Microsoft/Mac Monday
In the past we’ve written about Windows Photo Gallery and what a great job Microsoft has done with it. Not only is it a great way to manage photos, but it is also helpful for “fixing” (cropping, removing red-eye, etc.) them as well. You can even use it to upload photos to popular photo-sharing site Flickr (Windows Live Photo Gallery only), now how convenient is that? To continue our series on comparing features from Mac computers with those you’d find if you’re using Windows Vista, we’ll be comparing Apple’s iPhoto with Windows Photo Gallery.
About Windows Photo Gallery
As you might expect, Windows Photo Gallery is a feature that is included with all versions of Windows Vista. There’s also Windows Live Photo Gallery which is a downloadable version available to those using Windows XP and Vista (it has more features than Windows Photo Gallery). Overall it’s a photo management tool but they’ve incorporated features like the option to edit, tag, and add captions.
Navigating Windows Photo Gallery is simple and most of it is done either at the top or in the left-side navigation bar. There are also a few controls at the bottom for moving along to the next photo or rotating a picture. Right from the gallery is the option to print your photos using the Print Wizard or ordering copies of the photo online. Users can create and view slide shows of their photos.
About iPhoto
iPhoto is a product of Apple and is part of the iLife suite of applications that all new Mac owners receive. iPhoto is supposed to help you organize, edit, print and share your photos. Like Windows Photo Gallery, they offer basic image editing tools like the option to remove red-eyes or crop and resize photos. Their organization system involves placing all photos into groups which they call “Events.”
Other Apple applications are incorporated into iPhoto like the option to import music from iTunes to incorporate into dynamic slideshows. You can edit those slideshows in iMovie or you can also burn them to DVD using iDVD right from iPhoto.
Disadvantages of using Windows Photo Gallery
One of the nice features about iPhoto is that there’s an option to create a book, calendar, or card, right from the application. This is something that Windows Photo Gallery does not offer, although they do offer the option to send your pictures to a company online for printing which may offer similar features. Below you’ll see an image of what you’d see if you were to make a book in iPhoto. You can choose various themes, background colors, a layout, and more. Once you’re done, you can buy the book and have it professionally printed.
Disadvantages of using iPhoto
Perhaps the complaints we list today with iPhoto are because we are used to the ways of “Windows” , but in general we like control over how things are organized and iPhoto somewhat takes away that privilege. iPhoto wants to manage all of your photo files (which is like iTunes – it wants to manage all of your music). This is probably fine for most people, but for those of us who like to have control over how things are organized (Power Users), this can prove to be frustrating, especially if you like using a folder/sub-folder structure. We’ll get into that a little later.
If you want to work with your photos, you have to import the images (which is the only way you can get them into iPhoto). iPhoto ends up copying all of the photos into it’s own directory which means that this method takes up more of your memory. I should mention that there is an option in the preferences under the “advanced” tab where you can uncheck “copy items to the iPhoto library” so that when you import photos it doesn’t actually copy the file into the iPhoto library. Instead it will show you a shortcut, but the only problem is if you move the location of the original photo then the shortcut is not going to work and in turn, the photos will not show up in iPhoto when you want to do something with them.
Another “disadvantage” as we see it is for those who have their own system for organizing photos. Using iPhoto requires getting used to the “Mac” way of doing things which is essentially letting the application take control over how things are organized so that you don’t have to worry about it. iPhoto ends up organizing photos by the year that they were taken. You also have no control over file names. If you import images directly from your camera, it will keep the same file names that your camera gave the photos which is usually just a bunch of letters and numbers. There is a batch change feature which allows you to change the name, and you can append a number to it, but it won’t change the actual file name. If you happen to have your pictures organized into folders and sub-folders, iPhoto will ignore any folder structure that you have and only uses the parent folder of where the images are located as the event name.
