will hopefully take approximately the same amount of time this time around.
What I can tell you is that the update will be a free update for any existing users of iPhoto Library Manager, so if you buy a copy now, rest assured you will be able to use it with iPhoto ‘09 once the update is released. For those of you wondering whether to upgrade to iPhoto ‘09, you should still be able to switch between your libraries fine after updating, but you almost certainly won’t be able to do any photo copying or merging until the iPLM update is ready. If you really need to be able to use iPLM to do photo transfers, I would recommend holding off upgrading iPhoto until the update to iPhoto Library Manager is ready.
My thanks in advance for your patience, I will be posting further updates on how things are going as I learn more about what needs to be done for the update.
Disappearing iPhoto libraries on external drives
Posted on May 16, 2008 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Tips & Tricks, iPhoto, iPhoto Library Manager | 1 Comment
I just came across this article on TidBITS explaining how to deal with stray “doppleganger” folders that get created in the /Volumes directory, where external hard drives and network drives are mounted by Mac OS X. I’ve seen this particular issue come up quite a number of times with people working with iPhoto, so I’m glad to see someone else writing on the topic. I encourage everyone to go read the article, since you never know when this will crop up on your machine, and it’s good to have this floating around in your head as a possible cause.
The way this typically affects people using iPhoto is when you’re trying to open a library that you store on an external hard drive. One day, for no apparent reason, you open up iPhoto and are greeted with a totally empty library. Where did all my photos go!? Aaaaagh!
You’ll be glad to know that your photos aren’t actually gone, they’re just in a slightly different place, so iPhoto can’t find them. iPhoto stores its library location by a plain path, so it will be pointing to the “doppleganger” folder, instead of following the library to its new path where the external drive is actually located.
iPhoto Library Manager itself uses aliases to track library locations, so when this happens, it will usually figure out to update itself to point to libraries’ new locations. If it doesn’t automatically update, all you have to do then is to re-add any libraries that are pointing to the wrong place to iPLM’s library list, either by using the “Add Library” button, or by just dragging each library into the list. You can then remove the old, stale references from the library list, and you should be all set. If you’re just using iPhoto’s option-key-on-startup trick to switch libraries, you can just do that and go find the real library on the external drive to get iPhoto pointed back to the correct location.
MacSanta is coming to town
Posted on December 15, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, PlistEdit Pro, iPhoto Library Manager | 1 Comment
I’m happy to be participating this year in the MacSanta promotion! Generously set up by Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba, MacSanta offers deals from now until Christmas on products from five new Mac software companies every day. iPhoto Library Manager and PlistEdit Pro are both being featured today (December 15th), and you can get 20% off by using the coupon code MACSANTA07 when purchasing.
Also be sure to check out the Extended Deals page, which lists all the products that have been featured so far in the month, and you can still get 10% off any of those products by using the coupon code MACSANTA07TEN anytime until the end of December (this also applies to iPhoto Library Manager and PlistEdit Pro after today). There is also an RSS feed available, so you can continue to keep up on new deals that appear between now and Christmas.
iPhoto Library Manager 3.4 released
Posted on October 30, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | 7 Comments
At long last, iPhoto Library Manager is ready for Leopard! OK, it hasn’t really been that long since Leopard came out (4 days?), but it seemed like a long time. The new version is available for download and as usual, is a free update for existing customers. Leopard compatibility was the biggest change in this new version, but it also includes a bug fix or two as well. Enjoy!
iPLM Leopard update
Posted on October 24, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, iPhoto Library Manager | 4 Comments
Just a quick note on iPhoto Library Manager compatibility with Leopard:
- I am currently working on the update, but Apple has decided not to give developers an advance copy of the final version of Leopard until it ships, which means that I won’t truly be able to start final testing until this weekend. I’m hoping that it won’t take too long and that the iPLM update will be out sometime next week.
- Similarly to major iPhoto updates, so far the basic library switching in iPLM seems to work fine in Leopard, it’s just the advanced photo copying stuff that will need additional work, so upgrading to Leopard isn’t going to cut you off from your iPhoto libraries or anything
- The update will be free, so if you buy a copy of iPhoto Library Manager now, you won’t have to pay to upgrade, you can just download the new version.
That’s all for now, I’ll try to keep updates coming as I know more.
iPhoto Library Manager and Leopard
Posted on October 12, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Development, iPhoto Library Manager | 1 Comment
I just thought I would drop a quick note regarding plans for Leopard compatibility for iPhoto Library Manager. The short version is that iPhoto Library Manager will support Leopard fully by the time Leopard comes out. Yay! Since things can change and break things at the last minute with new OS releases, I won’t actually be releasing a Leopard compatible version of iPLM until I can actually test it with the final version of Leopard, but I’ve got the big stuff figured out already. For those interested in the nerdy technical details, read onward.
