iPhoto Needs A Save Album Function

I just had iPhoto 5.0.4 destroy 5 hours of work. Not only that there is not "save" button in iPhoto -- it doesn't even save work changes in the background as you would expect. I was creating an extensive book that was supposed to be ordered as printout. Right before finishing, iPhoto suddenly crashed -- deleting everything I had done so far. When restarting iPhoto, the book was back at the state 5 hours ago. It didn't even realise it had crashed or created any temporary or backup files (like even Microsoft stuff does these days). Quite obviously, iPhoto doesn't save periodically by itself. Even worse, it doesn't save at all! Horrible! This is it for me: Hands off iPhoto! Kind regards CK

I have found IPHOTO to crash frequently, the features/UI are sorely lacking. I have some regret about switching from acdsee.

Wow, I am surprised at all of the problems. I have a 20" iMac G5, Tiger, iPhoto 5, several gigs of photos and have had none of the problems experienced here. In fact I never used to use iPhoto, but have found the latest version to be an absolute blast to use. I have found that iLife programs each seem to have their problem version that usually gets fixed the next time around. I hated iMovie 3 (reinstalled 2 until four came out). I hated iDVD 4 and stopped using it, I have had no problems with iDVD 5. I really sympathize, but I really like iPhoto 5.

I updated to 5.0.3 on my g4 powerbook (I have 1.5 gigs of ram) and nothing's changed for me! Ever since I installed the new ilife, my iphoto has been oh-so-rainbow-slow! Scrolling down the list of albums could take an hour and it crashes on me when I try to import more than just a few photos from my camera. I called applecare and they told me that since my library was on an external hard drive (lacie 250g fireware) they wouldn't help me. Rubbish!

btw folks, the 5.0.3 iPhoto update is out as I noticed now! ;)

i noticed that with macs in general, running high load apps - especially with iphoto, there tends to be a lot more crashing on lower performance machines. i believe i had similar issues on a 1ghz pb with 512mb ram and my iphoto library at the time of about 4000 photos - roughly 4gb ish. Now i'm on a maxxed out mini (1.5ghz, 7200rpm hd, 1gb ram) and my library has grown to almost 6000 photos - 6gb ish. all of my crash related problems with osx seemed to stem from a lack of ram, and thus swap space was used alot more frequently on the hard drive. in alot of cases having symptoms of running crawlingly slow and crashing (with loss of data occasionally). it'll be interesting to hear about your specs of the machines the people with problems are having... how much ram have you got? (iphoto is a ram eating monster)

I use iPhoto extensively and over the past year have been building a lot of photo books. There is NOTHING more frustrating than seeing iPhoto crash after you just spent hours putting together a photo book to see it all died. In lieu of a SAVE button (why the $%&! won't they just put one in???), I've built frequent quit and restarts into my workflow. Every 5 - 10 minutes, I quite iPhoto and it forces a save. It's not an elegant solution, it's definitely a brute-force one... but it does work. Best of luck!

a) Messing around with 900 new photos last week I would agree to poster #35 Smart Albums feature is buggy. b) To all who lost photos: what a pity, this is my worst nightmare, which luckily has never happened to me yet. I mean, this DVD burner does the work! Backup everything! It's easy and stress free. Since when do you ACTUALLY trust IT so much guys? ;) As a laptop power user I am looking forward to a decent ext. firewire HD where to mirror my 30gb iBook. c) To #20. "As someone who just ordered his first Mac ... 1. What happened to "it just works"?" Well, the secret is: mac just got more complicated, the OS X is extremly powerful and promising platform. But what happens when things get complicated? They naturally become RELATIVELY more unstable... I actually know a very good multimedia professional who quit Mac after OS 7 or 8 because too many stuff had become configurable in OS and thus things weren't that simple and smooth any more... but that's his opinion ;) I'm perfectly happy with OS X. d) Back to iPhoto: yes, IN DEED, it needs a lot of work on it!! Is it just me or the Export feature is a bit slow? I cannot compare it to other image exporters though. TIP: to share pictures as a Quick Time file better build a Slideshow first and then Export... looks more decent and is scalable on screen without quality loss ;) and has music option.

Another problem is that the Smart albums do not work if you add to many rules for folders that have large image files.

I hope everybody is giving Apple some feedback (again) about iPhoto. ( Save album, duplicate album, import album, ... are all great ideas ) I'd love to use iPhoto but I don't like their file organization & duplication. I want more control over the archive structure, so I can get it similar to how I had it with ACDSEE (1st used that way back in the days). The crashes, as reported here and many forums, do not exactly help either.