iLife ‘09 Ships Tuesday

Apple has reworked its popular software suite for 2009, including major updates to iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand.

Apple’s popular iLife suite of standard applications for every Mac is getting a facelift. The company announced on Monday that iLife ’09, which debuted at this year’s Macworld, will be available for purchase Tuesday, with major updates to iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand.

Among the biggest chances, iPhoto will get a host of new tools for organizing photos in more creative ways than filenames and folders. Using face detection, recognition and GPS geotagging, users will be able to sort their shots based on who appears in them, or if they have GPS data embedded, based on where they were taken. iMovie will also get an update, with a new Precision Editor, video stabilization, advanced drag and drop, and animated travel maps. Meanwhile, GarageBand will introduce basic lessons for learning to play guitar or piano from scratch, new guitar features that will emulate famous amps and effects, and GarageBand Jam, which lets you view, tweak and rearrange a full band full of instruments as you play along. Artist Lessons will even offers users the chance to learn songs from the artists that made them famous, like video lessons from Sting illustrating how to play Roxanne.

The full iLife ‘09 suite includes iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD. All new Macs from the factory will come with iLife ’09 preinstalled, but existing users can also pick up the entire suite as a $79 upgrade. Apple will sell individual Artist Lessons from the iTunes store for $5 apiece.