Yet another downside is that if you go to edit a photo, it doesn’t actually touch the original. In the iPhoto library is a “modified” folder where all of your modified photos are stored. It’s good in the sense that you can always go back, but when we edit photos, we like the original to be changed because that’s likely to be the one you’d want to access more frequently. Windows Photo Gallery always modifies the original in the location where it’s at which is convenient, and then it saves a copy of the original in its own folder which makes more sense.
Wrapping it up
After comparing iPhoto to Windows Photo Gallery, for our purposes Windows Photo Gallery is the winner because it provides the user with more control over the organization of the photos and is great for navigational purposes because your folder structure is available in the left side-bar.
So far we’ve taken a look at the following Leopard vs. Vista Comparisons:
Hmmmm. Bet you don’t see this in a PC vs Mac commercial.
I think this article is about another iPhoto from another planet because in the iPhoto i use i can do the things these people apparently can’t. For Windows-people it makes sense to leave all your pictures scattered throughout your harddrives, making you forget where they are when you want to backup them all together. On a Mac they are all organized in one place.
Besides… These people dont know the difference between ‘memory’ and ‘space on my harddrive’. Importing is the ‘only way’ ? Not able to drag and drop ? Not the thing windowies are used to but then again; you are power-users, right ? Power-users with the enclosure permanently detached because the wires fall apart every now and then !
Bad article.
Great post. I have the same issues with iPhoto. I thought iPhoto would be better than what it is considering what I’ve heard from different people. I prefer to have more control myself.
I’m glad Windows Photo Gallery is finally improving. However, I’m still using iLife ’06, so I really need to upgrade to see the new version of iPhoto.
Windows Photo Gallery and support for tags in general was one of the main attractions in Windows Vista for me.
I had previously used a program called iTag to add tags and captions to my photos but it was really slow and clumsy to use. With Photo Gallery tagging is easy and fast. I have my photos tagged hierarchically in categories such as Places, People, Pets etc. I still keep the photos in monthly folders as well but it’s great to be able to search for example all the top rated photos taken last summer of my dog in the summer cottage.
Definitely not! Or if they did they would push the fact that it manages everything for you, but leave out how you have little control over how your files are stored.
I thought it was going to be an incredible application from what I had heard, but I was extremely disappointed with it.
I wonder what has changed since the 2006 version?
I never got into using tagging in Vista, but it was nice that it was always there if I wanted it. Their tagging system was setup very well within Windows Photo Gallery.
I wanted to open a video file with Windows Photo Gallery. I chose Open-with from the right click menu of a video file and then I chose Windows Photo Gallery program. It crashed Windows Photo Gallery and no video files worked in it since.
So NEVER right-click on a video file and choose Photo Gallery.
If you want to play videos in Photo Gallery, then open it first and select a video from inside Photo Gallery.
I moved my important files to a different folder, deleted my Vista user and made a new one to use Photo Gallery for playing videos again.
I like Microsoft products – but there is a problem with Windows Photo Gallery from Windows – if you share the photos online – e.g., Windows Live Spaces – the users cannot download full size photos.
Photos published online using iPhoto can be downloaded in full size. Now one must pay $100 a year for the .mac account. But it seems worth it. Also, right during the upload, one can send out an announcement.
An alternative is to share the photos on the free 5gb Windows Sky Drive – but now things are getting kludgey.
Use the Flickr service. It’s integrated into Windows Live Photo Gallery and it only costs $25 per year. You can then let users download full size images.
I’m running Win XP and Vista. But, I’ve liked the way some friend”s IPhotoslide shows look when the slide opens from one corner and pans to full size. It gives the feel of a movie. I’m looking for a program for XP/Vista which will do the same thing. Anybody know one. As far a photo managing and editing, I’ve been very pleased with
ACDSee Photo Manager which seems to do it all. Tom
Googled and checked out several programs. I settled on Photo Story 3 for Windows and have completed my first production. It turned out great. I love it so far. Easy to use. It says you have to have a valid Win XP program but I downloaded it to Vista, no problem.
