Used iPhoto for the very first time today.
Brilliant piece of application.
5/5

How many photos do you have loaded. Is the speed acceptable to you?

I like iPhoto very much for cataloging and saving casual and family photos.

As Harrison's question suggests, though, it can become sluggish as your catalog becomes larger. You should also note that iPhoto swallows copies of all the photos in its catalog, whether captured from the camera/memory card or imported from external files. This can make quite an impact on your main disk, which is the only location iPhoto will use for its store. It's also a big reason why iPhoto becomes slow, since the main disks on Macs are typically rather slow.

Unfortunately, the most current version of iPhoto (and probably all future versions) is part of the $49 iLife suite, which includes Garage Band, iDVD, etc. It's a good value but it was nice when it was really free.

Have fun!

Speed is not much of an issue with iPhoto 4. Earlier versions did slow down as the album size increased. I think the version on my wife's iMac has around 8,000 photos and scans on it and it loads the browser just fine.

iView Media pro works great for me. I recently got back with over 1500 photos from 4 months of travelling so I really needed an application to get a good overview. They also have an almost identical version for Windows which was a big plus for me since I can share the same libraries/catalogs.

The cataloging system in iPhoto is just a bad idea for a photo album software.

iView Media Pro is $199. comparing a free program, iPhoto, to a program clearly labeled as an application aimed at professionals in not really fair. iPhoto is not meant to compete in that market.

I have iView Media Pro, but have never really warmed up to it's interface. For large cataloging needs I prefer Extensis Portfolio, which is also PC compatible

Too be fair iPhoto isn't really free either unless you get a new computer/OS upgrade or buy the iLife package at $50 for any of the other software included. But I agree that $199 is a bit over the top for private use. The interface and speed make up for it for me.

Jeff, do you any thoughts on this: sometimes in iPhoto when I attempt to zoom a picture up to full size in the Organize mode, it takes a very long time to load (a low-res version sticks in the window)? Sometimes it's immediate, other times lengthy, and occasionally I have to click to the next picture and back again to unfreeze it.

What version are you using Charles?

Latest...4, right?

Have you updated to 4.0.3? You may want to try trashing the preferences file for iPhoto.