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iPhoto already has handy keyboard shortcuts for rating pictures, so why did we make Photon
Star?
Two reasons: It's more fun to rate with a remote, and it's more helpful to rate in stages.
With Photon Star's "ten foot user interface", you can sit comfortably and enjoy your photos.
I've used my remote to select an album from my iPhoto library that still needed ratings.
(Just like in Front Row, I could navigate with my keyboard instead.) Anyway... now I'm
in the first stage. I'm deciding which photos are better than the 1-star rating level shown
in the bottom left. There's more photos here than I have time to rate, so I'm going to
press the menu button to continue with just the photos I've seen. From this confirmation
page I could go back to make changes, but I've let Photon Star rate the 1-star photos
and it's moved the rest on to stage two.
Instead of having to make a five-way decision for each photo, I can get into a groove within
a rating level: thumbs up, thumbs up, thumbs down... I've got a picture in my mind of the
quality I expect for 2-stars and I'm simply choosing against that. Rating in stages really
helps me do this.
I've confirmed the second stage, so the photos I had moved down get rated with 2 stars and
I'm now making the same simple decision with the photos I moved up into this stage 3: What
photos do I promote to the next rating level?
I like to adjust the best photos to 5-stars later, in iPhoto, so I'm going to exit rating
instead of stage 4. Back in iPhoto, I'll be able to find the high quality pictures easily
now with a smart album or search. By rating my whole library like this, I can enjoy my
best photos more.