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Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / October 2006iPhoto Alternative(s)?
I really like the iPhoto interface and usefulness, but unfortunately it's not quite what I need for my photo collection, even with tools like iPhoto Buddy. Can anyone recommend a similar product (freeware is kind of a requirement) where the key difference is that I can maintain my current folder hierarchy of photos and not make duplicate copies of everything? Editing of the photos is unimportant, I have Gimp for that. Also, and this is really more to the point of this post... On my new Macbook Pro there's this great feature to use the remote to access a fullscreen graphical menu for music, dvd, videos, and photos. Now I can only assume the photos part just interfaces directly with iPhoto. If I can find an iPhoto alternative that suits my needs, is there any way to get this remote menu to use that instead? Any help would be much appreciate, thank you. -David I don't know about the app part, but I'm pretty sure the only way to use the remote is with the iLife apps (iPhoto, iTunes, etc.). --Emily On Oct 24, 12:37 pm, 47comput...@gmail.com wrote: > I really like the iPhoto interface and usefulness, but unfortunately > it's not quite what I need for my photo collection, even with tools [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > -David > I don't know about the app part, but I'm pretty sure the only way to > use the remote is with the iLife apps (iPhoto, iTunes, etc.). I was afraid that might be the case. And, like I said before, I really do like the iPhoto interface, especially with that remote. The family is going to love those slideshows when they visit :) I guess my biggest concern is how I'm going to be able to organize all my photos in iPhoto. I'd like to be able to preserve the folder structure, since that's the same folder structure of the photo archive on my server that drives other ways of accessing the photos, mainly my website. And, since this mac is a laptop and disk space is, in the long run, limited, having iPhoto make a complete copy of my entire photo archive is somewhat undesirable. That's a solid 5GB of wasted disk space, and growing. If there's any way to just get iPhoto to read my directory tree and use that as its library, that would be ideal. -David > I don't know about the app part, but I'm pretty sure the only way to > use the remote is with the iLife apps (iPhoto, iTunes, etc.). There are a few alternatives for FrontRow, which let you control other apps than iLife, as long a it goes with six buttons;-)  SignatureSZ > I really like the iPhoto interface and usefulness, but unfortunately > it's not quite what I need for my photo collection, even with tools [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Editing of the photos is unimportant, I have Gimp for that. If all you want is a folder hierarchy, what do you even need a special application for? Just use the Finder, and create whatever folders you want. You can see previews of the photos, and double-click to open them in Preview. You can even run slideshows right from the Finder. SignatureTom "Tom" Harrington MondoMouse makes your mouse mightier See http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse/ > > like iPhoto Buddy. Can anyone recommend a similar product (freeware is > > kind of a requirement) where the key difference is that I can maintain > > my current folder hierarchy of photos and not make duplicate copies of > > everything? > If all you want is a folder hierarchy, what do you even need a special > application for? Just use the Finder, and create whatever folders you > want. You can see previews of the photos, and double-click to open them > in Preview. You can even run slideshows right from the Finder. Finder is a bit clumsy for that. Yes, the slideshows are nifty, but browsing the hierarchy in the Finder, even with the previews available, is awkward. I keep all my stuff organized in the finder, dump some of the pix into iPhoto when I want to use it to do things like generate photobooks or batches of thumbnails and such for webpages, but what I recommend for the OP for general poking about the finder-organized hierarchy is GraphicConverter with its browse folder functionality. It's not freeware (and I find it somewhat selfish to demand that suggestions should be) but it's very reasonably priced shareware and certainly worth a try. SignaturePlain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed. No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow? http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting > It's not freeware (and I find it somewhat selfish to demand > that suggestions should be) but it's very reasonably priced > shareware and certainly worth a try. Normally I would agree with that, but I _did_ just buy a brand new Macbook Pro and I need to re-adjust my budget to accomodate before I go around spending any more money. Sure, freeware is always preferred, but I don't mind paying for a quality product. I'll check out your suggestion. Even with telling iPhoto to not create duplicates of the imported files, it still generates over a gig of data for the library :) And loading 14,000 thumbnails whenever I want to run iPhoto is... impractical. Sure, I can have multiple libraries with iPhoto Buddy, but that's not really a solution because it just further separates the photos into categories that can't be mixed. I just need iPhoto's library to be hierarchical, instead of one giant dump with some year-based sub-dumps. Only load the thumbs for the currently open folder, etc. I've been looking through the files in the library's folder and wondering if I can make some adjustments to those outside of iPhoto that will do the trick. It's not hard to write a Perl script that traverses my folder hierarchy and outputs some config files and symlinks, then I could just re-run that whenever I add new photos or change the folders at all. So, if anyone's more familiar with the config files for iPhoto, would a hierarchical structure be possible? Can AlbumData.xml do that? > I really like the iPhoto interface and usefulness, but unfortunately > it's not quite what I need for my photo collection, even with tools > like iPhoto Buddy. Can anyone recommend a similar product (freeware is > kind of a requirement) where the key difference is that I can maintain > my current folder hierarchy of photos and not make duplicate copies of > everything? In recent versions of iPhoto this is optional! You can switch off the copying of photos in the preferences and maintain your folder hierarchy manually. iPhoto will then just create aliases in its own hierarchy which point to the files. Jochem Signature"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery > > I really like the iPhoto interface and usefulness, but unfortunately > > it's not quite what I need for my photo collection, even with tools [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > manually. iPhoto will then just create aliases in its own hierarchy > which point to the files. This is very nice, but what to do with a maintained, 10K "old style" iPhoto Library? I would like to have it in the new way, without losing all my (smart) albums, ratings, keywords, titles, etcetera. Does anyone know a simple way to achieve this? SignatureSZ >> In recent versions of iPhoto this is optional! You can switch off the >> copying of photos in the preferences and maintain your folder hierarchy [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > albums, ratings, keywords, titles, etcetera. > Does anyone know a simple way to achieve this? Hmm, you should be able to just change that setting, leave your old stuff where it is and start to manage new photos manually. Or do you want to reorganize everything? That seems to be not that easy... Jochem Signature"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery |
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