Getting Familiar with iPhoto

iPhoto is organized much like iTunes. On the left side of the screen are the sourcesin this case, a Photo Library and a bunch of albums. An album is the equivalent of an iTunes playlist: a collection you create, a subset of your Library that organizes and simplifies viewing.

NOTE

Like iTunes, iPhoto has a few specialized collectionsin this case albumsthat are created automatically, including Last Roll and Last 12 Months.

iPhoto and iTunes are also similar in the way they work. You import content (from a CD in iTunes; from a camera in iPhoto), which is copied onto your hard disk and organized in your Library. Both programs have Smart Albums/Playlists; both let you make your own albums/playlists by dragging songs/photos from the Library. Both allow you to share songs/photos with other Mac users in your local network (around your office or home perhaps) with Apple's Rendezvous networks. (In short, if you can print to the same printer, you can probably share photos and music.) Both essentially organize your digital content; in addition to letting you easily burn CDs (from iTunes) and print photos (from iPhoto), both programs show up in other iLife applications. For instance, in iMovie and iDVD, you can select content from your Library or albums/playlists to make those applications more dynamic so that your movies are not just cut video, but video integrated with stills, moving stills, live sound, and recorded music.

If you understand the basics of iTunes, you already know much of what you need to know about iPhoto.

Here's the empty iPhoto window. If you weren't looking closely, you could easily mistake it for iTunes.

Your Mac is set up to open iPhoto, if it's not already open, and be prepared to import photos when you plug a digital camera into your computer.