I love the photo tagging (and other tagging features of vista). It’s a shame the mac people think Leopard is so perfect. I actually DITCHED my macbook and went to Vista after SP1 came out. I’m much more productive. I love how I can search for all my photos instantly using tags, keywords, etc. I hated how iPhoto organized photos in the directories (modified, originals, and always by date, wtf!). In Vista, it’s the same layout as in the Pictures folder so I can use either program to get to the pics.
I’ve used Leopard for a year and use macs every day at work, but I much prefer Vista! I’m a Mac-To-Vista converter and very happy. MS really needs to advertise!!
iPhoto is great for novices. Which are the majority of Mac users…
The other disadvantage with iPhoto is that I use Win and Macs at home and there is no easy way for Win users to see iPhoto albums…
I agree, iPhoto needs to get the following features:
a) Ability to pull all your pictures in to ONE folder like iTunes.
b) Save modified files with originals in the same folder.
c) A better navigation panel and the ability to browse pictures in a folder without importing them.
d) Export data to be readable by Win photo management apps.
e) Have an “expert” mode for power users. Even iPhone is annoying about the structure of albums.
I am looking at consumer products from Adobe like Adobe Photoshop Elements
Man, using anything on Vista is like pulling your healthy teeth with a pair of pliers out without anesthesia. ALL versions of Vista are EVIL…:evil:
Don’t get me wrong, I love Win XP SP2. It is amongst the best OS’s that I have used…
Hi, I am a Professional Webdeveloper and Graphics Designer also a Iphoto “power user” i am struggling to understand your “”Disadvantages of using iPhoto”"
I copy my files from my camera in RAW format, it saves them into iPhoto organised by the shooting date an “Event”. I can then Manipulate the Events. iPhoto organises my photos in the iPhoto folder location, that is Accessible through Finder, which is then organised in the same Events as i have specified. i can choose META (similar to id3 tags). to how the photo is recognised in OSX finder and on XP/VISTA Computers.
When i edit a photo i use the Edit photo button that opens Photoshop CS3, i can edit and save my photo i can then save my image where i like, and use iPhoto hold my Master images (like an SVN). a upside is that it Keeps my Original image, so if i accidently save my image i still have my Master File.
I can also Export to FTP/HTTP/Facebook/ Create web galleries from a click, and also export to Quicktime slideshows, all through ONE accessible menu named “EXPORT”.
iPhoto is easy to use, much better than Aperture and Adobe Lightroom, is SIMPLE, any powerfull things i need to do i use Adobe Software.
I could understand if people “put all their eggs in one basket” and try to use iPhoto as their only Photo editor, cause that is just idiotic.
I would expect “Power” users to know the difference between memory and storage, but apparently that’s asking too much. Most Mac people are sophisticated and experienced computer users. Ever hear of Seymour Cray? The fact that you have to muck about in the innards of the OS to get your work done does not make you a power user.
Also, a comparative article such as this should be written by someone with an easy familiarity with both OSes. It’s clear that the author does not have such a familiarity with the Mac OS X, which has always given the user more control (it is, after all, BSD UNIX with nEXT middleware and an advanced Mac OS gui.) The fact that you are more familiar with Vista than Leopard does not make for an objective comparative model.
I run Leopard, Windows Vista and XP, and Ubuntu Linux on a MacBook Pro. I’m intimately familiar with all four OSes. My preference is for Mac OS X Leopard. If I want power tools for cataloging, batch processing, or simply editing photo files, I go with Adobe, preferably for Mac. But hey, keep preaching to your choir. There’s nothing more comforting than having one’s cognitive dissonance reinforced by someone else’s willful ignorance.
Dude, this is our own personal comparison. We wrote about our observations and opinions of the two software applications. If you disagree with us feel free to write your own review/comparison.
P.S. We do use Mac, Vista, XP, Ubuntu, and Fedora on a regular basis. We’re well versed in multiple operating systems despite your assumptions.
