Dear iPhoto…

I want to like you. I want to use you. I really do. But I just don't understand you. Maybe it's because you're too easy, and after decades of manually sorting and renaming my photos into folders that are just so, I simply can't wrap my head around that simplicity.

Yeah, I get that that you're basically just one big database, and that anything I do inside you leaves my original images "on the outside" untouched. But if I want to use an altered photo from the database I have to export it, essentially creating a duplicate image. WTF? Other than from a safety standpoint of leaving all your original items untouched, what's the point? For me it's a bunch of extra steps that provides no benefit whatsoever.

I already have everything anal-retentively sorted and named inside [the admittedly huge steaming pile of shit that is] Adobe's Bridge, and all my editing is done either with Photoshop or a quick-n-dirty editor called Flare, so even your photo manipulation facilities leave me unmoved.  And even if I did use them, we're back to the whole having-to-export thing.

My workflow is basically when I snag a new image off the internet it first goes into a "Downloads" folder to later get renamed and shuttled off to its respective folder. Importing photos from my camera works basically the same way. In that case, I used to have folders by year, with individual dated subfolders for each "event" as you like to call them, where I'd put the images, but I blew away that system—which became too anal even for me—a while back and now just dump everything into yearly folders. I figure since everything is time stamped already,  I don't really need to break things down any further.

I suppose that if I'd started my photographic career off with you initially and had never been exposed to ThumbsPlus (that I curse on a daily basis for still not having a Mac version available) or Photoshop, we'd be having a marvelous love affair right now, but importing 80,000+ images (and no, that's not all porn!) after the fact and then basically recreating the folder structure I already have and use seems a huge waste of time.

I do understand a few of your benefits, most notably the ability to create virtual folders where disparate images can be grouped. I like being able to create a "Wallpaper" folder, and throw images from a dozen different albums into it. I find that useful. You're also great for making Photo Books. But other than that, I just don't see how you can fit into my workflow without doubling the number of steps I need to perform to get from Point A to Point B, and ain't nobody got time for that!