Edit Your Photos


One of the biggest advantages of digital photos is the freedom you have to edit them: you can crop them, change their brightness and contrast, reduce red-eye, and much more. iPhoto lets you do this without leaving the application; its Edit mode gives you a great deal of power over your pictures.

To edit any pictures, double-click the picture you want to edit, or select it and click the Edit tab.

Crop Pictures

When you take pictures, you don’t always get exactly what you want. You often get more than what you want, and with iPhoto you can crop your pictures to remove any extraneous objects. Here’s one example:

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As you can see in this illustration, the gutter of the house is in the way of this nice mountain picture. It’s easy to crop the picture, and focus on the mountain, removing the gutter as well as some extra space.

When you move your pointer over the picture, it becomes a cross. Just click and drag the cross to cover the area of the photo that you want to keep.

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You can see that the area you have surrounded is clear and the rest of the photo is dimmed. This dimmed part is removed when you click the Crop button.

Click Crop to crop the photo, and you’ll see the new picture in the iPhoto window. If you decide that you don’t like your crop, select Edit | Undo Crop Photo to return to the previous image.

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Did you know? Try Out Your Changes Before Making Them

Whenever you make any changes to a photo—whether you crop it, rotate it, change its brightness and contrast, correct red-eye, and so on—you can compare the changed version to the original version by pressing the Control key on your keyboard. Release the Control key to see the changed version again. If you don't like the changes and want to return to the previous version, select the Edit menu, and choose Undo. iPhoto always stores the previous version of a photo so you can undo the last changes you made.

You can also revert to the original version of any of your photos by selecting File | Revert to Original. This discards all changes and restores the original version of the picture.

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Rotate Pictures

When you take pictures, you sometimes turn the camera to take a picture in portrait mode. To view pictures like this correctly on screen, you need to rotate them.

Select a picture in one of your albums and click the Rotate button to turn it 90 degrees counterclockwise.

If you want to rotate the picture clockwise, hold down the OPTION key and click the Rotate button.

Adjust Brightness and Contrast

Most digital cameras don’t offer many exposure options, and this means that your pictures may turn out too light or too dark. You can’t always turn these into perfect snapshots, but by adjusting their brightness and contrast, you can improve them a bit.

Double-click a photo whose brightness and contrast you want to adjust, or click it to select it and click the Edit tab. You’ll see two sliders at the bottom of the iPhoto window: one for brightness (the top one) and one for contrast (the bottom one). Try moving these sliders in either direction, depending on whether you want to increase or decrease the brightness and contrast.

You’ll see the changes immediately as you adjust the brightness and contrast. These changes are saved instantly; if you want to return to the original, select Edit | Undo Brightness/Contrast.

Convert Photos to Black and White

While your digital photos are usually in color, you may want black and white pictures for several reasons: some pictures look better in black and white, or you may want to print them in black and white. You can change any photo to black and white with a single click.

Double-click a photo you want to change to black and white, or click it to select it and click the Edit tab. Then click the B & W button in the bottom section of the iPhoto window. This converts the photo to black and white. This may take a few seconds, and when it has finished, you’ll see the results of the change.

If you don’t like the way your photo looks in black and white, select Edit | Undo Convert to B & W.

Reduce Red-Eye

Red-eye occurs when you take pictures of people using a flash. When you’re close to your subject, the flash reflects in their eyes, showing bright red spots in their pupils. iPhoto lets you reduce red-eye, and, in many cases, correct it so it is no longer noticeable.

To reduce red-eye in a photo, double-click a photo you want to change, or click it to select it and click the Edit tab. Drag the crosshair pointer around the subject’s red eyes; try and keep the selected area as small as possible. Then click the Red-Eye button, shown at left, at the bottom of the iPhoto window.

Red-eye correction affects any red parts of the selected area of your photo. So try to make your selection as small as possible; in fact, in many cases, you’ll be better off reducing red-eye one eye at a time.

Improve Photo Colors

Depending on the light available when you took your pictures, their colors may not look ideal. iPhoto lets you improve the colors in your photos, but you can only do this on a global basis. This feature is pretty much hit-and-miss, but you’ll find it hits pretty often.

Double-click a photo you want to improve, or click it to select it and click the Edit tab. Click the Enhance button, shown at left. This affects the colors and the contrast of your photo. If you want, you can click the button several times, and check to see if the enhancement continues to improve the photo.

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How to... Work with Other Image-Editing Software

While iPhoto's editing functions are good for casual users, some people may want to work with other programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, or its light version, Photoshop Elements. If you want to use these programs to edit your photos, you can still use iPhoto to organize them. iPhoto's preferences let you set a different program to use for editing.

Select iPhoto | Preferences; in the Double-Click section, check Opens in Other, and then click Select and find your image-editing program. When you do this, you can create albums and organize photos with iPhoto, but when you want to edit your pictures, just double-click them to use your other editing program.

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How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
ISBN: 007225355X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 171

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