6.2. One-Click Fixups: The Enhance Button

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6.1. Editing in iPhoto

You can't paint in additional elements, mask out unwanted backgrounds, or apply 50 different special effects filters in iPhoto, as you can with editing programs like Photoshop and GraphicConverter. Nonetheless, iPhoto is designed to handle basic photo fix-up tasks in two categories: one-click fixes and advanced fine-tuning.

6.1.1. One-Click Fixes

These are the original iPhoto editing tools, the ones that were present in the previous version and are nearly idiot-proof:

  • Enhance. With one click, this tool endeavors to make photos look more vibrant by tweaking the brightness and contrast settings and adjusting the saturation to compensate for washed-out or oversaturated colors.

  • Cropping. The cropping tool lets you cut away the outer portions of a photo to improve its composition or to make it the right size for a printout or Web page.

  • Retouch. This little brush lets you paint out minor imperfections like blemishes, freckles, and scratches.

  • Red-Eye. This little filter gets rid of a very common photo glitchthose shining red dots that sometimes appear in a person's eyes as the result of flash photography. Who wants to look like a werewolf if it's not necessary?

  • Black & White. Turns your color photos into moody black-and-white art shots.

  • Sepia. Makes new photos look faded and brownish, for that old-time daguerreotype look.

6.1.2. Advanced Fine-Tuning

iPhoto 5 introduces a new floating panel for power users who used to go galloping off to Photoshop every time they needed greater control over photo editing. It includes sliders for these parameters:

  • Brightness/Contrast. These sliders can tone down bright, overexposed images or lighten up those that look too dark and shadowy. While the Enhance button takes an all-or-nothing approach to fixing a photo, the Brightness and Contrast controls let you make tiny adjustments to the settings.

  • Saturation, Temperature, Tint. These sliders affect the overall color of a picture: its vividness, warmth, and color cast.

  • Sharpness. There's no rescuing a completely out-of-focus shot. But this slider can take a photo a few percentage points closer to sharp, orin situations where a traditional photographer might smear a little Vaseline on the lensblur the picture softly to hide your subject's wrinkles and flaws.

  • Straighten. Here's a really fun new control. In one quick twitch of the mouse, you can rotate a crooked shot slightly so that it appears square with the horizon.

  • Exposure. Like magic, this slider lets you fix most over- and underexposed shots, allowing you to crank up the flash or bring details out of shadow.

  • Levels. Using these sophisticated controls, you can compress or expand the lights and darks across a photo's spectruma function that will make a lot more sense when you try it.

For anything beyond these touch-up tasks, you need to manipulate your photos in a more powerful editing programwhich you can easily do within iPhoto, as explained later in this chapter.

6.1.3. Using the Editing Tools

All iPhoto editing is performed in a special editing mode, in which the photo appears at nearly full-screen size, and tool icons appear along the bottom (Figure 6-1). You enter Edit mode either by double-clicking a photo's thumbnail (the quick way) or by highlighting the thumbnail and then clicking the Edit icon at the bottom of the screen (the long way).

Figure 6-1. iPhoto's editing tools appear in the toolbar when you open a photo for editing. A >> symbol at the right end of the toolbar (as shown here) means that the window is too narrow to display all the tools. Just drag the window wider to show all tools, or click the double-arrow to access the tools via a pop-up menu.


As you may recall, however, iPhoto can take you to either of two alternate Edit worlds . First, there's the one where the photo appears right in the iPhoto window. Second, there's the one where the photo opens up in a separate window of its own.

A reminder: You specify which arrangement you prefer in the iPhoto Preferences dialog box. Then again, you can decide on an individual basis, too. To do so, Control-click a thumbnail or a photo in its own window, then from the shortcut menu, choose "Edit or "Edit in separate window,"depending on your preference. (If you've bought a two-button mouse for your Mac, just right-click instead.)

If you've opted to open the photo within iPhoto's window, by the way, you'll see a parade of other photo thumbnails at the top of the window. Feel free to edit any other photo by clicking its little postage -stamp icon up there (or by clicking the big Previous/ Next arrows at the bottom of the window).

Or, if you'd rather hide the thumbnail browser to reclaim the space it's using, choose View Thumbnails (Option- -T) so that the checkmark disappears.


