Sharing Photos on a Network

If you have more than one Mac on a network, you can share each Mac's photo library and make it accessible to the other Macs on the network.

Network photo sharing leads to all kinds of possibilities. Keep your "master" photo library on one Mac, and then access it from other Macs when you need to no need to copy the library from one Mac to another and worry about which library is the most current.

Don't like centralization? Embrace anarchy: let everyone in the family have his or her own photo library, and then use sharing to make the libraries available to others.

Have an AirPort-equipped laptop Mac? Sit on the sofa (or at poolside) and show your photos to friends and family. Or take your laptop to their house and browse their libraries. Network sharing, a laptop Mac, and AirPort form the ultimate portable slide projector.

You can choose to share an entire photo library or only some albums. And you can require a password to keep your kids (or your parents) out of your library.

Activating Sharing

To share your photo library with other Macs on a network, choose Preferences from the iPhoto menu, then click the Sharing button.

Accessing Shared Photos

To access shared photos, choose Preferences from the iPhoto menu, click the Sharing button, and be sure the Look for Shared Photos box is checked. iPhoto scans your network and, if it finds any shared photo libraries, adds their names to the Source list.

To view a shared library, click its name in the Source list.

Working with Shared Photos

No Keywords or Info

Unfortunately, iPhoto ignores any keywords, titles, or comments that you may have assigned to the photos in a shared library, even if you copy those photos to your local photo library.

As a result, you can't use the Search box, smart albums, or keyword searches to find photos in a shared library.

If you want to copy some photos to your local library and preserve this information, burn the photos to a CD or DVD using the techniques described on page 202. Then, insert the CD in your Mac and copy the photos to your library.

Slide Show Music

You can view a slide show of a shared album, but if the shared album has music assigned to it, you won't hear that music. Instead, iPhoto plays its default music, unless you've assigned a different song to your library.

But here's an interesting twist: you can temporarily assign a song or playlist from your local iTunes library to a shared album. Just use the techniques described on pages 160 and 161.

When you assign local music to a shared album, iPhoto doesn't save your assignment. If you disconnect from the shared album and then reconnect, it's back to whatever your default song happens to be.

Just Looking

You can view and print shared photos. You can also email them, order prints, and display a basic slide show. But you can't edit shared photos, nor can you send them to iWeb or access them from the photo browsers in the other iLife programs.

To perform these tasks, copy the shared photos you want to your local iPhoto library: select the photos, then drag them to the Library item in the Source list or to an album.

And what about adding shared photos to saved slide shows, calendars, cards, or books? You can do it: if you drag a photo to one of these items in your Source list, iPhoto imports the photo, adds it to your local library, and then adds it to the item.

Folders and Shared Libraries

If you store albums in folders, as I recommend on page 133, you'll be in for an unpleasant surprise when you connect to your library from a different Mac. iPhoto doesn't display the individual albums within a folder. Instead, it simply displays the name of the folder containing the albums. If you select the folder's name, you'll see the photos in all of the albums contained in that folder.

The unfortunate moral: when you want to be able to connect to a specific album from a different Mac, don't store that album in a folder.