So today I have finally decided and paid $200 for iView MediaPro. I've been test driving the product a year or so ago (when it was app launch-limited), and felt it is pretty good for my needs, especially given the iPhoto frustration ("slow", say that again "slow"). Back then, I couldn't justify the cost of the product vs usefulness to me, so I didn't make the switch. Then iPhoto was updated and it became singificantly faster, so I decided to continue using it.
Now some time has passed, and I've decided to give iView another try (given how eager some pirates at the unnamed board are to get a serial for the product, I figured it has to be worth trying ;). I went to the iView Multimedia site and noticed they got the 2.x version out.
Now I will present some of my humble opinions regarding iView vs iPhoto. This is by no means a review, just some random things I noticed and liked (or not).
First thing you notice when you launch iView is speed. Yup, iPhoto 2 may be fast, but... Of course, I am by no means a professional photographer, but lately my library has outgrown the 5k photos mark, and man, iPhoto is still slow for anything above 2-3k of photos (at least it feels like that for me).
Another cool things that led me to the decision of purchasing:
- RAW file support. iPhoto chokes on these, and it's nice to keep RAWs organized, given how I only shoot in RAW lately.
- Awesome categorizing features: you can assign people, locations, categories, keywords, anything to a photo or a bunch of photos - in the same window so you dont have to muck with a separate keywords window in iPhoto. Plus, it's über-convenient to pick, say, "Slava" and "Masha" from the list of the people and instantly see which pictures I got where my wife and me are displayed.
- HTML galleries. This ain't a biggie for me, since I use Coppermine to post random family photos for my family mermbers on the web, but still, in cases I need to up some pictures somewhere, it's handy.
- Rotates and other things in iView are faster than iPhoto's.
There's one bug I've noticed in the iView though -- import from iPhoto didn't quite worked for me. It did launched iPhoto, hang there for a moment, then quitted it and nothing happened.
Either way, I think that's a well-spent $200. I now gotta have lots of fun tagging all of my photos, heh.
Posted by slava at 10:17 PM
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$200 for a piece of software that does basically what iPhoto does but (albeit) better? I WISH, oh WISH, I had money to spend like that! I'll give you everything you said that iView does as better than iPhoto (and for $200 it had better BE better!) but I can't justify spending $200 for something I can get basically the same features for free. I can deal with slow for $200.
Eh, just my opinion. I can see professionals wanting more power but for me, free is good. Glad you're happy with it though, Slava.
Posted by: MaestroJAL on October 6, 2004 6:11 AMiPhoto doesn't even come close to handling what iView can handle, thus the price difference. iPhoto, for one, is specifically photos, where as iView can handle pretty much anything you throw at it: most image types, most video types (including the AVI format that your digital camera spits out), fonts, PDFs, text documents...
I have multiple catalogues - one for photos, one for images, files, and assets for my clients [I do web design work], one for fonts... the price is high, but it's a reasonable price for the amount of power you get - iView blows away anything currently out there
Posted by: neilio on October 6, 2004 7:13 AMGreat product
MacDigit (french Weblog). There is a very good review on iView MediaPro
http://www.macdigit.com/index.php/weblog/more/iview_mediapro_macdigit_catalogueur_phototheque_photo_thierry_lothon/
Sorry for my english. I'm french woman…
Posted by: Carole_Morvan on October 13, 2004 2:20 AMIview destroys iphoto.. its like the diffrence between imovie and final cut... huge improvement very deep and detailed program...
Posted by: Dan Busta on October 20, 2004 7:04 PMiView has one huge flaw. You can't quickly resize and send a photo from iView to an email program. Instead, you have to download and AppleScript and pay for it.
For how much iView costs, the ability to resize an image and send it to your email program in one step should be a standard feature. Christ, iPhoto and Graphic Converter have this feature.
Until iView adds this instead of charging extra for it, they can suck my balls.
Posted by: Vic on October 21, 2004 3:50 PMYes, I have just about had it with iPhoto! I have tried out the 26 day free version of iView MediaPro. It seemed pretty good given I am beginning to deal in digital images for my livlihood. I am an artist who is making the switch from slide film documentation to digital. iphoto is fine for a family album, but as soon as i need to start adjusting, correcting, formatting for CD portfolios, and catagorizing iphoto really was too basic. And I suppose it is the amount of stuff I have packed in iphoto, but that program keeps crashing on me, wiping out my library, and taking forever to do things (if doing them at all).
I presented my problem to a graphic designer I know and he pointed me towards iView! The price IS hard to swallow and I tend to suffer with whatever is cheapest until I wipe out some major documentation. I just can't spend that much at this point!