The MacAddict Guide to iPhoto

Date: Oct 22, 2004

Sample Chapter is provided courtesy of Que.

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Simply put, iPhoto keeps track of your digital images. With a capacity of 25,000 photos, there's plenty of room for the snapshots you scanned in from the old family albums, the digital pictures you take now, and the images your cousins send in email. The cool part—or one of them—is that unlike the stack of beat-up albums, or the shoebox in your mom's dresser drawer, iPhoto can preserve and enhance your photos, and help you keep them in easy reach. Oh yeah, and you can create photo books, slideshows, web pages, CDs or DVDs, and even print groups of photos the old-fashioned way—on paper!

Organizing photos is just great, but discovering that one you have imported from a camera looks like junk can be more frustrating than trying to figure out who the blurry baby on Aunt Millie's lap might be. Although iPhoto can't fix the blurriness, it can retouch your images, eliminate red eye, and perform other groovy editing tricks. More hands-on operations, such as cropping and resizing, also get the iPhoto treatment. iPhoto is the Swiss Army knife of image management.

In this chapter, we'll show you how to import photos, how to label and organize them, and how to obliterate photographic errors with iPhoto's editing tools. With your images catalogued in iPhoto, the next step is to share 'em. This chapter gives you tips on printing, making slideshows, and uploading your masterpieces to .Mac so that web visitors can enjoy them.

The Many Moods of iPhoto

Everything you can do with an image in iPhoto occurs in one of its four views: Import, Manage, Edit, or Book.

Meet iPhoto

Everything you need to work with photos is easily accessible from the iPhoto window, and the steps to completing a photo project are mirrored by the program's four views, conveniently represented by buttons that are located near the bottom of the window. We'll work through the four views of iPhoto in this chapter, with stops along the way to describe features that don't quite fit into any of them. The four iPhoto views are:

• Import. Bring images into iPhoto from a digital camera, or from files on your Mac.

• Organize. Move your photos into albums, view them as slideshows, export, print, or place them on the Web.

• Edit. Crop and enhance photos to make them look their best.

• Book. Design a printable hardcover photo book.

Like iTunes, iPhoto uses a library to organize the items you import into the program. Once a photo is part of the library, it can be added to an album, and from there it can be printed, viewed as part of a slideshow, or exported and used in a photo book. iPhoto uses the album concept to organize photos by date—both the date you took the picture, if that is known, and the date it was imported. When you click on the triangle to expand the library, folders correspond to each year (see Figure 3.1). The Last 12 Months album displays the oldest images first. Last Roll contains the most recently imported photos, whether from a digital camera or from files. By the way, if you're worried that the date associated with a photo is wrong, fear not. You can change it, as we will learn shortly.

Figure 3.1 iPhoto's Source pane gives you several ways to view a subset of your photos.

Importing Photos

iPhoto accepts images in several ways: you can import them from your camera or card reader, use the Import command to bring in a folder or file, or drag images into the iPhoto window.

About Image Formats

iPhoto supports any image file that is supported by the QuickTime multimedia format. That includes popular formats such as JPEG, GIF, TIFF, Photoshop, PICT, MacPaint, PNG, BMP, Targa, and a few others. Some iPhoto operations change the formats of exported files. For example, saving an album into a web-based gallery converts all images in the album to JPEG, the Web's standard photo format.

Importing from a Digital Camera

Mac OS X has built-in support for digital cameras. With a camera connected to your Mac's USB port, you can use iPhoto to import photos stored on its memory card. Connect the camera to a USB port on your Mac and set the camera to play back photos. By default, plugging the camera into the Mac opens iPhoto, and you'll see the name and icon for the camera in the lower-left corner of the iPhoto window (see Figure 3.2). You can use the Image Capture application to tell the OS to do something other than open iPhoto, including using Image Capture to do it. Because this chapter is about iPhoto, we're sticking to the default, but we do recommend that you take a peek at Chapter 16, "The Little Guys," for a primer on how Image Capture can help you download images to your Mac.

Figure 3.2 The make and model of your camera appears in the lower-left corner of the iPhoto window.

Click Import to copy your photos. You have the option to erase your camera's memory card after importing photos, but we suggest you complete the import and then erase the card using your camera, just in case something goes wrong. Leave the Erase Camera After Transfer check box alone for now.

To import photos from your camera, click Import. A status bar and thumbnails of your photos appear while the import progresses (see Figure 3.3). When the import is finished, your new photos appear in the iPhoto Content pane. Click the Last Roll album to see only the photos you have just imported.

Figure 3.3 View the status of your iPhoto import.

Import Selected Photos. There are times when you might want to import only a few of the images from your digital camera, rather than the whole enchilada. There are a few ways to do this:

• Use Image Capture to download images to your hard drive. From there, you can import them to iPhoto, as described in "Import from Your Hard Drive or a CD."

• Connect a compatible card reader to your Mac, insert your camera's memory card, and import selected photos by dragging them into iPhoto.

• If you have already imported images from your camera, but have not erased the memory card, connect the camera and choose Import in iPhoto. When iPhoto asks whether you want to overwrite the first duplicate image (see Figure 3.4), click the Applies To All Duplicates check box and then click No. Only the new images will be imported.

Figure 3.4 iPhoto warns that you are about to overwrite a photo.

Import from a Card Reader

Plugging a supported memory card reader into your Mac's USB port opens iPhoto and switches it to Import view, just as connecting a camera does. An icon for the card reader shows up in the iPhoto window. Click Import to bring the card's contents into iPhoto. When you're done, erase the card and select the reader's icon on the desktop or in the sidebar of a Finder window and then eject the disc.

Import from Your Hard Drive or a CD

You have two choices when it comes to importing photo files: the Import command, or the ol' varsity drag. With the Import command, you navigate to a file or directory and quickly add it to your library. Dragging files or folders into iPhoto gives you the flexibility to bring them directly into an existing album, or to create a new album for the imported images, all in one step.

To use the Import command, choose File -> Import and find the folder or file you want to import. iPhoto does the rest. Your imported files appear in the Photo Library and in the Last Roll album.

You can drag files into iPhoto's Content pane. When you drag into the Content pane, you won't have the instant feedback of seeing your images go where you drag them, but they're ready for you in the Last Roll album.

Drag a file or folder onto an existing album. If you drag an item into the empty area of the Source pane, iPhoto creates a new album. That works whether you drag a folder or a single photo. The new album takes the name of the item you import. If the imported folder contains other folders, all of the images in the folders are imported into a single album.

