Here is the Apple site to see what is different in iPhoto09:
http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/
I have mainly been exploring the iMovie part of iLife for a current project. I can see from the numbers that if you do not already have Leopard this would be a much more costly upgrade.
Amy: I do use Epson printers, a R2400 and a R200. Both have drivers on the Epson site and both work fine with Leopard. I don't know about the R1800 but I believe Cassie has that and I am pretty sure she has Leopard.
There are new editing tools, new options for slide shows and the ability to upload strait to Flickr. But mainly every since I learned:
a. I can play in iPhoto without importing the actual files,
b. that I can have several libraries and
c. that having a record of photos and videos in iPhoto makes it so easy to create slide shows and DVDs
I am more positive about it.
I WILL SAY THAT I NEVER USE iPhoto to import into my file system. I use either the basic ImageCapture function on the MAC (when I have video mixed in from my G9 camera) or LR2 when uploading from my Rebel. I learned the hard way that video imported with iPhoto not transfer well.
Hope this helps. Be your own judge about whether iLife is worth the price of upgrading to Leopard. Seems steep to me.