iPhoto Library Manager and iPhoto ‘09

As many of you know, today Apple announced a new update to their iLife suite, iLife '09, which includes an update to iPhoto. iPhoto '09 won't be available until the end of January, but I'd like to fill you in on the status of iPhoto Library Manager compatibility with this new version of iPhoto.I don't get special early releases of iPhoto or anything like that, so I'll be working with it for the first time once I can pick up a copy from Apple. In the past, major iPhoto updates have required updating iPhoto Library manager to provide full compatibility for all its features, and I suspect things will be the same this time around. The basic functionality of iPLM (creating new libraries and switching back and forth between them) has never broken in any previous iPhoto update, so I'm pretty sure that stuff will be the same this time around. The more advanced features, such as copying albums between libraries and merging libraries together, however, require a bit more work to make sure they work properly. For iPhoto '07 and iPhoto '06, it has taken me about two weeks each time to issue an iPLM update for the new version of iPhoto, so it will hopefully take approximately the same amount of time this time around.What I can tell you is that the update will be a free update for any existing users of iPhoto Library Manager, so if you buy a copy now, rest assured you will be able to use it with iPhoto '09 once the update is released. For those of you wondering whether to upgrade to iPhoto '09, you should still be able to switch between your libraries fine after updating, but you almost certainly won't be able to do any photo copying or merging until the iPLM update is ready. If you really need to be able to use iPLM to do photo transfers, I would recommend holding off upgrading iPhoto until the update to iPhoto Library Manager is ready.My thanks in advance for your patience, I will be posting further updates on how things are going as I learn more about what needs to be done for the update.