TUAW Tip: iPhoto '08 does selective importing

Praise the heavens, do a little dance and buy Apple's iLife engineers a beer - iPhoto '08 finally solves a long-standing annoyance by allowing selective importing. In previous versions, iPhoto simply offered a big fat 'Import' button, giving you no choice in which images to bring over from your digital camera or mobile phone. Convincing me to agree with folks who say iPhoto is finally learning a few tricks from its older bigger brother Aperture, I plugged in my iPhone today to perform my first import into the new iPhoto, and I caught these two options: Import Selected and 'Hide photos already imported.' The new import dialog itself has been updated, presenting thumbnails of all the photos on the device you plugged in. This new Import Selected option allows you to manually select as many or as few images as you like (either by holding the command key to select individual photos or holding shift to select a range) and only import those. The 'Hide photos already imported' option, circled at the bottom left of the iPhoto window (above), is really handy for those who often import pictures off devices like mobile phones but would prefer to permanently keep at least some of them on the device for good posture. Toggling that will hide and review all the photos you've already imported, allowing you to keep those photos out of your way or reveal them to ensure your libraries are still in sync.

This is a great new feature that should bring smiles to both heavy and casual photo importers alike. I think I speak on behalf of a lot of iPhoto users when I say: thank you Apple.