Oh man, how cool is the new Retina iPad mini for photographers? Not only has it got that sweet new hi-res display, it can now be had with 128GB RAM. That alone makes it pretty great for viewing and editing your photos, but there’s also a new version of iPhoto for iOS. But does it improve on the last excellent-but-flawed version of iPhoto on the iPad? Does it play nice with the Mac version of iPhoto? Let’s see.
First off, no, you can’t add pictures to your Photo Streams direct from iPhoto for iOS. You can view the streams from within the app like before, but iPhoto doesn’t get any special privileges when it comes to creating or adding to Photo Streams. For that, you’ll still need to use the regular Photos app.
What you can do is send your pictures out via AirDrop.
The biggest improvements (Apart from the iOS 7-friendly interface revamp) is in organisation. Previously in iPhoto on the iPad, you’d find yourself getting lost between all the different kinds of albums. Now you can organize your photos by tagging, and each tag will get its own album, automatically. Yes, you could do this with the previous version but now it has become the main way to organize your photos. And because you can add multiple tags, your photos can appear in multiple albums.
Searching is also much easier now, with a new filter panel that lets you easily find and sort photos, and from this view you can also flag, tag and “heart” your pictures to further organize things.
The biggest disappointment is that iPhoto for the Mac, although it has been updated for Mavericks, is still much the same as it was before. That is, it’s still totally lame. It doesn’t even get to share properly with iPhoto on the iPad. If Apple had made the two apps sync, maybe letting you share auto-updating albums between them, then iPhoto on OS X may have been worth revisiting. As it is, there seems to be little point battling with its tortured convolutions yet again.
As it is, this looks like a solid if uneventful update for iOS, and a lame-as-ever update for the Mac. Still, the iPad mini looks truly awesome. I wonder if I’ll buy the 128GB version…
Source: Apple
