IPhoto not well designed?

Question

Hi group, I've just posed this feedback to Apple about iPhoto. You'll notice that I'm pretty disappointed with the product but I'll appreciate any hints and constructive feedback from you.
The more I try to use iPhoto, the more I find it unusable.
Not everything is an event!
It is very difficult and time consuming to organize my 10,000+ photos in any meaningful sets of these so-called events. That idea is great: being able to 'skim' over a graphical gismo that shows the photos is contains and all, but it is only a gimmick! I have pictures of my kids, of my houses, of my holidays, of my things... I mean, how do I classify pictures of my cat into a stand-alone root event? That doesn't make sense! I have about 380 pictures of my houses nicely ordered by house and room... If I wanted (and I do want to) to import that into iPhoto it would create about 30 separate events called 'Bathroom' or 'Garden'... Are these events? Obviously not... At the moment, there are classified in folders and sub folders, logically. The only way I can get close to that is by recreating by hand the folder hierarchy in iPhoto, create an album in each folder representing the house and group all the rooms of the same house under the same event so that it doesn't clutter the event list. That's a lot of work for very little gain.
As for my kids photos, they are organized be 'events' (I called them mini-albums) which are by date and by subject which are not date-specific. For my mini-albums, Events are great but for the rest events are just not logical.
It's only for specific things such as holidays or family events that they sort of make sense. But again, it would be nice if they wouldn't get thrown together on the screen without a way of grouping them logically (and I mean grouping, not ordering).
Also, why aren't events accessible from the left pane, like in iMovie for instance? Is consistency not needed between Apple applications of the same iLife suite? I would happily get rid of the skimming if I could get my events on the left pane, a thumbnails pane and a preview pane (so without preview pane it's also ok).
The more I've been thinking about it, the more I believe that the Events idea is disastrous and that a more familiar folder/sub folder concept would have been the way to go to make this application the best one on the market.
Canon used to have an application called ZoomBrowser, it was the easiest and clearest photo organizing application. iPhoto is only a step away from the concept used in this app. The way it stands, iPhoto begs you to just dump all your photos in one huge meaningless event and use the other facilities to classify and order them.
It's counterproductive and far from being intuitive.
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If anyone has suggestions such as a better photo organizer program (not Aperture...) or how tos, any help appreciated.

Answer 1

Well that is OT's preferred method of working, but then he actually uses iView as his primary photo organiser. But it certainly is not necessary to rename the files before importing.
With iPhoto 7 (iLife 08) the old iPhoto Library Folder is now a Unix Style Package File. The change was made to the format of the iPhoto library because many users were inadvertently corrupting their library by browsing through it with other software or making changes in it themselves.
A key rule of thumb with iPhoto: there is never a need to access the files in the iPhoto Library via the Finder - there never has been with any version of the app, and every time you do you risk damaging the library.
There are many, many ways to access your files in iPhoto:
For 10.5 users: You can use any Open / Attach / Browse dialogue. On the left there's a Media heading, your pics can be accessed there. Apple-Click for selecting multiple pics.
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
To upload to a site that does not have an iPhoto Export Plug-in the recommended way is to Select the Pic in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export and export the pic to the desktop, then upload from there. After the upload you can trash the pic on the desktop. It's only a copy and your original is safe in iPhoto.
This is also true for emailing with Web-based services. If you're using Gmail you can use THIS
If you use Apple's Mail, Entourage, AOL or Eudora you can email from within iPhoto. Or, again with 10.5, you access the iPhoto Library from within the new Message window:
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
If you use a Cocoa-based Browser such as Safari, you can drag the pics from the iPhoto Window to the Attach window in the browser.
Or, if you want to access the files with iPhoto not running, then create a Media Browser using Automator (takes about 10 seconds) or use THIS
Other options include:
1. *Drag and Drop*: Drag a photo from the iPhoto Window to the desktop, there iPhoto will make a full-sized copy of the pic.
2. *File -> Export*: Select the files in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export. The dialogue will give you various options, including altering the format, naming the files and changing the size. Again, producing a copy.
3. *Show File*: Right- (or Control-) Click on a pic and in the resulting dialogue choose 'Show File'. A Finder window will pop open with the file already selected.
All of these are faster and safer than rooting around in the old iPhoto Library Folder.
As to editing:
You can set Photoshop (or any image editor) as an external editor in iPhoto. (Preferences -> General -> Edit Photo: Choose from the Drop Down Menu.) This way, when you double click a pic to edit in iPhoto it will open automatically in Photoshop or your Image Editor, and when you save it it's sent back to iPhoto automatically. +This is the only way that edits made in another application will be displayed in iPhoto.+
Regards
TD