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iPhoto ‘09 is full of new features, but the two biggest features are the new ways of sorting your photos. They are Faces and Places. Let’s take a look.

Faces

The first new feature I wanted to try out in iPhoto ‘09 was Faces. Call me vain, I don’t care, but I want to make sure that my Mac knows who its master is. It also doesn’t hurt that I have a fair amount of pictures of myself.

In short, Faces is great, and it works better than I expected it to. Yes, for some reason it initially confused me with Tony Bennet, but that’s alright, I’ll let it slide. Honest mistake. I was really impressed by some of the pictures in which it found me. Take, for instance, this one:

I took that on my iPhone at… well, I could show you on a map now! Sorry, back to the point. This is a small picture, and my face is distorted in a circular mirror. But after less than 30 seconds of confirming my face on numerous photos, it found this one. Wow. That said, it won’t get everything. Don’t expect it to find the side of your face, otherwise you might be disappointed. Besides, didn’t your mother teach you to point your beautiful face at the camera!?

Places

The second new feature I went to is obviously Places. The next best thing to my Mac being able to identify me amidst a group of people is it to know where I’ve been. If you have an iPhone and you use it to take pictures, then you will be very happy. While it hasn’t always been a feature of the first gen iPhone, many of your photos will be already be geotagged. iPhoto automatically takes that GPS data and makes sense of it, placing it right on a map. It really does a great job of telling where you are. Now, this is a little bit of an unfair example, but check out where this pic of Cali Lewis and me was taken.

That’s right, the Moscone Convention Center. I was expecting San Francisco, or maybe the street. But again, wow.

This is powered by Google Maps, so you’re likely pretty familiar with the maps already. Zooming in will center on the last pin selected on the map. You can choose from terrain, satellite or hybrid. If you want to see the pictures from an area, just click “Show Photos” and you’ll be taken to that collection. You can also choose a location with an iTunes like hierarchical display. But why would you want to do that?

First Impression

iPhoto ‘09 doesn’t really seem that different from ‘08, but that’s because ‘08 was already a great program. This version brings some pretty interesting features, namely Faces and Places. I think it’s highly likely that these two features alone are what is driving sales on iLife ‘09. Do you need either of these features? The practical answer, probably not.

The real answer? Of course you do. Are Faces and Places highly productive and necessary features? No. But they are flashy and fun and show off the wonders and power of the Mac beautifully. They give you two more “Hey, look at what my Mac can do” features with which to shame your PC-enslaved friends.

Product [iLife ‘09]