Photocasting

This is quite a contentious feature of iPhoto 6. The feature allows those with .Mac accounts (do I feel a cross-sell coming on?) to upload their chosen photos to their .Mac accounts, to allow those with iPhoto 6 to share their library. Think of it like Bonjour but without the need for a network. You can notify people as to the address and they can subscribe to your photos. It's a very handy way of family members staying in touch with people of live overseas as an example. For non-.Mac users, they can choose to subscribe to your photos via their RSS readers or "up to date browsers." There does seem to be some chatter amongst RSS users that there are issues with this, however.

Also, the day before iPhoto 6 was released at January's Macworld Conference & Expo, so was [url=http://www.filmloop.com]Filmloop[/url], which has a similar concept to iPhoto in sharing photos but in a completely different manner via a standalone program with a stock ticker like loop of pictures -- which again you can subscribe to.

Full screen editing

On the bottom left side of screen is now a new option -- full screen editing. Choosing this mode allows you to see your picture in full screen goodness. From there, you can do your usual editing with cropping, enhancements, etc. However another new feature is that of Compare. This allows you to compare up to eight photos at once side by side -- very handy if you are looking for the best picture out of a group.

There is also now an effects palette which allows you to choose nine effects for your photos like Sepia, boost colour, black and white etc. Again, using the Compare feature allows you to choose which enhancement works best for your photo.

Calendars and cards

You can now choose to build your own calendars or cards and print them yourself. Of course, Apple offers this service, plus a photo book one if you live in most other countries, but has chosen not to offer it here in Australia (don't get me started!). There are a number of themes to choose, and it's a simple case of drop and dragging photos into the templates and you can either print directly at home, or save as a .pdf and email to your friendly printer.

iWeb integration

As part of iLife 06, the various components seem to integrate a lot tighter together and also into .Mac. When you use iWeb to design your own web page, your photos in iPhoto 6 effortlessly appear in the Inspector, allowing them again to be dropped and dragged into the appropriate places.

Overall opinion

I believe solely based on iPhoto '06, iLife is a great buy. The new editing features, far better performance and the tighter integration with .Mac makes it a must have if you are into storing your precious family snapshots in one easy to use place.

Macsimum rating: 8.5 out of 10