Photocasting Tips


Size Concerns

On the previous pages, I mentioned that iPhoto lets you choose a size for the photos in a photocast. The smallest size is ideal if you or your subscribers are burdened with slow, dial-up Internet connections, but the larger sizes give your subscribers more creative options.

For example, iPhoto lets you order prints of the photos in a photocast album as well as add those photos to calendars or greeting cards. But for photocasts whose images are published in the smallest size, the photos lack sufficient resolution for any prints larger than wallet-sized. (For more details on resolution at it relates to print size, see page 180.) And if you try to add small photos to a calendar, book, or greeting card, you may see the dreaded warning triangle discussed on pages 190 and 196.

The size you choose when you publish a photocast should be based not only on Internet connection speeds, but also on how you see the photocast being used. Do you want its subscribers to be able to print photos or zoom in dramatically in slide shows? If so, plan to publish larger sizes.

And in case you're curious, at the Small size, a photo's longest dimension is 640 pixels. At the Medium size, it's 1280 pixels. At the Large size, it's 1920 pixels.

Get the Address of that Photocast

Doing so displays the Announce Photocast dialog box that appeared when you originally created the photocast. Click its Announce Photocast button, and you can send an announcement email on its way.

Elsewhere in iLife

I've already mentioned that you can do things with the photos you've subscribed toorder prints, make greeting cards and slide shows, and so on.

Your creative options don't stop in iPhoto. Photocast albums to which you've subscribed appear in the other iLife programs, too. That means you can add them to iMovie HD projects, iDVD slide shows, GarageBand podcasts, and iWeb pages.

Did you subscribe to a family member's vacation photocast? Surprise her by creating an iMovie HD montage of the photos, complete with Ken Burns moves. Or create an iDVD slide show with background music.

If the creator of the photocast provided only small versions of the photos, the degree to which you can zoom in using the Ken Burns effect may be limited. But give it a try.

Flickr Meets iPhoto

When it comes to the Flickr photo sharing site (described on page 173), it's no secret that I'm a fan. Okay, I'm a rabid, obsessed zealot. One of the many things I love about Flickr is that the site provides RSS feeds for just about everything: the photos in someone's photostream, the photos in a group pool, and much more.

Some clever programmers have created Web sites that let you turn a Flickr RSS feed into a format compatible with iPhoto. Thus, you can keep an eye on the photos that specific Flickr members have posted, or on the photos in a specific group. And as I've mentioned elsewhere, this lets you do fun things with those photos, such as create slide shows.

Get links to photocasting utilities and resources. www.macilife.com/iphoto


You'll find links for these services on my Web site's iPhoto resources page: www.macilife.com/iphoto.

Other Ways to View Photocasts

I've already mentioned that you can subscribe to and view photocasts using most RSS newsreaders, such as Ranchero Software's NetNewsWire. There are also programs designed for photocasts. If you don't want or need the complexity of a full-blown newsreader, check out Photocast Viewer (www.photocastviewer.com), which is free and available for Macs and Windows alike.

Another free program for the Windows users in your life is dmAlbums. Both Photocast Viewer and dmAlbums can also subscribe to RSS feeds from Flickr.

You can also subscribe to photocasts using Safari RSS, the version of Apple's Safari Web browser included with Mac OS X Tiger. But there's trick to it. If you've installed iPhoto 6 on the Mac, pasting the photocast's Internet address causes the Mac to switch to iPhotoexactly what you don't want.

The trick? Paste the photocast's address into Safari RSS's address bar, then edit the beginning of the URL to read web.mac.com instead of photocast.mac.com. Then press Return, and Safari RSS loads the photos in the photocast.

Adding to the Library

You can do a lot with the photos in a photocast, but you can't edit them. If you want to edit a photocast photo, you need to add it to your iPhoto library first.

To add a photocast photo to your library, you might think that you can simply drag the photo to the Library item in the Source list. Good thinkingbut it doesn't work.

Instead, you must drag the photo to any existing itemalbum, book, slide show, calendar, or greeting cardin your Source list. Doing so adds the photo to your library and to the item to which you dragged it.

Another way to add photocast photos to your library is to delete the photocast album to which you've subscribed. When you delete a photocast album to which you've subscribed, iPhoto reminds you that its photos aren't actually in your library and gives you the opportunity to add them.

Customizing the Photocast Announcement Email

The photocast-announcement email that iPhoto creates contains useful information, but maybe you'd like to augment it with some of your own. You can edit the email every time, but that's a lot of work.

My colleague Rob Griffiths has published a customizing tip for replacing the stock iPhoto photocast announcement text with some verbiage of your own. I've linked to Rob's handy tip on my site's iPhoto reference page, www.macilife.com/iphoto.

Discontinuing a Photocast

Don't want to make an album available as a photocast anymore? Select the album in the Source list and choose Photocast from the Share menu. In the dialog box that appears, click Stop Publishing.

Note

When you discontinue a photocast, you aren't deleting its photos from your iPhoto library. Subscribers to the photocast will still be able to see the photos that they loaded before you discontinued the photocast. But if subscribers try to update the photocast to see if any new photos have arrived, they'll see an error message.




The Macintosh iLife '06
The Macintosh iLife 06
ISBN: 0321426541
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 229
Authors: Jim Heid

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