Cropping made difficult

Question

When I want to crop an image, iPhoto '08 zooms out, displaying the image on a black background. When the objects on the photo are dark, this actually makes it difficult to see where the image stops and the application background begins. (We want to crop before enhancing, right.) Also, the proportion numbers and two buttons (cancel and that other one) are placed on the image itself, blocking the view to the bottom part of the image.
I suppose there is no way to crop an image while actually seeing the image (and not just "most of the image")?
And another silly thing: My photos are 4:3, and the closest format the photo lab uses is 13 x 10 cm, which is slightly shorter. The lab automatically cuts off the edges, so sometimes I want to crop the images to 13 x 10 to decide which edge of the image should survive its visit to the photo lab.
In iPhoto '06, when I typed 13 x 10 (because it isn't in the list, you know), the crop area was always at its maximum size, so I only needed to move the area towards one of the edges. If I wanted to zoom and crop (leaving out more of the image), this of course had to be done manually.
Now I have to manually grow the crop area to its maximum (dragging the crop edges at least twice, once I needed to drag the edges and move the crop area five times to reach the maximum size). I mean -- most of the time there is no reason to "zoom and crop", and certainly very seldom to the exact area that iPhoto proposes. So whoever wants to zoom in/crop to a particular area will always have to do some manual adjustments to the size of that area. Now one also has to manually zoom out.
In iPhoto '06 the crop area was even centered, so I could see exactly what the photo lab would leave out. Now I can only hope to place the crop lines more or less in the center. But it's difficult to see because of the black background and all the writing.
What happened? Did Microsoft buy Apple?
Oops. I just uttered a couple of Norwegian swear words here in my sofa. I accidentally discovered one more annoying thing.
In iPhoto '06, when the crop area was shown, one had to press Enter or click some button to actualy perform the cropping. One could see the crop area and decide that this image doesn't need to be cropped, and then click the right arrow, move on to the next image, and right away evaluate it for cropping, etc.
If I click the arrow in iPhoto '08 while the crop function is active, a cropping is actually performed. So now I have to activate the crop function, manually enlarge the crop area using multiple clicks and drags, hope to be able to center it despite the black background and the writing at the bottom, then decide that the image doesn't need cropping, deactivate the crop function, click the right arrow and activate the crop function again.
I want my money back.

Answer 1

Thanks for all the advice, but it seems I am not good at explaining what I don't like and why. I'll try to explain in detail. There's nothing new here, so don't read it unless you really want to.
Here in Europe 13 x 10 cm is one of the standard sizes of a photo print. Many digital cameras (e.g. Ixus 750) use the ratio 4:3. The print size 13 x 10 cm equals 3.9:3.
(The adviced 5:7 equals to 13 x 18 cm, which again is equal to 4.15:3. This is of course also pretty close to 4:3, but then we need other albums for the prints.)
When the photo labs receives an uncropped 4:3 image, it will make 3.9:3 prints (13 x 10 cm) where the edges of the original 4:3 image have been cut off. Often this is not a problem. But not too seldom it is wise to perform the cropping to 3.9:3 at home before uploading to the photo lab. In most of those cases we do not want to select some small area of the image, we want to conserve the whole hight but remove one of the short edges in order to preserve the other one.
Of course, 10 x 13 is not in the list of predetermined sizes. The closest predetermined size is 4:3, which is exactly the size we want to avoid when cropping. I can live with that. It's easy to type the numbers "13" and "10" manually.
In iPhoto '06, when the size had been chosen, the crop area popped up and was so big that it couldn't be expanded any more. It was also centered on the photo, and we could see very easily what parts of the picture the photo lab would leave out on the prints if we didn't crop anything at home. And we could drag the crop area to one of the short edges and then crop if we wanted that partucular edge to be preserved on the print. Of course, we could also make the crop area smaller if we wanted to leave out even more of the picture.
If the picture was already cropped to 13 x 10, the crop area that popped up would be smaller than the cropped photo itself, and so we could see fairly easily if the image had already been cropped or not. A nice feature, but not crucial.
Having looked at one picture (and perhaps cropped it, perhaps not) we moved on the the next picture, looked at the cropping area, and decided if we needed to crop the photo for the photo lab's sake or not.
In iPhoto '08, when the crop tool and ratio have been chosen, the crop area pops into position, but it is not expanded to its maximum. We have to perform at least two clicks-and-drags to achieve this. (I have discovered that if I "reset crop", then that will expand the crop area to the desired maximum that wasnt' there in the first place. Still, this is of course counterintuitive.)
Also, there is now a black border around the picture when the crop tool is activated, and it's more difficult to see where the actual edges of the uncropped picture are. I have found no way to change that colour. And we don't even need that border, as the only reason to have it when editing in the main window or in a separate window, would be to make place for the crop info bar, which is really a floating window that can be moved.
Anyway, all this means that it has become more tedious/complicated to crop pictures, and especialy the kind of cropping that we need to do to make a 4:3 image fit onto a 13 x 10 cm print.
One of the complicating factors is also the fact that in iPhoto '08 we can't just move on to the next picture anymore. If we do, the present picture will be cropped automatically, unless we first deactivate the crop tool, and then move on before we activate it again. So... more difficult to crop what we want to crop, but easier to crop what we don't want to crop. To achieve the latter disaster, we just need to forget to turn the crop tool off and then on.