I've just spent 20 minutes viewing highlights of Apple's newest release of iLife 08. iPhoto has been updated with some great features, such as the ability to organize photos by "event." iPhoto automatically sorts photos by events according to the day photos are taken. All the photos from one event can be skimmed through in a small preview window. When viewing the photos in a single event, iPhoto provides a "hide" feature for pictures that you just don't want to throw away, but you might not want to view all the time.
In addition to some new printing templates, I was most impressed by the new Web gallery for sharing photos on .Mac ("dot Mac"). Photos can be published/uploaded with a single click and viewed on any web browser in a variety of ways -- (reminds me of viewing photos in Flickr) and high quality downloads for printing are available as well.
The best feature is that others can add or upload to your gallery!! I have been a .Mac subscriber since it was first given away free (currently $99 per year) and now .Mac subscribers are being given more webspace, increasing it to 10GB combined storage for mail and web publishing! Yay!
iMovie has been totally recreated to allow "super-fast movie creation" using a built-in library of video clips that you can skim through to select sequences as easily as selecting text. Drag and organize sequences in the new project window and share your finished masterpiece in your .Mac web gallery, reportedly in higher resolution than DVD. Or, publish directly to YouTube is also an option in the Share menu. Among the formats the iMovie now accepts is DV, HDV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and AVCHD.
Of course, iWeb is still available for publishing websites that include blogs, podcasts, and photos in creative albums. However, now iWeb also provides web-widgets for adding interactive content such as embedded YouTube videos and "interactive Google maps." Google's Ad-Sense program is also available as a widget, if you choose to use this (I hate ads on webpages).
GarageBand 08 has a new feature for musicians. Take the "stage" with a hand-picked virtual band, (just turn on and off instruments) to create music using your own instrument, voice, etc.
Check out iLife at http://www.apple.com/ilife/. Upgrades are $79.
Be sure to note the system requirements: iMovie requires OS X 10.4.9, and an Intel processor, a Power Mac G5 (dual 2.0GHz or faster), or an iMac G5 (1.9GHz or faster). iMovie HD 6, previously distributed with iLife ’06, is available for download for those who have purchased and installed iLife ’08 at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html
No comments:
Post a Comment