iPhoto 2

Mac OS X includes iPhoto, an application for organizing and sharing your digital photo collection. Like iTunes, iPhoto is a kind of database application with lots of bells and whistles to help you use and manipulate the data — in this case, digital images.

What follows is a brief overview of iPhoto’s features, including basic hints of how to use it. Figure 20-24 shows the iPhoto 2 interface.

Figure 20-24: The iPhoto 2 interface.

iPhoto 2 gives you the following capabilities:

• Import images from a digital camera with a USB connection, or from the camera’s memory card reader via USB. You can set iPhoto to open automatically as soon as you connect the camera. Click the Import button to start the process.

• Import photos stored on a CD or a hard disk by simply dragging them to iPhoto’s main window.

• Organize the imported pictures via thumbnail versions which appear in iPhoto’s main window, the Library. You can keep track of thousands of images, limited only by the storage space on your drive and your RAM memory. Each “film roll” in the list on the left of the window symbolizes a separate import batch; the time and date of the import are recorded automatically and displayed in the lower-left corner of the window. You can create albums in the list on the left by clicking the plus sign button below, naming the album, and dragging to it the photos you wish it to contain. You can add new titles, alter dates, type comments, and include keywords to making searching easier. View the images at different sizes by moving the Size slider. Double-click an image to see it fill the whole main window.

• Search for the photos by a keyword, or text in a file name, title, or comment.

• Edit your photos by cropping them as shown in Figure 20-25, rotating them, removing blemishes, wrinkles, shadows, and red-eye, enhance the color, and adjust the contrast and brightness.

  
  Figure 20-25: The Edit panel of iPhoto, with an image crop in progress.

• Create a book layout from an album by choosing from one of the included layouts and customizing it, adding captions. Use this layout to order a professionally printed hardcover book via the Internet, or print the pages of the book on a color printer. The Book panel is shown in Figure 20-26.

  
  Figure 20-26: The Book panel of iPhoto, showing one of several possible layouts.

• Create a slideshow, with a musical soundtrack selected from iTunes, which plays inside of iPhoto, or can be exported as a QuickTime movie or copied to iDVD.

• Create a slideshow that appears as your desktop picture.

• Email your selected photos to family and friends via the Mail application, AOL, Entourage, or Eudora.

• Print your pictures to a color printer. You have the option to use iPhoto’s templates for full-page prints, standard-size prints, greeting cards, and others.

• Order professionally processed prints via the Internet.

• Create a Web page containing your photos via the .Mac HomePage service, and send friends and family the URL for it via email. You must be a .Mac member.

• Create a slideshow that others can download from the Internet to use as a screen saver, with the .Mac Slides Publisher application (downloadable by members only from the .Mac Web site).

• Burn CDs or DVDs containing your selected pictures, to archive or share the content. You need a CD or DVD burner to do this.