Kodak's Picture CDs are a popular alternative to traditional photo printing. Image files can also be added to your iPhoto library, just like any other digital image, although iPhoto is smart enough to recognize the format when you insert a Picture CD into your Mac's drive. iPhoto launches (unless you have changed that setting in the CDs & DVDs System Preferences pane), and takes you to Import view (see Figure 3.5). Click Import to add the CD's contents to the library.

Figure 3.5 Inserting a Picture CD takes you to iPhoto's Import mode, and displays info about the CD.

Photo Triage

You take a lot of photos—probably more than you did when your camera used film. After all, those digital bits are free, unlike the celluloid stuff. After a long day of picture-taking, you import your masterpieces into iPhoto. But now you want to quickly review the images, rotate the ones that were taken vertically, and delete the duds.

An iPhoto slideshow is just the ticket. Besides giving you a better look at your pictures than what you have in the viewfinder, you can make a quick run at organizing the day's work.

When you have imported the photos you want to review, click the Last Roll album in the Source pane and then click the Play button below it. iPhoto begins a slideshow, and displays a set of controls you can use to navigate through the photos, rotate them in either direction, rate them, or delete them (see Figure 3.6).

Figure 3.6 Navigate, rotate, rate, or delete photos with the slideshow.

The slideshow begins, using whatever time, music, and transition settings from the last time you ran a slideshow. If you've never run one, iPhoto changes photos every five seconds. Clicking the left or right arrow interrupts the automatic turning of the slides. Use the two rotate buttons to turn the image clockwise or counterclockwise. Click on a star to give the photo a rating from 1–5. If you want to remove a photo from the library, click the trash can. You won't be asked whether you're sure: the photo goes to iPhoto's Trash, from which you can retrieve it later or delete it permanently. When you've finished photo triage, click anywhere to end the slideshow. It will end by itself when it has displayed all the photos in the album once.

You don't need to run a slideshow to perform photo triage. All the options described previously are available in the Content pane from the menu bar or a contextual menu. And by the same token, you don't have to limit your photo triage to the last roll you imported—it works with any iPhoto album.

Control-click a photo in iPhoto's Content pane and choose Rotate Clockwise to rotate the image. Choose an item from the My Rating menu to give your photo 1–5 stars. To delete it, choose Move To Trash from the menu, or just press the Backspace key. These options are also available on the Photos menu.

Managing Photo Information

iPhoto offers several ways to tag photos so that you can find them. We suggest you read about all the options before you begin tagging. It will be easier to find what you're looking for later if you develop a consistent way of applying iPhoto tags. For example, you could use photo titles to describe the pictures from your Colorado vacation, but it's probably easier to use Keywords to describe the group of images, and then very specific titles for individual images.

Every photo in your library has a number of attributes. You can change most of them and use the information to find and organize large numbers of images. In the next section, we'll show you how to build and maintain iPhoto albums, but first, we need to show you how to use the library's powerful database to identify each photo uniquely.

Names, Dates, and Comments

Photos you import from a digital camera often have filenames such as PA20008. If you're lucky, the filename might include a clue to the date the picture was taken. You can replace the meaningless alphanumeric drivel with a descriptive title. In the Import, Organize, or Edit views, select a photo and type a new title in the Title field, located below the Source pane (see Figure 3.7). Choose View -> Titles to see titles for all photos.

Figure 3.7 Replace a cryptic filename with a descriptive title.

Similarly, iPhoto imports a photo's creation date and time, and adds it to the Date field. You can change it if you want—or at least check to see that it's correct. If your camera's battery died while you were taking pictures, it might have taken the correct time and date information down with it. While we're on the subject of dates, click on the Last Roll album that shows the most recent photos you imported. Notice that the Date field lists the range for all images in the album.

With a photo selected, click the Show information About This Photo button. It's the one just to the right of the Play button. The Comments field opens (see Figure 3.8). You can add notes about the photo here. Click the Info button again and all photo information disappears. Click once more and you're back to the first of the three views.

Figure 3.8 Make notes about the selected photo in the Comments field.

Changing Multiple Photos at Once

Photos from the same film roll (to echo iPhoto's metaphor) often have a lot in common. iPhoto lets you make changes to the titles, dates, and/or comments of an entire album, or a group of photos you select from the library or an album. You might decide to give your European vacation photos a prefix that identifies them (Eur) and then add a more precise description to the title of each photo (Eur-EiffelTower). Or you might want to select a group of photos taken on the same date and use the date in their titles. iPhoto calls changing multiple photos' tags a batch change.

Start by selecting photos for the batch. Either click an album to select its contents, or click and drag to select photos in the Content pane. Choose Photos -> Batch Change. Leaving the Set menu option set to Title, you can erase all titles (Empty), begin all titles with the same characters (Text), or use Roll Into, Filename, or Date and Time to create the titles.

To give all photos in the batch a common date, choose Date from the Set menu. iPhoto displays the current date for the first image in the batch. Date and time stamps for all can be identical, or you can check the Add check box (see Figure 3.9). Type the number of seconds, minutes, hours, or days you want iPhoto to add to subsequent photos' dates and times.

Figure 3.9 Edit the starting date and time for the batch of photos, click the Add check box, and enter an offset for each image.

Batch changes to the Comments field will overwrite existing comments for individual photos or add the batch notes, if you click the Append To Existing Comments check box.

Keywords

Perhaps the best way to keep track of the many kinds of photos in your library is by assigning keywords to them. You can assign one or more keywords to any photo and then search by the keyword. You might use event keywords, like "vacation", "work friends", or "dad's family". It all depends on the way you organize your photos and how you want to be able to search for them later.

To assign a keyword to a photo, select it in the Content pane and then choose Photos -> Show Keywords. (You can add a keyword to multiple photos by selecting several, or selecting an album.) The Keywords dialog box opens and shows you the keywords that are already available in iPhoto. You can use any of these, delete them, and/or create your own. To assign an existing keyword to the photo, click it and then click the Assign button. To add your own keyword to the list, choose New from the Keywords pop-up menu and type the keyword. Now you can assign the new keyword to the currently selected photo.

You can use keywords to search your library or just the currently selected album. To locate photos by keyword, select an album or the library. Then open the Keywords dialog box, if it isn't already. Click the keyword and then Search. All photos tagged with the chosen keyword appear in the Content window.

Photo Info

There's one more collection of information available in iPhoto. This one is not editable, however. The Photo Info window displays an image's name, creation date, size, and resolution in pixels. If the photo was imported from a digital camera, the Photo Info window also lists the manufacturer and model of your camera. Photos you scan, download or receive in email won't include this info. To view photo info, select the photo and choose Photos -> Show Info, or press Command-I. To see details about the settings used to take a digital photo, click the Exposure tab. Figure 3.10 shows Exposure info.

