iPhoto at a Glance

Millions of photographs lead lives of loneliness, trapped in unorganized boxes where they're never seen. Their digital brethren often share the same fate, exiled to cluttered folders on a hard drive and rarely opened.

With iPhoto, you can free your photosand organize, print, and share them, too. iPhoto simplifies the entire process. You begin by importing images from a digital camera, your hard drive, a CD from a photofinisher, or other source. Then you can create albums, organizing the images in whatever order you want. You can even have iPhoto create the albums for you.

Along the way, you might also use iPhoto's editing features to make your photos look better. And you might use iPhoto's keyword features and search box to help you file and locate images.

When you've finished organizing and editing photos, share them. Order prints or make your own. Design gorgeous photo books, arranging photos on each page and adding captions. Design calendars and greeting cards. Create slide shows, complete with music from iTunes, and then watch them on the Mac's screen, burn them to DVDs, or transfer them to an iPod.

Prefer to share over the Internet? Email photos to friends and family. Have an Apple .Mac account? Create Web photo albums with iWeb (page 366). Or create automatically updating photo albums, called photocasts, that others can subscribe to.

Welcome to the Photo Liberation Society.

Beyond the Shoebox

Use the panes in the lower-left corner of the iPhoto window to view and edit information, find photos from specific dates, and assign descriptive keywords. To display a pane, click its button (circled below).

Information pane. Edit information for photos, albums, and books (page 120).

Calendar pane. Quickly view photos from specific dates, weeks, or months (page 123).

Keywords pane. Assign keywords to photos to make them easier to find and organize (pages 126129).