I think thAT WINDOWS PHOTO GALLERY IS AN EXITING EXPERIENCE. i HAVE IT IN ALL THREE COMPUTERS IN MY HOUSE.
:idea: 
Great review, and I1m totaly AGREE with it.
I write this comment on a black Apple Macbook, and my experience is: iPhoto is a peace of s..t!
Guys are you with your minds ? iPhoto ’09 is the best photo gallery ever ! It can sort pictures by faces, you can attach location to your picture, it makes your folders into events… Are you organising your photos right ? Mine are organised into folders and i don’t have any trouble at all ! CN power users (rofl) i thing someone paid you to type this review ;] If someone thing im Apple fanboy you are wrong I am Windows user from 10 years, Linux user from 1-2 years and Leopard user from one and a half month .. and my personal experiance with those OS’s says : Windows for games, Linux for reliability and Leopard for all your other work/entertainment + reliability !
Hmm.. cool site if someone like me says the truth his post gets deleted, nice ;]
iPhoto ’09 is definitely better than previous versions. I’ve actually started to use it because of the faces and places features they’ve added, along with the Flickr uploading.
I don’t know why your comment didn’t show up when you looked, but it definitely wasn’t deleted.
No disadvantages to photo gallery???????? What a surprise!
Yeah I’ve recently ditched my mac to get this Windows box and I gave Windows Live Photo Gallery a whirl.
Not that impressed.
iPhoto is much more intuitive and user friendly. So what if it ‘takes control’ of my photos. It’s supposed to. It’s an effing photo management program! Personally only being able to go two sub directories deep is not a big problem for me.
Also although the photo editing tools on Microsoft effort leave much to be desired (hello no where’s the eetouching brush). Though I must admit I like the auto fix feature.
For casual users who just want to edit and/or funkify their photos then iPhoto wins HANDS DOWN..
I am a novice. I have Vista and my daughter (who is scanning and tagging 7,000 photos) has MAC. Can someone tell me which one (Photo Gallery or IPhoto 09 is best for SORTING all of these photos after they are tagged? I am not going to do sharing on the web. Will make various DVD/CD’s for the family (like family resemblences between generations) or daughters ice skating and granddaughters ice skating), etc. Thanks.
Pamela use Picasa, it is easy to do that, there are plenty of choices to manage albums in PC
I received an image in email on my Mac with instructions to open with Window Photo Gallery. How do I do that?
You can’t… unless you’re running Windows on your Mac. Although you should be able to open an image with one of several apps on your Mac.
Interesting article. I would say that as the article says this is written by a biased party. The main issue I have with these types of reviews is when they are written by someone who lives on windows and then decides to review a mac.
Windows OS in general is outdated, so why then is it still so popular (even over the recent update). People are used to it, and against getting used to another one.
I live on windows at work, and my degree focused on teaching me how to use windows. The other couple hours I have at home are on a mac. There are no college courses on how to use a mac, because it’s really simple. At first I was irritated when things were different, but being in a position of logging hundreds of hours on each system a year for multiple years gives me a better perspective then the people who did wrote this.
iphoto is simpler to use, and offers the same amount of control.
Who cares about folders when you can organize with smart albums. so you can group by favorites, events dates keywords and different peoples with face recognition (which works very well after you tell it who is in a a few different pictures). As for the non destructive editing comment. If you do it the way windows does it and keeps a copy of the original your files will be twice as big. With the way Iphoto does it you can remove your changes to get back to your original if you want. If you want you can always make a copy of the original if you really want to. Iphoto can upload directly to facebook and flickr with one click, The books are amazing. My friends thought it was a book I bought from my trip until I was in a picture. The slide shows you can make are fantastic and you can create a DVD that plays on any DVD player.
As for the copy of the photos into iphoto that is true. Once that is done delete the file they came from so they don’t consume HD space.
