Apple is releasing a new version of iPhoto with a very cool sounding feature called "Faces and Places".  One of the key concepts behind the new "Faces" feature is that it has a facial recognition feature built into it.  This feature could be very useful when you are looking for a photo of a specific person because you would not need to search through your entire photo library or all of your events.  You could simply search for photos of "Sam Miller" and it would list all the photos of me.  I am hopeful that this feature would work similar to how the spotlight search works.  This new "Faces" feature could save us a ton of time looking for "people" photos after we do the initial training of iPhoto.

Places could be an even more useful feature for those of us in the real estate industry.  If you have an GPS enabled camera or an iPhone, "Places" has the ability to  recognize the location where the photo was taken.  Let's say I take a photo of my real estate office at 710 South Main Street, Mount Vernon, Ohio 43050 using a GPS enabled camera, that photo would include the geocode or the location of where that photo was taken.  Consider that most major mapping software utilizes this type of technology and with iPhoto 09 you will have the ability to map your photos with a pinpoint.  This could be a very useful feature especially when you are wanting to create a detailed map with an associated listing photo.

I have preordered my iLife 09 software upgrade from Apple and I am excited to give this new version of iPhoto a try.

Sam Miller