Figure 3.10 The Photo Info window shows details about an image that was imported from a digital camera.

View Your Handiwork

iPhoto users often search for photos using keywords, ratings, and titles, but you can also use them to jog your memory while scrolling through your library or individual albums. To display photo titles below the image in the Content pane, choose View -> Show Titles. The same procedure gets you a look at keywords and ratings. Just choose the matching items from the View menu. Figure 3.11shows photos with their titles, keywords, and ratings exposed.

Figure 3.11 These photos have titles, keywords, and ratings.

Organizing Photos

iPhoto's Organize view provides tools for arranging photos and customizing your view of them. We have already worked in Organize view, naming individual photos and viewing their labels in the Content pane. In this section, we focus on features used to wrangle groups of images. In Organize view, you create and use iPhoto's two grouping mechanisms, albums and film rolls. You can also use various iPhoto viewing options to get a big-picture look (groan!) at your library, or a very granular one, depending on how you want to work with your photos.

Albums

We've mentioned iPhoto albums a few times in this chapter. Now let's dive in and learn how they work. Although photo attributes such as titles and keywords are optional ways to identify individual photos, albums are pretty much a necessity for anyone who wants to print, export, or view groups of photos. You will be glad you read about albums when we show you how to order books, make slideshows, and export to the Web.

An iPhoto album is very much like an iTunes playlist (Chapter 1). It's a grouping of items from your iPhoto library that you either create manually, or by setting up criteria to generate a smart album. iPhoto itself uses smart albums to group photos from recently imported film rolls, and those taken during a period of time.

The way you use iPhoto albums depends on how your mind wants to organize photos. You can take a cue from iPhoto's date-centric scheme, and/or create albums for specific events and types of photos. Like a song in your iTunes library, a photo can appear in any number of albums, and deleting the image from an album doesn't remove it from your library.

Create an album by pressing Command-N (or choose File -> New Album). Name your album and drag photos from the Content pane onto the album icon. To create an album for photos from your most recent film roll, follow these steps:

1. Import the images from your camera and do any photo triage that's necessary.

2. If you haven't created a new album yet, do so now and give it a descriptive name.

3. Click the Last Roll album.

4. To add all photos from this roll, press Command-A to select all of them.

5. Now drag the photos onto the new album icon (see Figure 3.12).

Figure 3.12 Drag photos from the Last Roll to a new album.

To create a new album from a portion of your library or a film roll, select the photos you want to add to the new album. You can Shift-click to add contiguous photos, or Command-click to select individuals. Choose File -> New Album From Selection. Name the new album to complete it.

Remember that you can also create albums instantly by dragging a folder or file from the Finder into the empty area of the Source pane. The files are imported and the album is named for the item you imported.

Smart Albums

Like an iTunes smart playlist, a smart album in iPhoto gathers photos based on criteria you set, including title, date, rating, or keyword. You can't add or delete a photo into a smart album, but you can modify the album's criteria at any time.

To create a new smart album, press Command-Option-N, or choose File -> New Smart Album. Name the album in the dialog that opens and choose conditions from the pop-up menus. For example, choose Keyword from the first menu and Contains from the second, then type Prague. When you click OK, all photos with the keyword Prague will appear in your smart album. If you add the keyword Prague to additional photos, they will appear in the smart album.

To add criteria, click the Plus button and make selections from the Conditions menus. You can choose to require that any or all criteria must be met (see Figure 3.13). To remove a condition, click the Minus button next to it.

Figure 3.13 Create criteria for a smart album.

Date-Based Albums

Whatever means you choose to organize your photos, iPhoto always keeps track of the dates on which they were imported and when they were taken (in the case of images imported from a camera). You have several choices when it comes to viewing photos by date. Last 12 Months is just what it says, an album of all photos imported during the previous year. Click on the triangle next to the Library album to see subfolders for each year. The presence of an Early Photos folder probably indicates that the date assigned to photos by your digital camera is wrong. This might have happened if your camera's date was incorrectly set, of if its battery ran down while you were using it. You can use the Early Photos folder to individually select and correct photo dates.

Film Rolls

iPhoto creates a new film roll when you import images. The roll simply groups all images that were imported together. If you import a second memory card or folder, iPhoto creates a new film roll and replaces the contents of the Last Roll album with the new photos. The displaced last roll photos are still in your library. You can also recapture film roll information. The photo library can display photos by roll, and the Last Roll album can be set to display multiple rolls. Film Rolls are a handy way to identify a group of pictures that were taken at the same time. From there, you can quickly add consistent titles, dates, or keywords.

Customized Views

Organize view gives you several options for changing the way the Source and Content panes look in iPhoto. Most of these options affect the way photos show up in the Content pane, but a couple of them apply to the Source pane.

Album and Film Roll Options. To customize the Last 12 Months album, choose Preferences, and then the General tab, if it isn't already selected. Change the number of months to display in the album, or click the check box to disable it. You can also customize the Last Roll album by typing the number of rolls you want to see, or disabling the Show last roll album check box. You can create a new film roll by selecting photos in the Content pane and then choosing File -> New Film Roll From Selection. You might want to do this to separate several projects that were shot on the same memory card.

View and Edit Film Rolls. To view individual film rolls in the Photo Library or Last Rolls album, select the album and then View -> Film Rolls. iPhoto separates film rolls with a horizontal line, a date, and roll number (see Figure 3.14). Collapse the roll display by clicking the triangle next to the listing.

You can change the names of film rolls. With Film Rolls showing, click the header for a film roll in the Content pane. Notice that the name of the film roll appears in the Title field in the Info area, below the Source pane. You can edit the roll's name and date (see Figure 3.15).

Figure 3.14 When you view film rolls, iPhoto shows the date of the roll, and its number or folder name, if the roll was imported from files.

Figure 3.15 Rename or change the date of a film roll.

Rearrange Albums. Albums in the Source pane typically appear in the order you added them. You can change that by dragging an album up or down the Source pane. You can't move the Photo Library, Trash, or other albums created by iPhoto.

Changing the Display View. The number and size of thumbnails you see in the iPhoto display view can be changed with the slider and buttons in the lower-right corner of the iPhoto window (see Figure 3.16). Although this option is also available in the Import and Edit views, you will probably use it most while organizing your photos.

Figure 3.16 Resize thumbnails with the slider below the Content pane.

With the Photo library or an album selected, move the slider to the left to see more photos in the Content pane. Move it to the right to see fewer larger photos. To view the maximum number of photos, click the button to the left of the slider (see Figure 3.17). To have a single photo fill the Content pane, click the button on the right. To navigate through your photos, scroll the page or the Up and Down arrow key.