The orginal review was on iphoto 08 iphoto 09 has even better editing options. Nice to know that windows has something that even comes close. I have been asked by so many people is iphoto made for windows. Now I can tell them that windows has built a close second
Talk about Windows bias…
There are a lot of stupid comments about having to get used to the “Mac way.” If you’re using iPhoto obviously you’re already using a Mac. Also, one of the worst things you can do to your photos is modify the original – renaming, editing, etc. This is why we use photo management software. If you really need a higher level of control, then you should be using a professional management package like Aperture.
So we have a “mixed” household: a Mac, where all photos are managed and a couple of PCs. Any ideas how all computers could access all pictures (stored on a large central Harddrive – a NAS, actually)? Is there a program like iPhoto that works on both Mac and PC so there is the same storage logic? Thanks!
One thing is clear. You are a long time Windows user that has not spent enough time on a Mac.
I switched about 3 years ago, and I struggled with what I thought was a lack of control, until I realized that the control I had in Windows was really a lack of features in a particular app.
You can do everything in iPhoto that you can do in Windows Photo Gallery (Live photo gallery now) + Windows explorer. It take two applications on Windows to almost do what iPhoto can do on the Mac.
Seriously get someone on your staff that is a full time Mac user. When you do these reviews, make a list of tasks that a normal user would want to do/accomplish, then have your windows user and mac user do these tasks and then write about the process, number of steps, limitations, and THEN talk about the extra stuff.
As a 75% Mac user/100% iPhoto users now, I am so glad I dont have to deal with organizing my photos at a explorer level.
I’ve just started with mac. I really want to use Iphoto’09. My question is: what happens if after using Iphoto’09 for many months, with no backup, I decide to continue using windows? Can I transfer my iphoto data to any windows picture browser?
Thanks, fede.
Yes there is an export feature.
Strangely enough I recently started iphoto and expected to dislike it, however I actually liked it …..a lot. Especially the faces functionality that does some facial recognition with tagging rolled up into it.
With the size of y unsorted photo collection I actually found the feature that automatically groups your photos into events by folder and date to help with the organisation a lot.
Hi,
I am very new to MAC. I am taking plenty of pictures and like to keep them in folders.
I am a Nikon man and use Nikon Transfer to import my RAW pictures into my own specified folders and with my own specified name. I use View NX to quickly view my pictures and then delete the obvious blunders. Then I do a batch process and convert all of the remaining images into Jpeg format. I have then been using Windows Photo Gallery to browse through, organize in different folders and crop. When I get a real nicer image, I will open up the RAW file of that Image in Capture NX and do the necessary enhancement there.
I now have all the Nikon sw installed on my MAC, but i am missing the easy to use features that I am used to in Windows Photo Gallery. I will never change my way of working. I do not like the idea of importing all the images into iPhoto. Is there a simple photo editor like Windows Photo Gallery available for MAC. I only need to open the picture, delete, zoom, crop and save. If only View NX had a crop function for JPEG, I would have been ok.
Please help
Per
I think these comments are quite biased towards Windows Gallery. If you haven’t used iPhoto before you cannot compare. iPhoto by far has way more advanced features in editing and organizing photos. iPhoto purposely moves photos into a library so that they are not accidental erased. iPhoto 09 has advanced software such as face recognition, map creation, and more. I have yet to find any photo program that is comparable for the pricing of iPhoto (more or less free).
What they say is true once you go mac, you don’t go back…while Windows 7 has come a long way for PC, Mac still supersedes PC.
Until next time…until you’ve really played with iPhoto, you can’t complain about it.
Sorry to disagree but I switched to Mac Dec 2009 and I way prefer windows to iphoto. Iphoto wants to make all my decisions for me..in the way of organizing. I want my photos in folders by year, month, then the name of the activity etc… iphoto wants to organize them for me and changes the dates if I change or add a photo of a different date. Plus, if I make exposure improvements etc to the photos it keeps the original in a file and the improved photo in a file. I dont need both of them. And, my biggest complaint is that I have the fastest and newest computer Mac sells but it takes over 3 mintues for iphoto to startup because evidently I have too many photos for it to handle. I have the exact file of photos on my PC at work and it is four years old and it opens immediately.
