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13.3. Exporting and Converting PicturesThe whole point of iPhoto is to provide a centralized location for every photo in your world. That doesn't mean that they're locked there, however; it's as easy to take pictures out of iPhoto as it is to put them in. Spinning out a photo from iPhoto can be useful in situations like these:
13.3.1. Exporting by DraggingIt's amazingly easy to export photos from iPhoto: Just drag their thumbnails out of the photo viewing area and onto the desktop (or onto a folder, or into a window on the desktop), as shown in Figure 13-3. After a moment, you'll see their icons appear. The drag-and-drop method has enormous virtue in its simplicity and speed. It does not, however, grant you much flexibility. It produces JPEG files only, at the original camera resolution, with the camera's own cryptic naming scheme.
13.3.2. Exporting by Dialog BoxTo gain control over the dimensions, names, and file formats of the exported graphics, use the Export command. After selecting one picture, a group of pictures, or an album, you can invoke this command by choosing Share Export (Shift- -E). The Export Photos dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 13-4. Click the File Export tab, if necessary, and then make the following decisions:
13.3.2.1 File formatYou can use the Format pop-up menu to specify the file format of the graphics that you're about to export. Here are your options:
Whereas GIF graphics generally don't make good photos because they're limited to 256 colors, PNG is a good choice for photos (except the variation called PNG-8, which is just as limited as GIF). The resulting files are smaller than TIFF images, yet don't exhibit any compression- related quality loss, la JPEGs. Not all graphics programs and Web browsers recognize this relatively new format, but the big onesincluding iPhoto, GraphicConverter, Photoshop, and most recent browser versionsall do. 13.3.2.2 Named optioniPhoto maintains two names for each photo: its original file name , as it appears in the Finder, and its iPhoto title, the one you may have typed in while working in the program. Click either "Use filenames" or "Use titles" to specify what names iPhoto gives the icons of the graphics you're about to export. (When you export just one photo, you're offered the chance to name it whatever you like.) Your third option is "Use album name." It tells iPhoto to name your exported photos according to their album nameand sequence within that album. If an exported photo is the fourth picture in the first row of an album titled Dry Creek, iPhoto will call the exported file "Dry Creek 04.jpg." Because you determine the order within an album (by dragging), this is the only option that lets you control the numbering of the exported result. 13.3.2.3 Size optionsRemember that although digital camera graphics files may not always have enough resolution for prints, they generally have far too much resolution for displaying on the screen. As Chapter 9 makes clear, iPhoto offers to scale them down automatically whenever you email them or transfer them to the Web. If you turn on "Scale images no larger than," and then fill in some pixel dimensions in the boxes, you can oversee the same kind of shrinkage for your exported graphics. Points of reference: 1024 x 768 is exactly the right size to completely fill a standard 15-inch monitor, and 640 x 480 is a good size for emailing (it fills up about a quarter of the screen). Tip: You can also use this option to de-megapixelize a bunch of photos. Suppose they're all 8-megapixel photosmore than you'll ever need. Export them at, say, 2272 x 1704 pixels (about four megapixels) to a folder on your desktop called "4 Megas" (or something). Delete the originals from your Photo Library, if you like, and then re-import the scaled-down versions by dragging that 4 Megas folder off the desktop and into the album list. |
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