Leopard will require some changes in the way iPhoto Library Manager works under the hood. iPLM uses the Input Manager mechanism of Mac OS X to load a bundle of code into iPhoto which supplements iPhoto’s Applescripting capabilities, which is what makes features such as copying albums and merging libraries possible. Some other programs, such as Inquisitor and 1Passwd also use input managers to implement their functionality. However, as has been reported by Ars Technica and discussed on some other blogs, input managers are no longer going to be supported under Leopard.
Other developers have found other methods to do what they need to do under Leopard, such as 1Passwd, whose developers say they are going to switch to a WebKit plugin, which works well for them since their product is web browser oriented. iPhoto Library Manager is going to take a different approach though.
One difference between iPLM and some other apps that use input managers is that iPLM only actually needs its code to be loaded when it’s actively doing something with iPhoto, like copying some albums between libraries. It doesn’t matter if the code is loaded every time iPhoto is launched, unlike say, Inquisitor, which pretty much always has to be there to be of any use.
So, instead of a plugin based approach, under Leopard iPLM will use a handy little feature of the OS X dynamic linker, the DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES environment variable. Basically what this does is allow you to load additional dynamic libraries in an application (and even substitute for libraries the application is already linked to). The most well known usage for this feature is the MallocDebug developer application, which loads a custom debug version of the malloc library that replaces the normal system library and provides all sort of information on memory usage in the application being debugged.
The downside to this approach is that it requires relaunching the application in question in order to load the additional code, since you have to set up this environment variable and then launch the application yourself. So, for something like Inquisitor, launching Safari directly from the dock would not load the code automatically. There would have to be a separate program that performs the special setup and launch Safari itself, which would be a pain in the butt for users. However, this isn’t really a problem for iPLM, since it has to relaunch iPhoto multiple times during an album copy anyway, so having to do the special setup doesn’t really change the flow of things at all.
There are a couple other upsides to this approach:
- The code will only be loaded into iPhoto itself, unlike input managers, which load their code into any Cocoa application that runs. iPLM’s code doesn’t actually do anything unless it’s being loaded in iPhoto, but the input manager bundle still shows up in crash reports and such, which can be suspicious to others trying to debug a crash.
- Nothing needs to be installed! All the code can sit happily within iPLM’s application bundle, and there’s no need to update the bundle when iPLM is updated, or any of that hassle. This means I’ll actually be deleting more code than I’m writing in order to change to the new method.
The only feature that will be lost as a result of the change is putting the name of the current library in the title bar of the iPhoto window itself. This was a neat addition that I put in on a whim, but since the iPLM code will no longer always be running in iPhoto, this will be going away.
In retrospect, if I had known about this method of doing things back when I first wrote iPLM 3.0, I probably would have done it this way in the first place, since it’s less intrusive and uses a long standing feature of dyld that isn’t likely to go anywhere anytime soon. Like I said above, this method isn’t feasible for many programs that are currently using input managers, but this may still prove a useful technique to some other programs transitioning over to Leopard.
iPhoto 7 editing behavior
Posted on October 9, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under Tips & Tricks, iPhoto, iPhoto Library Manager | 1 Comment
While fiddling around with the editing controls in iPhoto 7, I came across a small bit of new behavior that I thought may be interesting to some. If you use any of the sliders in the “Adjust” palette, iPhoto 7 will actually remember the positions of those sliders if you come back to that photo to edit it a second time.
Picture after editing and reopening
This is in contrast to iPhoto 6, where opening this photo back up again would result in the “Temperature” slider being reset to 0. This is pretty cool overall, even if it prevents you from doing X-TREME 200% SHARPNESS adjustments by sliding the slider to 100% twice.
However, if you choose to edit your photo with an external editor, such as Photoshop or Preview, iPhoto will not remember these slider settings.
Picture after editing in Preview
Also note that when copying photos with iPhoto Library Manager, transferring both the original and modified versions of the photo does the equivalent of editing in an external editor, so the slider settings won’t be transferred.
iPhoto 7.1 update
Posted on September 27, 2007 by Brian Webster
Filed Under News, Updates, iPhoto Library Manager | Comments Off
Naturally, since I released an update to iPhoto Library Manager yesterday morning, Apple had to go and release an update to iPhoto about 5 hours later that broke some stuff. Worst. Timing. Ever.
A few things needed tweaking to maintain compatibility, but it wasn’t much, and I’ve posted a new update to iPhoto Library Manager (now version 3.3.2) to get everything working properly with iPhoto 7.1 You can download the new version from the main iPLM page.
« go back — keep looking »
RSS 2.0