I am a recent user of iphoto. I like it and use folders. My problem is sending a photo as an attachment to our computer which uses a windows system. The same photo is on both computers and the pixel sizes are the same on both computers. But when I send from my snow leopard mac to windows vista it goes from 3200 x 2400 pixs (approx) to 320 x 240. I don’t understand. What’s happening in transmission to shrink it?
I have learned, by reading on the forums, to use plain text in the email to get it as an attachment, but why doesn’t it open in full size on the other windows computer in the house?
It must be something very obvious but I can’t seem to find out what. AT the moment I am having to send pictures via windows which is a bit of a shame considering I’m now getting used to iphoto. Any help is much appreciated.
Are you sending directly or using an email program? Mail has a not-very-obvious selector at the bottom of the message pane that lets you select the size of the attachment. Often the default is set to Small. Set it to Actual Size.
Your email is the likely culprit here.
See [discussions.apple.com] for discussion.
I have recently started experimenting with iphotos on my first apple computer. I rather like it’s features and being no expert haven’t had a problem using it.
However, I do have a serious problem when sending a photo from the mac to a windows PC. I can’t open it fully on the windows system – it’s tiny. I have the same photo on both systems approx size 3400 x 2400 pixs yet when I email it as an attachment in plain text it says it’s only 340 x 240 approx. What’s that about? Am I missing something obvious? At the moment I have no option but to use windows for my pictures as the iphoto isn’t doing what I want – which is a shame as I quite like it.
Does anyone know how I get over this problem? Please bear in mind I am new to this and NOT a techno wizard like some of you above. Many thanks
You can name photos in iPhoto anything you want …and you can do so quite easily. You can also rate them, assign them key words. Group them into albums and easily create “smart” albums (ie. all photos containing the key word “dog”, taken on or before May 12 1999, and rated 5 stars) Both programs iPhoto and Photo Gallery are designed novices and both offer basic editing tools. If you use a PC, Windows Photo Gallery works just fine. Afterall, Microsoft designed it to compete with iPhoto. Personally, I’m convinced Windows Photo Gallery has the edge. Still, if I had to teach my Grandmother how to use one or the other, the “Mac” way of doing things wins hands down. There are, of course, plenty of software programs for the more serious photo archivist; Picassa and ACDSee 8 come to mind.
I work in software development – primarily Windows programs. However, a few of our titles are published for Mac’s as well. I work on both platforms and the debate I see on this thread is the exact same argument I see expressed in my company every day. When you use Windows, you buy into a very particular work-flow philosophy that encompasses everything you do. And the same is true for Mac’s.
So whenever some one who is conversant with one philosophy attempts to use a program embedded in another philosophy, they are going to feel discombobulated. But many choose not to recognize the feeling for what it is and instead insist the unfamiliar computing platform is the problem.
Both Iphoto and Photo Gallery work well – both allow you to organize and edit your photos. Iphoto has more bells and whistles. The suggestion that you lack control in Iphoto is a very old complaint that Window users have about Macs. It has absolutely no basis in fact. What the reviewer is saying is “Since I don’t understand low level control in Macs as well as I understand low level control in Windows, it must follow that low level control in Mac’s does not exist.”
Mac vs Windows = jigsaw vs circular saw. Familiarity with one tool doesn’t negate the usefulness of another tool.
“Familiarity with one tool doesn’t negate usefulness of another tool.”
Amen. A longtime mac user I find myself using more winxp system due to changes. Its a little frustrating to make a windows system cough up ‘where are my files’ when the Mac has them all right there. (Yes my comment is the exact opposite of the complaint about control cited in the original article. Funny how perspective and familiarity bias opinions.)
I use the iLife suite but for platform migration issues I have to find Win7 replacements for what I can do now without thinking. That’s what brought me here. Thanks for all your comments!