Figure 3.17 Show tiny thumbnails by clicking the button to the left of the slider.

Arranging Photos

Photos in iPhoto albums are typically sorted by filename (or by title, if you have chosen that option), but you can change that with any option from the Arrange Photos menu (View -> Arrange Photos). You can arrange photos by film roll, title, date, or rating, and you can apply your choices to any album, plus the photo library. You can only rearrange albums you have created manually. To flip the sort order, choose iPhoto -> Preferences and then click the Appearance tab. Click Place Most Recent Photos At The Top.

To rearrange an album's photos manually, drag a photo to the place in the display where you want it to appear. The other images move to accommodate the photo's new position.

Editing Photos

Try as you might, it's hard to take perfect pictures. Red eye, poor color fidelity, or plain old bad cropping can render an otherwise decent photo into junk. Although iPhoto can't work miracles or even approach the sophistication of an image-editing program like Adobe Photoshop, its editing tools can save a less-than-perfect image, and make a mediocre one look a lot better.

To edit a photo, you must start in Edit view. You can get there either by clicking the Edit button below the Content pane, or by double-clicking a photo in the Content pane. If you click the Edit view button, iPhoto replaces the page of photos with an enlarged version of the first photo in the current album, and displays editing tools below the photo (see Figure 3.18). Double-clicking a photo displays that image, along with the editing tools.

Figure 3.18 Edit view shows the enlarged image and a set of editing tools.

You can also work with a photo by opening it in a separate editing window.

Control-click the photo and choose Edit in Separate Window from the contextual menu. The editing window displays the photo and a toolbar with options similar to those in the main Edit view (see Figure 3.19).

Figure 3.19 The iPhoto editing window contains the photo and a toolbar at the top.

Customize the Editing Environment

iPhoto gives you three choices when it comes to photo editing: work in Edit view, use a separate editing window, or edit in another application. The default, as mentioned earlier, is Edit view. To change the default so that a photo will open in a new window when you double-click it, choose iPhoto -> Preferences and click the Opens Photo In Edit Window radio button, found on the General tab. To use an external application such as Photoshop or GraphicConverter, click Opens Photo In, and then click the Select Application button. iPhoto takes you to the Applications folder, where you can choose an image-editing tool you like. When you save a photo you've edited in an external application, your altered image is available in iPhoto, just as if you had worked on it in Edit view or in the editing window.

The Editing Toolbar. The editing tools available to you in Edit view differ slightly from the set provided in the Edit window. We aren't sure why. You can change that though, adding or removing any tool from the Edit window toolbar. Follow these steps:

1. Open a photo for editing in a separate window.

2. Click the Customize button, or if you see an arrow at the right edge of the toolbar, click it and choose Customize Toolbar from the pop-up menu. You can also Control-click on the toolbar and choose Customize. iPhoto displays all available editing tools.

3. Drag one up to the toolbar to add it, or drag a tool from the toolbar to remove it.

4. Use the Show pop-up menu and the Use Small Size check box to change the look of the toolbar. Click Done to see your changes. Figure 3.20 shows a toolbar we like better than the original.

Figure 3.20 We dragged all of the image-tweaking tools onto the toolbar and removed the custom aspect ratio tool, because we won't use it as often.

If you Control-clicked the toolbar to use the Customize command, you probably noticed the other options on the menu, all of which let you resize the toolbar by shrinking the size of the tool buttons (Use Small Size), or by viewing text, icons, or both. Because the toolbar is narrower when you're working on a vertical photo, shrinking the buttons helps you cram more of them onto the toolbar.

Using Editing Tools

We're going to walk you through all of iPhoto's editing tools, and while we're at it, we will point out which ones are available in each editing view by default. First though, a few words about what happens to images you edit, and how to avoid making booboos with your precious photos.

If you are just getting started with image editing, or if you are editing images for specific exporting or printing purposes, you might not want to lose the original. To protect your original, duplicate the image before you edit, working on a copy and renaming it so that you can distinguish the two easily. You can duplicate an image in Organize view or Edit view (Control-click and choose Duplicate).

iPhoto lets you recover from mistakes, too. While you are working on a photo, you always have access to the Revert to Original command from the Photos menu or the contextual menu. Like most other OS X applications in which you edit files, iPhoto also provides Undo and Redo commands on the Edit menu. Use these if you catch an edit you don't like before moving on to another action.

Zoom. In Edit view, use the Size slider (right below the Content pane) to zoom in on your photo. When you enter Edit view, your image is zoomed out as far as it can go. Click the buttons on either side of the slider for minimum zoom (left) and maximum zoom (right). In the Edit window, use the zoom buttons (see Figure 3.21) to zoom in (up arrow) or out (down arrow). You can zoom out much further in the Edit window than you can in Edit view. Although the Edit window lacks the minimum and maximum buttons found in Edit view, you will find the helpful Fit command there—it fits a complete image into the window. Resize the window, click Fit, and you'll get a resized image.

Figure 3.21 On the Edit toolbar, click the up arrow to zoom in and the down arrow to zoom out.

Rotate. The Rotate command is available in both Organize and Edit view. Click the Rotate button in the Info pane, or Control-click to use the contextual menu. In the Edit window, there's also a Rotate toolbar button.

Crop. When a photo is open in either editing view, your cursor becomes a cross, allowing you to select a portion of the image and work on it. To crop extraneous stuff from a photo, click and drag across the image. iPhoto dims the portion of the photo that's outside the cropping square. Keep dragging until you have selected everything you want to save and then release the mouse. Here are a few cropping tips:

• To move the cropping area without changing its size, click inside it and drag.

• To change the area's size and shape, drag one of its edges.

• To make the selected area a specific proportional size, choose an option from the Constrain pop-up menu. iPhoto adjusts the area accordingly (see Figure 3.22). See the Aspect Ratios section for more on constraining images.

Figure 3.22 Select the area of a photo you want to use, and click the Crop button to remove the rest.

When you're satisfied, click the Crop button. The portion of the photo outside the selection rectangle is removed.

Aspect Ratios. iPhoto provides a menu of aspect ratio options that give you a quick way to crop a photo so that it will fit on a printed page or match some other relative size constraint you might have. Applying an option from the Constrain menu creates a crop area with the relative dimensions of that option. You can drag the selected area around to center it and then click Crop to create a photo with the desired aspect ratio. If you need to crop the photo to remove extraneous material, do so before you choose an aspect ratio and then crop again. To use an aspect ratio that's not on the Constrain menu, open the Edit window and enter width and height constraints in the Custom boxes on the toolbar. To remove an aspect ratio constraint before you crop, choose None from the Constrain menu.

