iPhoto Alternatives??

August 18, 2005 6:54 PM

Is there alternative photo organizer software for OS X? iPhoto is driving me nuts. I'm not interested in anything that costs money -- just a reliable free download that will organize and display photos. Thanks.
posted by crapples to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

What's driving you nuts? Maybe it's something that can be fixed? Or is it just the UI in general?

I had an iPhoto alternative bookmarked a while back. Lemme go see if I can find it for you.
posted by socratic at 7:10 PM on August 18, 2005

Time again to recommend Picassa. See also this thread, which quite a few suggestions for free photo software.
posted by LarryC at 7:11 PM on August 18, 2005

Picasa != OS X compatible.
posted by socratic at 7:13 PM on August 18, 2005

Try Kodak EasyShare. I have just switched back to iPhoto from it, though, because EasyShare doesn't handle RAW images.
posted by kindall at 7:20 PM on August 18, 2005

(It's spelled Picasa, by the way.)
posted by Jairus at 7:26 PM on August 18, 2005

I hated iPhoto too until I fixed some crap with it. I got the newest version that came with iLife, and then I ran the iPhoto Diet software to keep it from completely taking over my hard drive. iPhoto Librarian can allow you to have separate photo libraries [like one an external drive]. If you really truly still can't stand iPhoto, this thread has some replacement suggestions though I don't know if any are free.
posted by jessamyn at 7:32 PM on August 18, 2005 [2 favorites]

Personally, I found that iphoto couldn't handle the number of photos I had (15000+). It just got bogged down. I'd love to hear tell that this has been fixed, but in the meantime, I paid for, and love iviewmedia pro. It handles all of my photos, in folders, easily browsable, recognizes when I insert my flash card (wink), and know's when my external storage is plugged in.
The only thing it doesn't do (that canon's imagebrowser used to, at the severe cost of time) is allow me to move entire folders from here to there. Only their contents.

I know I'm straying from your desire to not pay for software, but given that we'll all have a gazillion photos within the next few years, I'm sad that many of the free alternatives I researched seemed woefully inadequate to take on large photo libraries.

But good luck!
posted by asavage at 8:29 PM on August 18, 2005

Without knowing exactly what you're after, I can only recommend the various programs that I've used. (I, too, loathe iPhoto. It's awful.)

Take a look at Lightbox, Magic Lantern, and/or Graphic Converter. One or more of those may be of use. Or not.
posted by jdroth at 11:24 PM on August 18, 2005 [1 favorite]

second the graphicconverter suggestion. it's my favorite solution. i think it costs $30 or so, but you can use it for free indefinitely if you're willing to put with a 30 second delay at startup.
posted by Silky Slim at 12:58 AM on August 19, 2005

Response by poster: I love Picassa, but it won't work on my Mac. I'll check out graphicconverter and some of the others.

Some asked what my problem was with iphoto: I have constant problems with exporting photos (error: not enough disc space). This one drives me crazy. Then, last week it got stuck indefinitely on "loading photos" -- When i recovered my photos (finally, after much work because of the insane way that the photos are organized on the hard drive) all of the "photo taken on" dates were gone. I had backups of most of them, but not all.

I don't know - I have just had nothing but problems with it.

Thanks a lot for all of the suggestions!
posted by crapples at 5:54 AM on August 19, 2005

I'll second asavage's suggestion of iView MediaPro. Yes, it's not cheap, but it's a fantastic piece of software. Classify & organize your photos in just about any way imaginable. It was a pain in the wallet to buy, but it's defintely been worth it.
posted by misterioso at 6:51 AM on August 19, 2005

iView MediaPro is incredible. Totally worth every penny.

If you don't need RAW support, though, and you're planning to just use the program for digital photos and maybe movies, then iView Media might work for you - it's a slightly less feature-full version of iView MediaPro, and it's only $50.

But yeah, iView MediaPro is just great. What I do is I use iPhoto just to pull photos from my camera so that they end up in the iPhoto library. That way applications that access iPhoto libraries can still see my photos.

I then do an import into my iView MediaPro photo database. iVM just points to the original files - it doesn't actually make copies of the images so you don't end up with multiple versions all over the place. So you get the best of both worlds.
posted by theNonsuch at 6:27 PM on August 19, 2005