This week Apple rolled out iLife 11, the new upgrade to the user-friendly multimedia software suite. iLife 11 incorporates some new features that make the software more powerful than its predecessor set.
iPhoto brings home the new influence of full-screen apps on the Mac OS X front, incorporating the elements from iOS. The full-screen view goes more in-depth than the previous experience adding new functionalities and features. Along with that, Apple also expanded on some features, more precisely, iPhotos social network integration. Facebook integration now includes updates and comments made on the photos posted on the users account. The app also includes an more elegant, simplistic, integrated method for emailing photos to recipients. You can now set up an email message with the photos cropped according into a variety of templets. Custom letterpress options are also now available in iPhoto. Letterpress is the process of printing from a hard, raised image under pressure, using a thick and consistent ink. Being that the theme of the event was creating a cycle between the iPhone/iPod, ipad and Mac, the new iPhoto also introduces a new iBooks-like shelf to hold all of your album creations.
iMovie receive the same treatment getting a bunch if new nifty features that make the software just easy and fun to use. To accompany the precision video editing of iMovie ’09, iMovie ’11 bring audio editing. From sound effects to music, you can manipulate the audio clip with a variety of sound effects in the iMovie toolbox. To make it easier to alter sound, iMovie presents content as color coded wavelengths so its easy to distinguish how much effect is being added. It also allows you to fade sound with a fade edge thats similar to the one in GarageBand. One-Step Effects enables users to apply many visual effects, such as slow motion and freeze frame, to their creations within one single function. Apple has made it simple as picking where you want the effect to take place, dragging where you want to the content to stop and then clicking the corresponding One-Step Effect button. The results are…honestly…very professional (much like you would expect from Apple). Taking a move from the iPhoto playbook, iMovie now incorporates a People Finder. People Finder allows you to find content of a certain person that you would like to use and add them in to your project instead of manually combing through material. Not only can you use it for people, but Apple has extended it to certain aspects of a project such as spotlighting all the close ups, wide angle, medium shots and group content, making it quick and easy for you drop content into place, which is ideal for the new Movie Trailer feature. Movie Trailers allows users to create professional looking, ready-made movie trailers, as the name of the feature implies. The feature entails custom made soundtracks composed by a famous British orchestra. It also includes recognizable trailer logos that users can implement into their creations. Social integration for Facebook, CNN iReport and Vimeo has been added to the already present YouTube and MobileMe selections.
GarageBand has received updates to it’s renditioning as well. To improve rhythm and feel to your compositions, Apple has added two new features: Flex Time and Groove Matching. These fix the timing and the groove of the music a user creates and makes them precisely even, resulting in a great end product. Cupertino also added additional amps and stomp box effects for your creation tool kit. With now an arsenal of 12, you can mix these sounds with the various stomp boxes to create numerous ways to create music. Apple didn’t forget about the beginners either. They add a “How Did I Play?” feature along with new lessons for starting piano and guitar players, 22 genre based lessons bringing the total lessons to 40. How Did I Play tests your skills in the lessons you have studied and helps hone your skill by listening, recording and monitoring your performance with a performance meter, colored notes and a progress bar, perfecting your skills.
The new iLife is definitely a step above from the one of yesteryear. Apple has went the mile and added tons of features that really put high-grade professionalism in anyone’s project. iLife is available now for $49.99, and if you have just bought a Mac, you can grab it up for seven bucks. Definitely a well polished software suite. One of the many reasons why people are attracted to the Mac.
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