Enhance. Enhance is as close as iPhoto comes to doing magic with your images. When you use this option (available in Edit view and from the contextual menu in the Edit window), iPhoto tries to correct for poor color, brightness, and/or contrast. Some photos benefit greatly, some do not. To try it out, simply click the Enhance button. Keep your eye on the photo to see how iPhoto changes it. To compare the enhanced version to the original, press Control. iPhoto switches to the original image and back again. Figure 3.23 shows before and after versions of an enhanced image.

Figure 3.23 This image benefited greatly from the Enhance command.

If the Enhance button is grayed out, you have selected a portion of your photo. Choose None from the Constrain menu to remove the selection and then click Enhance.

Brightness/Contrast. Although the Enhance option tries to fix photos with brightness and contrast problems, you can often achieve better-looking results with the more precise brightness and contrast sliders in the Edit view, as seen in Figure 3.24. (You'll need to add the sliders to the Edit window toolbar to use them there.) Start by diagnosing your photo's problem. If the image is too dark, drag the Brightness slider slightly to the right. Watch the photo to see how much difference the change makes. If the photo is still too dark, move the slider again. Similarly, use the Contrast slider to make the photo more or less sharp until you are happy with the image.

Figure 3.24 We used the Enhance tool first, but got better results with the Brightness and Contrast sliders. Although the photo on the right is better, it remains too dark.

B&W. Why take a perfectly good color photo and render it in black and white? You might have artistic reasons for doing so; something to do with illustrating the starkness of the Arizona landscape, maybe? Whatever the reason, you can make the change with the B&W button in Edit view or the contextual menu in the Edit window. Once again, be sure no part of the photo is selected and then click B&W to convert the image.

Sepia. Whereas unaltered black-and-white images can be stark, sepia-toned images are said to take the edge off. The technique is often used to make newer photos look old-timey. With nothing selected, click the Sepia button in Edit view or choose Sepia from the contextual menu in the Edit window.

Retouch. Whether they're birthmarks, the oily aftermath of a chocolate binge, or a bit of unidentifiable gunk, blemishes sometimes appear on faces and surfaces. The Retouch tool allows you to cover them up. To retouch a portion of an image, click the Retouch button in Edit view or select Retouch from the contextual menu. Click and drag the mouse back and forth over the blemish area. Press Control to view a before-and-after version figure.

Red Eye. Perhaps the most common problem in flash photography, red eye can be removed or reduced with this nifty little tool. To use it, select the (red) eyes of your subject and click the Red Eye button in Edit view, or Control-click to use the Red Eye option on the contextual menu. Figure 3.25 shows ye olde before and after.

Figure 3.25 Click the Red Eye button to correct the selected eye. We've already fixed the other eye.

Sharing and Displaying Photos

Assuming that your photos are now imported, organized, and flawless-looking, you would probably like to share them. How? Let us count the ways. Print them on your inkjet printer. Order professional prints. Make a slideshow or a web page. Burn them to CD or DVD. Or share your albums over your home network with other iPhoto users. We cover one final way, printing a photo book, in the project section at the end of this chapter.

Printing Your Photos

You can print photos from any iPhoto view; the options are the same in Organize and Edit view. Book view has its own printing features. If you need to print your photos' titles and/or comments, pick a book template that supports text and use Book printing. You can initiate printing by clicking the Print button in Organize view, or choosing File -> Print. To print photos from an album, select the album before choo sing Print. To print specific photos, select them first. The many wondrous ways you can print photos to your own printer can be found on the Styles pop-up menu in the Print dialog. When you choose one, more options appear, along with a Preview window. Figure 3.26 shows your options for printing a contact sheet. Here's the full list of printing options and how you can use them:

Figure 3.26 A contact sheet prints small versions of your entire album.

• Contact Sheet. Print thumbnail-sized versions of selected photos. Use the slider to change the number of items per page. If one photo is selected for printing, the contact sheet repeats that photo.

• Full Page. Print a selected photo to fill an entire page. Moving the margin slider widens or narrows the page's margins.

• Greeting Cards. This option prints a photo on the top half of a card (single-fold) or the top quarter (double-fold).

• N-Up. Like contact sheets, N-Up prints display several photos per page, but N-Up uses a vertical orientation. If you click the One photo per page check box, N-Up duplicates one image the number of times selected in the Photos Per Page pop-up menu.

• Sampler. This layout enlarges one image, and prints smaller versions of subsequent ones. Sampler includes two templates, available from the pop-up menu of the same name. Figure 3.27 shows Template 1.

Figure 3.27 The two Sampler templates print one image at a fairly large size, and the rest much smaller.

• Standard Prints. This is the template that best captures the way most of us are used to dealing with photos. Choose a print size from the size pop-up. Click One photo per page to limit the number of prints.

Each iPhoto print option gives you a thumbnail preview of how the pages you are about to print will look. To see a larger version, click the Preview button. After some churning (lots of churning if you're using a slow Mac), the Preview application opens, displaying a temporary PDF version of what you're about to print. Click the thumbnails on the right to page through your album. Use the Save As PDF command instead of Preview if you want an electronic copy you can keep or send to others.

Besides the iPhoto–specific layout options, you always have access to the usual settings that apply to your printer. You should also use Page Setup (File -> Page Setup) to choose correct paper size and page orientation.

Ordering Prints

Like iTunes with its very popular music store, iPhoto comes with opportunities for you to spend some money with your friends at Apple. The quickest way to do that is to order prints from your digital photos. You can also order photo books and use .Mac to put photos and slides on the Web, but we'll get to those later in this chapter.

Apple sells prints ranging in size from the typical 4x6 up to 20x30. As of this writing, 4x6 prints are $.39 each, a pretty competitive price. It's always a good idea to check for the best deals locally, or on the Internet. Our local grocery, drug, and discount stores all offer prints from digital photos. iPhoto does offer the convenience of direct print ordering, without the extra step of exporting files or burning a CD to take to your local photo shop, although even retail stores sometimes offer online printing.

Choose an album of photos you want to print, or create a new one to contain them. You will be able to select photos to print individually, so it's not strictly necessary to create a new album, but it is easier not to have to scroll through batches of photos you don't intend to print. Check to see that each photo you want to print has been cropped and edited to your satisfaction, and that it has been sized to an aspect ratio that works with the print size you want to use.

