Burning Photos to CDs and DVDs | The Macintosh iLife 06

The phrase "burning photos" can strike terror into any photographer's heart, but fear not: I'm not talking about open flames here. If your Mac has a CD or DVD burner, you can save, or burn, photos onto CDs or DVDs. You can burn your entire photo library, an album or two, just a few photos, or even just one.

iPhoto's burning features make possible all manner of photo-transportation tasks. Back up your photo library: burn the entire library and then stash the disc in a safe place. Move photos and albums from one Mac to another: burn a selection, then insert the disc in another Mac to work with them there. Or send a few high-resolution photos to a friend who has a slow modem connection: burn the photos and pop the disc into the mail.

iPhoto doesn't just copy photos to a disc. It creates a full-fledged iPhoto library on the disc. That library contains the images' titles and keywords, any albums that you burned, and even original versions of images you've retouched or cropped. Think of an iPhoto-burned disc as a portable iPhoto library.

iPhoto's burning features are compatible with any CD or DVD burner supported by Mac OS X. If you can burn with iTunes, you can burn with iPhoto, too.

Now back away from that fire extinguisherwe've got some burning to do.

Burning Basics

Burning photos involves selecting what you want to burn, then telling iPhoto to light a match.

Select items to burn.

Use the selection techniques discussed on page 131 to specify which photos to burn. Remember that you can also select multiple albums by Shift-clicking or -clicking on each one.

You can also select multiple books, folders, and slide showsiPhoto can burn them, too. Indeed, burning a disc is the only way to move a book or saved slide show from one Mac to another.

Choose Burn Disc from the Share menu.

iPhoto asks you to insert a blank disc.

Tip

If you burn discs frequently, you can have iPhoto display a Burn button in its toolbar. From the View menu's Show in Toolbar submenu, choose Burn.

Working with Burned Discs

When you insert a disc burned in iPhoto, the disc appears in iPhoto's Source list. To see its photos, select the disc's name. Note that the disc's photos aren't in the iPhoto library on your hard drive they're in the iPhoto library on the disc.

You can display photos on a disc using the same techniques that you use to display photos stored in your iPhoto library. You can also display basic slide shows, email photos, and order prints.

However, you can't edit photos stored on a burned disc, nor can you create an iWeb photo album, a saved slide show, a book, a calendar, or a greeting card. To perform these tasks, add the photos to your photo library as described at right.

Copying Items from a Burned Disc

To modify a photo, book, or slide show that's stored on a burned disc, you must copy it to your iPhoto library.

To copy a set of photos, select them and drag them to the Library item in the Source list.

To copy an album, folder, book, or slide show from a burned disc, select it in the Source list and drag it up to the Library item.

Note

When copying a book or saved slide show to a different Mac, be sure that the destination Mac contains the same fonts or music used in the book or slide show.

Burning CDs for Windows Computers

The burning feature in iPhoto creates a disc intended to be used by iPhoto. Among other things, that means that the disc contains a convoluted folder structure that can only be deciphered by iPhoto.

If you want to burn some photos for a friend who uses Windowsor send them to a photofinisher you need to use a different procedure. You can also use these steps to burn a disc for a fellow Mac user who doesn't use iPhoto.

Step 1.

Prepare a disc. Insert a blank CD or DVD in your Mac's optical drive. The dialog box below appears.

Type a name for the CD and click OK. The blank disc's icon appears on your desktop.

Step 2.

Copy the photos. Position the iPhoto window so that you can see it and the blank disc's icon. Drag the photos that you want to burn to the icon of the blank disc.

As an alternative to dragging photos, you can also select them and use the File menu's Export command to export copies to the blank disc. This approach gives you the option of resizing the photos and changing their file names.

Step 3.

Burn. To burn the disc, drag its icon to the Burn Disc icon in your dock. (The Burn Disc icon replaces the Trash icon when you've selected a blank disc.) In the dialog box that appears next, click the Burn button.