10. Publishing a Photo Book

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9.5. Photo Sharing Across Accounts

Mac OS X is designed from the ground up to be a multiple- user operating system. You can set up Mac OS X with individual user accounts so that everyone must log in. When the Mac starts up, in other words, you have to click your account name and type a password before you can start using it.

Upon doing so, you discover the Macintosh universe just as you left it, including your icons on the desktop, Dock configuration, desktop picture, screen saver, Web browser bookmarks, email account, fonts, startup programs, and so on. This accounts feature adds both convenience (people don't have to wade through other people's stuff) and security (people can't wade through other people's stuff). As you can imagine, this feature is a big deal in schools , businesses, and families.

This feature also means that each account holder has a separate iPhoto Library folder. (Remember, it lives inside your own Home folder.) The photos you import into iPhoto are accessible only to you, not to anyone else who might log in. If you and your spouse each log into Mac OS X with a different account, you each get your own Photo Library ”and neither of you has access to the other's pictures in iPhoto.

But what if the two of you want to share the same photos? Ordinarily, you'd be stuck, since iPhoto can't make its library available to more than a single user.

There are three relatively easy solutions to this common conundrum .

9.5.1. Easiest: Share Your Library

iPhoto's sharing feature, as described on the previous pages, isn't just useful for sharing photos across the network. It's equally good at sharing photos between accounts on the same Mac.

To make this work, you have to set up two things. First, iPhoto has to be running in the account that will be sharing the pictures. Second, you have to turn on Fast User Switching. (To find this checkbox, open the Accounts panel of System Preferences. Click the Login Options button.)

Now you're ready. Log in as, say, Dad. Share some albums.

Now Mom chooses her name from the little Fast User Switching menu at the upper-right corner of the screen, thereby switching to her own account (and shoving Dad's to the background). She'll find that Dad's albums show up in her copy of iPhoto, exactly as shown in Figure 9-17. She can copy whichever pictures she likes into her own albums.


Tip: Of course, you can also share the contents of a Photo Library by burning an iPhoto CD, as described on page 337. Once you've put your Photo Library on CD using the Burn command, any account holder ”on your own Mac or any other ”can open and view it within iPhoto. Other people can copy individual photos or whole albums from your CD to their own Photo Libraries.

9.5.2. Geekiest: Move the Library

The problem with the Share Your Library method is that you wind up with copies of the pictures. In some situations, you may want to work on exactly the same set of pictures. You want, in other words, to share the same iPhoto Library.

What will trip up any normal person's attempt to share an iPhoto Library is a little thing called permissions. That term refers to the insanely complex web of invisible Unix codes that keep your files and folders out of the hands of other account holders, and vice versa.

The trick here, then, is to perform a two-step maneuver (one of which requires the assistance of a piece of free software). First, put your photo library somewhere where every account holder has access to it. Second, change its permissions from "mine" to "everyone's." Here's the drill:

  1. Quit iPhoto. In the Finder, drag your iPhoto Library folder into the Shared folder.

    Let's take that step slowly. Your iPhoto Library folder is the folder that contains all of your pictures (and all of the information associated with them, like albums, comments, and so on). It's probably sitting, at this moment, in your Home Pictures folder.

    To move it, you'll probably have to open two Finder windows side-by-side, so you can see your starting and ending points at the same time.

    Your destination is the Shared folder, which sits at this moment in your Macintosh HD Users folder. Drag that iPhoto Library folder into the Shared folder.

    You've done most of the setup. Now comes a step that each individual account holder must take individually. Suppose, for example, that you're now your mom.

  2. Log in to your account. Don't open iPhoto yet. Open iPhoto Library Manager instead.

    The gloriously useful (and gloriously free) iPhoto Library Manager program is described at length in Chapter 14. (You can download it from, for example, the "Missing CD" page at www.missingmanuals.com.)

  3. Click the Add Library button. Navigate to the Macintosh HD Users Shared folder, click the iPhoto Library folder, and click Open.

    Now the shared photo library appears in iPhoto Library Manager's list of libraries, as shown in Figure 9-18. Make sure it's highlighted.

  4. Set all three pop-up menus to "Read & Write," as shown in Figure 9-18. Also turn on "Automatically apply before launching iPhoto."

    Your mom has just made your iPhoto Library folder her own. And every time she opens iPhoto (from within iPhoto Library Manager, that is), those pesky permission bits will be set automatically to give her ownership for this editing session.

    Figure 9-18. Top: To share your Photo Library with other useraccount holders on your Mac, start by moving its folder into your Mac's Shared folder. For clarity, the iPhoto library has been named "iPhoto Library (Shared)" here.
    Bottom: Now add the shared library to the list of iPhoto libraries in the freeware program iPhoto Library Manager. (That involves clicking Add Library at the top of the window and navigating to that Shared folder.)
    Set the iPhoto Library (Shared) folder's three pop-up menus to "Read & Write, " as shown here. Finally, turn on the shared library's checkmark and then click Launch iPhoto.


  5. Turn on the iPhoto Library folder's checkbox, and then click Launch iPhoto.

    Incredibly, iPhoto opens up that iPhoto library in your account ”even if it wasn't yours to begin with. You're free to edit the photos to your heart's content. And you won't have to repeat any of these steps, either; from now on, just opening iPhoto (again, from within iPhoto Library Manager) will take you straight to the pictures.

Better yet, each family member (account holder) can set things up the same way for themselves , by repeating steps 2 through 5. (Only one person can actually have the library open for editing at a time, though.)

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iPhoto 5. The Missing Manual
iPhoto 5. The Missing Manual
ISBN: 596100345
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 179

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