Select the album you want to print from, or select individual photos in Organize view. Click Order Prints. iPhoto whirs for awhile, then displays thumbnail versions of your photos, along with a price list and quantity fields for each type of print. Initially, all the fields are dimmed because you are not logged into your Apple account. Whether you have an Apple ID or not, click Set Up Account. If you don't have an account, click Create Account. If you do have one, enter your Apple ID and password. By the way, you might never have set up an Apple account in iPhoto, but you do have one if you have bought music from the iTunes Music Store or registered a product with Apple. The ID you created at that time will work with iPhoto, and your account information will pop up when you enter the ID and click Sign In.

If you need to create a new account, you'll be asked to fill out three dialog boxes with your name and email address, a password, and billing and shipping addresses.

With account information entered or confirmed, you're back to the Order Prints dialog (see Figure 3.28), but the order form is now ready to use. Begin by typing the number of prints you want to order from the first photo, and in what size or sizes. Scroll through your list to order more photos. Notice that your subtotal changes as you add more prints to the order.

Figure 3.28 Type the number of copies of each print you want to order. Your total is updated automatically.

The largest photo sizes might be preceded by a warning icon. As explained at the bottom of the order dialog, the photo's resolution might be too low to look good when printed at such a large size. You have been warned. If you shot or scanned the photo at a very high resolution, you might not receive a warning, and your prints will probably look just ducky.

Most of the time, you'll probably want to order 4x6 prints of all selected photos. Do that quickly by clicking the 4x6 Quick Order button in the upper-right corner of the dialog. Clicking the up arrow adds one copy of each print to your order.

And finally, note that you can choose from Standard and Express shipping, and that the estimated cost, as well as applicable sales tax, is updated as you change your order. When you're satisfied with your order, click Buy Now. If the 1-click ordering feature has been enabled, clicking the Buy Now button places your order.

Slideshows

To turn an album or a group of photos into a slideshow on your screen, complete with music and a choice of snazzy transitions, first choose an album or add some photos to a new one. (You knew we were going to say that, didn't you? There is a pattern to this stuff.) In Organize view, select the album or the group of photos you want to use, and click the Slideshow button. The Slideshow Settings dialog opens (see Figure 3.29).

Figure 3.29 Use Slideshow Settings to configure the look of your show.

First choose the type of transition you would like to use between slides. When you choose a different transition and/or a direction, the preview thumbnail shows how it will look. Use the Speed slider to make transitions slower or faster. Next, type the number of seconds you would like each slide to stay onscreen. Use the set of check boxes to tell iPhoto whether to play slides at random, whether to repeat the show when all slides have been shown, and whether photos should be scaled to fill the screen. You can also decide what should appear with the slides, including titles, ratings, and controls. The controls are those we introduced you to in the "Photo Triage" section of this chapter. They're used for controlling playback, as well as rotating, rating, or deleting images.

Slideshows need not be silent. By default, iPhoto plays Minuet in G when you fire up a show, but you can choose a different tune with a little help from iTunes and your music library. Click the Music tab in the Slideshow settings. If you don't want to include music in your slideshow, click to uncheck Play Music During Slideshow and skip the rest of this paragraph. To use music, either choose one of the items in Sample Music, or select an iTunes item (library or playlist) from the Source menu. Click a song to select it (see Figure 3.30), or don't click a song to use the entire playlist as a soundtrack. To locate a particular song, type text in the Search field. To deselect a previously selected song, pick another one or Command-click the original.

Figure 3.30 Choose a song to go with your slideshow in the Music tab.

When you have finished setting up the slideshow's look and music, click Play to start it. If you want to preserve these settings for the current album, click Save Settings. Each album can have its own settings.

To play the slideshow without a stop at the settings dialog, click the Play button in the Info section of the Source pane. You can control some aspects of the slideshow with the keyboard and mouse. To temporarily pause the slideshow on a particular slide, press the spacebar. Indicator arrows appear near the bottom of the screen (see Figure 3.31). Use the left and right arrows to move forward and back within the show. The up and down arrows change the show's speed. Move the mouse to make the slideshow controls appear at the bottom of the screen. Clicking the mouse or pressing a key other than the spacebar or arrow keys ends the show.

Figure 3.31 The slideshow indicators appear when you use the keyboard to control the show.

Emailing Photos

Email gives you another way to share photos. You may have sent pictures to friends or family by attaching them to mail messages, and you can certainly take that route with your iPhoto images. Or you could save a few steps by creating the email and attaching photos from within iPhoto.

iPhoto uses the application you have selected as your default email program for this Mac. The Email icon in Organize view reflects this (see Figure 3.32). To use a different one, choose iPhoto -> Preferences, and pick a program from the Mail Using Pop-up menu. You can choose from Apple Mail, Eudora, Microsoft Entourage, or America Online. Only the ones you actually have installed are available from the menu—others are dimmed.

Figure 3.32 This user's default email program is Eudora, so iPhoto displays a Eudora icon in Organize view.

To send iPhoto images, be sure that you're in Organize view and select one or more photos you want to send via email. Click the Email button. iPhoto tells you how many photos will be attached to the message, and the file size of the combined attachments, assuming that you send the photo at the default 640x480 pixel size. You can change the photos' sizes to decrease the attachment's size (makes the photos smaller) or increase its size (send higher-quality photos). When you pick a new item from the pop-up menu, iPhoto updates the photos' estimated size (see Figure 3.33). Keep your recipients' Internet connection in mind when sending photos. A 1MB attachment is a large mouthful for a dial-up user's connection to swallow. Many ISPs restrict the size of email attachments to 3 or 4MB, even for those with fast connections.

Figure 3.33 You can choose the size of photos to be sent with an email message.

Click Compose. iPhoto makes copies of your photos at the resolution you have chosen, opens your email program, and attaches the photos to a new message. Address the message, replace the "great photos" subject line if you want, and type a message. Now you're ready to send 'er.

Web Pages and Slides with .Mac

Apple intends its .Mac Internet service to be an extension of Mac OS X. Many of its features are accessible directly from Apple applications, including iPhoto. You can use a .Mac account to place photos on the Internet for your friends and family to enjoy. Upload the images to a home page, or create a set of .Mac slides.

Naturally, to use iPhoto's .Mac features, you must have a .Mac account. Apple charges $99 per year for an account that includes an email account, 100MB of disk storage, access to a library of Apple and third-party software, and website hosting. Although .Mac is not for everyone, it is well integrated into OS X, offers nifty tools, and is worth exploring, especially if you're interested in publishing a website or backing up your Mac files to a secure server.