Note: If you're used to the way previous versions of iPhoto handled photo editing, here are three important differences. First, the editing tools always appear in the same place (the bottom of the window), regardless of whether you're editing a picture right in the iPhoto or in its own separate window. Second, you can no longer edit the toolbar; the same set of tools always appears in the same order.Finally, Apple eliminated the mode buttons in iPhoto 5 (Organize, Share, Edit, and so on). As a result, when you're finished editing a photo, either click the Done button (or close the window, if you're editing in a separate window) to return to the normal thumbnails view, or switch to another photo using the arrow buttons or the thumbnail browser at top.

6.1.4. Three Ways to Zoom

Before you get deeply immersed in the editing process, it's well worth knowing how to zoom and scroll around, since chances are you'll be doing quite a bit of it.

If you've opened a photo into its own window, one way to zoom is to change the size of the window itself. Enlarge the window to zoom in; shrink it to zoom out.

6.1.4.1 iPhoto zooming tricks

But you can make a window only so big by dragging its corner before you run out of screen. Therefore, you need a way to magnify the photo independently of its window sizeand two new iPhoto 5 features let you do just that.

  • The Size pop-up menu. It's on iPhoto's Edit toolbar, and it may be hidden. If you don't see it, make sure you've opened a photo in its own window, and then click the >> button in the lower-right corner of the window (Figure 6-1). You'll find the Size submenu, complete with larger-than-life settings like 150% and 200%.

  • Number keys. You can press the number 1 key on your keyboard to zoom in so far that you're viewing every single pixel (colored dot) in the photo. That's often bigger than your screen, so you're now viewing only a portion of the wholebut it's great for detail work.

You can also type 2, which doubles the previous magnification level. Use this ultrazoom for editing individual dead skin cells on someone's face.

And when you've had quite enough of super-zooming, tap your zero (0) key to zoom out again so the whole photo fits in the window. (Zooming in, by the way, disables iPhoto's zoom-by-changing-the-window-size feature. Tapping the 0 key lets you once again zoom in or out by dragging the window's corner.)

6.1.4.2 iPhoto scrolling tricks

Once you've zoomed in, you can scroll the photo in any direction by pressing the Space bar as you drag the mouse. That's more direct than fussing with two independent scroll bars.

Better yet: If you've equipped your Mac with a mouse that has a scroll wheel on the top, you can scroll images up and down while zoomed in on them by turning that wheel. To scroll the zoomed area horizontally, press Shift while turning.


Note: In previous versions of iPhoto 5, you could zoom into a specific portion of a photo by first dragging out a rectangle with the mouse. Then, when you used any of the standard zooming tools, iPhoto would position your target in the center. This technique doesn't work in iPhoto5, however. Apple probably figured that the two scrolling tricks described above were more useful.

6.1.5. The "Before and After" Keystroke

After making any kind of edit, it's incredibly useful to compare the Before and After versions of your photo. So useful, in fact, that Apple has dedicated one whole key to that function: the Control key at the lower corner of your keyboard.

Hold it down to see your unenhanced "before" photo; release it to see the "after" image.

By pressing and releasing the Control key, you can toggle between the two versions of the photo to assess the results of the enhancement.

6.1.6. Backing Out

As long as you remain in Edit mode, you can back out of your changes no matter how many of them you've made. For example, if you've adjusted the Brightness and Contrast sliders, you can remove those changes using the Edit Undo Brightness/ Contrast command ( -Z).

The only catch is that you must back out of the changes one at a time. In other words, if you rotate a photo, then crop it, then change its contrast, you must use the Undo command three timesfirst to undo the contrast change, then to un-crop, and finally, to un-rotate.

But once you leave Edit modeeither by closing the photo's window or by clicking the Done buttonyou lose the ability to undo your edits. At this point, the only way to restore your photo is to choose Photos Revert to Original, which removes all the edits youve made to the photo since importing it.


Tip: If you prefer to edit your photos in the main iPhoto window (rather than in a separate window), you'll be tempted by the presence of a big fat Done button that you can click when you're finished editing. But if you plan to edit another photo, you can save yourself a click by not clicking on the Done button, and clicking instead on the thumbnail (at the top of the editing window). iPhoto saves the changes to your existing image, then opens the next one for you.
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iPhoto 5. The Missing Manual
iPhoto 5. The Missing Manual
ISBN: 596100345
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 179

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