iLife 09: iPhoto and iMovie Have Big Offerings

A series of iLife 09 updates were announced during the Apple Keynote at this year’s Macworld.

Each piece of software saw at least marginal updates, and some — like iPhoto and iMovie saw major updates. And for me, those are the two apps I use the most.

iPhoto

iPhoto will see several new additions, but these are the updates that I’m most excited about trying:

1. Faces. Right now I tag all of my photos by who is in it. That helps especially with the kids. If Faces works as well as it should, then that will be a welcome way to sort my photos.

2. Facebook and flickr support. I use both online services, but I only upload photos to flickr. To do so, I use a third-party add-on, FlickrExport. It’s nice to have native capability for both, which means Facebook friends can stop nagging me about adding more photos.

3. Enhanced Photo Editing. I’m not sure how much more improvement they have done, but I know many users were happy with iPhoto’s editing capability in the current iteration of the app. I use PhotoShop for heavy lifting and Pixelmator for light work. Perhaps it’s time to give iPhoto a shot for everyday editing on personal photos.

For more details on updates, visit Apple’s iPhoto page.

iMovie

I use iMovie for web videos, generally in campaigns that I manage. When Apple updated iMovie for their last iLife release, they stripped it of some of its functionality. Now that functionality has reportedly returned.

1. Precision editor. This is the most important release in iLife for me. I hope it works as demonstrated in the keynote. It looks just about perfect for me.

2. Video stabilization. I have my doubts about this feature, at least on a MacBook Pro or iMac. I’m afraid it will be too slow, but who knows. I’ll try it out to see.

3. Animated travel maps. Now I can take my childhood dream of being Indiana Jones one fanboy step further! (Even if George Lucas and Steven Spielberg tried to destroy my memories with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull…)

If you want to read about other updates, visit the iMovie page at Appple.com.

The rest of iLife 09

Here’s a taste of the offerings for other iLife apps:

1. Garage Band. Take music lessons from recording artists like Sting, Sarah McLachlan, Fall Out Boy, John Fogerty and Ben Folds.

2. iWeb. Add widgets to your website and choose from new, more dynamic themes.

3. iDVD. Magic iDVD will create a full-featured DVD in minutes, letting you choose from new themes.

To buy or not?

I’ll buy it, for iMovie alone. And I’ll take iPhoto as a bonus.

Who knows, one day I might even use iDVD and create a DVD.

As for iWeb… I’m not big on it. But I’ve never really used it to see what it can do. So there you go.

The upgrade is $79, and I believe well worth it.