If you aren't logged into .Mac or don't have an account, clicking the HomePage or .Mac Slides button in iPhoto brings up a dialog box telling you that your .Mac information is unrecognized. You can either click .Mac Preferences to go to the .Mac system preferences pane, or click the Join Now button. Either way, you'll be taken to the .Mac website. If you are opening an account, the web page contains a form to fill out, registering you for a free trial. If you're already a .Mac subscriber, your .Mac web page opens. Sign up for or log in to .Mac, and we'll meet you back here when you're done.

Once you've logged in to .Mac, you can go back to iPhoto and begin building your web page or slide gallery.

HomePage. A .Mac home page can include any sort of web content you like, but the HomePage command creates pages that contain rows and columns of images from your photo albums. You're limited to 48 images on a single iPhoto home page, and iPhoto will squawk if you try to add more. In Organize view, first locate the album containing the photos you want to upload to .Mac. Click the HomePage button. The Publish Home Page window opens, displaying the selected photos. The page's title text is selected, allowing you to type a title for your page. Press Tab and type a description for the page. Pressing Tab again takes you to the title of the first photo, which you can change. In fact, you can type a multi-word caption if you like (see Figure 3.34). You can drag photos within the window to rearrange them. On the right side of the Publish Home Page window are several themes, each of which has its own background, fonts, borders, and other attributes. Click one to try it on for size, and then another.

Figure 3.34 The Publish HomePage window is a preview of your .Mac web page. You can edit the page title, a caption, and title/captions for each photo on the page.

Below your page are a few display options. Your .Mac account is already selected, but you can switch to a different one from the Publish To Pop-up menu. You can change from three to two columns (makes your photos larger), and/or add an email link and counter to your page. The counter tells visitors how many visitors have viewed the page. Click Publish when you're happy with the look of your page. iPhoto connects to .Mac and uploads your photos. When uploading is finished, iPhoto confirms that the page is ready, and provides a URL you can give to friends and family. You can see your page live by clicking Visit Page Now. In addition to your photos, the web page includes a Start Slideshow button. Click it to page through enlarged versions of the photos on the page.

The .Mac website gives you tools for managing and editing your HomePage albums. Using iPhoto, you can add more groups of photos, just as you did the first one. Go to the .Mac website (http://www.mac.com) and log in. Next, click the HomePage link to see your photo albums. You can edit the same information about the album that you did when you created it in iPhoto. Click an album and then the Edit button. An editable version of the page appears. Update the page title or caption, move images around, or hide a photo by unchecking the Show check box (see Figure 3.35).

Figure 3.35 Move photos around or hide them by disabling the Show check box.

When you have made all your changes to the page itself, click the Themes button and choose a new look for it. If you want to preview the page after choosing a new theme, click Edit and then click Preview. Finally, click Publish to update the album.

You can use the .Mac website to rearrange and combine your albums in any way you like. You can even delete albums and build new ones with the photos you have already uploaded. Photos stored with your account count toward your included 100MB of .Mac storage space. Apple will be happy to sell you additional storage, however.

.Mac Slides. A .Mac slideshow is a special gift from a Mac user (you) to other Mac users (those who have had the good sense to use Mac OS X, specifically). The basic idea is this: You upload photos that your Mac-using family or friends will like, and they subscribe to your slides, which then appear as a screensaver on their Macs.

In Organize view, select the photos you want to turn into slides. Click the .Mac Slides button. iPhoto lets you in, assuming that you have a .Mac account and are logged in as described in the previous section, and then asks if you're sure you know what you're doing. (It doesn't actually say that, but you get the idea.) Click Publish and iPhoto uploads your images. The dialog informing you that the slides have been uploaded comes complete with a button from which you can send an email announcing the slideshow. It's a nice option, especially because the automated message includes step-by-step instructions for connecting to the slideshow.

Make Your Own Screensaver or Desktop Photo. To make your own slideshow screensaver, first create an iPhoto album containing the photos you want to use. Open the Desktop & Screen Saver pane and then click the Screen Saver tab. Scroll down the list on the left and choose an album from the iPhoto section (see Figure 3.36). The first photo in the album appears in the sample pane. Set the other screensaver options and click OK. To use an iPhoto image as a desktop pattern, select it in Organize view and then click the Desktop button. For more fun with iPhoto on your desktop, open the Desktop & Screen Saver pane in System Preferences and choose Desktop this time. Click an iPhoto album to view its photos. Either choose one (the equivalent of clicking the Desktop button in iPhoto), or click the Change Picture check box and choose an interval. Your desktop picture updates accordingly.

Figure 3.36 Select an iPhoto album as your screensaver.

Burning CDs and DVDs

Once again, in the mold created by iTunes, Apple has endowed iPhoto with the capability to quickly turn files on your hard drive into CDs or DVDs. There are a few limitations to the feature, and you might need to work around them to burn discs for your PC-using friends. First we'll show you how to quickly burn an iPhoto disc.

Select the photos you want to burn to disc, or burn an album by selecting it. Notice the combined size of the photos in the Info area, below the Source pane (see Figure 3.37). A CD holds around 650MB, whereas a DVD holds about 4.7GB. If you have selected more photos than your disc can hold, you will need to complete the burn in multiple steps. Unlike iTunes, iPhoto won't automatically burn multi-disc projects.

Figure 3.37 The library won't fit on a single CD. Either manually select a group of photos that will fit on a disc, or create an album containing photos less than 650MB in total size.

Click the Burn button. iPhoto asks for a blank disc. Click OK when you have inserted it and then click the Burn button again. You now have one more opportunity to change your mind, confirm the burn, or set further options. Click Eject or Cancel, or click the triangle near the top of the dialog box to see more options. You can change the burn speed, or tell iPhoto whether to verify the disc after burning. In most cases, you won't need to change these options. Once you've clicked Burn for the final time, iPhoto completes the task and ejects your finished disc.

When an iPhoto disc is inserted into a Mac, iPhoto opens and the disc appears as an item in the Source pane. The photos are displayed under the film roll titles from your original iPhoto library. Choose View -> Film Rolls to hide the display. Your recipient can now run a slideshow, print the images, and import them into her own library.

PC-Friendly Discs. iPhoto's Burn command creates an iPhoto disc that will open iPhoto when inserted in a Mac drive. Although iPhoto images open just fine on Windows machines when double-clicked, inserting an iPhoto disc will not invoke Windows automatic disc-handling features. Too, iPhoto's file storage structure makes your pictures hard for PC users to view and locate. The best way to burn a disc everyone on your photo list can use is to export the photos first and then burn the folder containing them to a disc using OS X's built-in disc-burning feature, or a tool such as Roxio's Toast. We describe exporting files in the "Exporting Photos" section of this chapter, which, as it happens, is coming up next.

iDVD Slideshows. Here's one more example of iPhoto's integration with other iLife applications. Apple's iDVD, included with all SuperDrive-equipped Macs and available as part of iLife '04, makes it possible for you to create DVDs that will play on a computer or on any DVD player connected to a television. With the iPhoto iDVD command, you can send photos to iDVD, from which you can burn a slideshow to DVD. To burn a disc in iDVD, you must have either an Apple SuperDrive, or a compatible third-party DVD recorder. You can create iDVD projects on any Mac with iDVD installed, however.

In iPhoto, choose the photos or album for your DVD slideshow and then click the iDVD button. After a while (maybe a couple of minutes if you're using lots of photos), iDVD opens. Click the Customize button to see a view of iDVD themes, and drag one into the main pane to select it. Because you imported images from iPhoto, your DVD already contains a slideshow (see Figure 3.38). Chapter 5, "iDVD," describes using iDVD in detail. You'll learn how to add audio, movies, and text to complete the project. You can also import more photos from your iPhoto library using the Media tab.

Figure 3.38 Choose an iDVD theme and edit text, audio, and photos to build your DVD slideshow. Double-click on the name of the album you imported to work with your slides.

Exporting Photos

Think of iPhoto's exporting features as more generic (and often more useful) alternatives to some of the photo-sharing features we've described in previous sections. You can export files for sharing with PC users or burning to disc, export web pages to use on a non-Apple website, or make your own QuickTime slideshow, suitable for playback on Macs or PCs—any computer with the QuickTime player installed.

Exporting Files. Because of iPhoto's cryptic directory structure, you can't simply find and copy photos from the iPhoto library to another location. You could try, but we suggest you take the much easier way, which offers the added benefit of being able to choose consistent file quality and sizes for the items you export.

Select an album or group of photos and choose File -> Export. Click the File Export tab (see Figure 3.39). Here you can choose the size, quality, and a few other attributes for the photos you're about to export from iPhoto. To simply copy the files at the same quality at which they were imported, leave all settings unchanged. To change file formats, choose one from the Format pop-up menu. For web or email photos, use JPEG, and choose other options to shrink the photos. If you intend to print them, try TIFF, and don't make any other changes that will decrease their quality. PNG is a PC format that is compatible with the Web and can be read on either Macs or Windows machines.

Figure 3.39 Choose a file format, size, and name information for photos you export from iPhoto.

Scaling images makes them easier to manage on the Web or in email, and also decreases the file size—a good thing if you have lots of photos to send or to burn to a CD. If you're exporting to JPEG, you can click the Scale image no larger than button to work with width and height dimensions. Typing a number in either box changes the other dimension in proportion. Type 640 in the width box. iPhoto adds 480 in the height box. Scaling isn't available for TIFF or PNG formats. Next, choose whether to use the photos' filename, title, or album name to identify the exported versions. To use a filename extension (not necessary on the Mac, but required by other systems), leave the Use Extension check box enabled. Click Export and then navigate to a convenient location on your hard drive. Click Create New Folder to keep the exported images organized.

Export Web Pages. The web page export feature combines file exporting with an HTML generator. The result is one or more HTML pages and a set of JPEG files that you can upload to any web server—no .Mac required. iPhoto creates both thumbnail and large versions of each image. When a visitor clicks on the thumbnail, the larger version opens.

Choose File -> Export and then click the Web Page tab (see Figure 3.40). Type a title for the page and choose the number of rows and columns per page of photos. iPhoto calculates how many pages will be needed. Next, you can choose a background color or an image to serve as background for the web page, and a contrasting text color.

Figure 3.40 Type a name for your web page and choose size and color options.

Choose dimensions for the thumbnail and large versions of each image, and use the check boxes to display each photo's title and/or comments. Click Export and navigate to a convenient location. Be sure to create a new folder first, and don't change its name, or the names of any of the new files, lest you break the links iPhoto has built for you. When the export is complete, switch to the Finder and open the folder where you exported the pages and photos. Double-click the HTML file to preview it in your web browser. Because the page is a standard HTML file, you can edit it in any text editor. If you know HTML, you can customize the appearance of this and all the other pages iPhoto created. When you are satisfied with your page, use an FTP client to upload the folder to your website. If your site is stored on your own Mac, copy the folder there.

iPhoto gives the top-level page of your new folder the same name as the folder. When you upload the folder to the root level of a website whose domain you own, the URL for your photos looks like this: http://www.mydomain.com/Photos/photos.html.

QuickTime Export. Apple's QuickTime Player can show full-motion movies, but it's also a great way to share an iPhoto slideshow. You can mail a QuickTime slideshow to anyone who has the QuickTime Player installed, including Windows users, display the movie on the Web, or burn it to a CD. Exporting photos into QuickTime is about as easy as it gets. If you want to use music with the movie, select or create an album, click Slideshow, and find the song you want to use. Open the Export dialog and click the QuickTime Export tab. Change the dimensions of the movie if you want. Changing one dimension does not adjust the other proportionally, so be sure to calculate a new value for the second dimension if you want the movie to remain proportional. Tell iPhoto how long to display each image, choose a background color or image, and leave the check box selected to add music to the movie. When you click Export, iPhoto asks you to name the movie. By default, it will be saved to the Movies folder in your home folder. Figure 3.41 shows a QuickTime movie containing a slideshow.

Figure 3.41 When you double-click a QuickTime slideshow, it opens in QuickTime Player.

Network Photo Sharing

We return yet again to an iTunes comparison. Like its musical sibling, iPhoto makes it possible to share the contents of its library with other Mac users on a local network. The photos you share are "read only." Those who view them can't make any changes to the photos themselves, or change how they're organized. Shared photos can be copied, emailed, or printed, however. You can share your entire library, but it's a better idea to share albums, because less data has to travel the network when users connect to your Mac. If you want to share a lot of photos, share lots of albums that people can connect to individually, and encourage them to use them one or two at a time.

To share your photos, choose iPhoto -> Preferences and click the Sharing tab to see your options (see Figure 3.42). Click the Share My Photos check box to activate sharing. Click Share Selected Albums and choose those you want others to be able to see remotely. Give your library a new shared name and/or a password, if you like.

From another Mac on your network, open iPhoto. Look for shared iPhoto albums in the Source pane (see Figure 3.43). If there aren't any, choose iPhoto -> Preferences and be sure that the Look For Shared Photos check box is enabled. Click a shared album in the Source pane to see its contents.

Figure 3.42 Share your iPhoto albums.

Figure 3.43 Shared albums appear in iPhoto just as other albums do. You can change your view, export, or burn a shared album to disc.

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