Improving Photos in iPhoto
By Brad Miser
Date: May 25, 2009
Sample Chapter is provided courtesy of Que Publishing.
Brad Miser walks you through how iPhoto’s editing tools enable you to improve photos to correct problems or to make them better.
One of the best things about using iPhoto is that you can improve the photos you take. Is something included in a picture that you’d rather not see? Just crop it out. Something seem off-kilter? Straighten a photo to make it look right. Do the subjects of a photo appear to have become demon-possessed? You don’t need an exorcist; a few clicks of the Red-eye tool will get them back to the light side. Want to apply your artistic creativity to some photos? With iPhoto, it’s no problemo.
iPhoto’s editing tools enable you to improve photos to correct problems or to make them better, more effective, and more enjoyable to look at. To edit a photo, you select it, and then put iPhoto into Edit mode. You can do this within the iPhoto window, or you can use full-screen editing.
When you edit within the iPhoto window, you see the Source list on the left as you normally do. At the top of the right part of the window, you see the photo browser, where thumbnails of photos you are editing appear. When you select a thumbnail, the photo appears in the largest part of the window, which is where you edit it. At the bottom of the right part of the window, you see iPhoto’s editing tools.
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Editing Photos
No matter which specific editing tasks you want to do, you follow some common steps. These include selecting the photo you want to edit, moving into the Edit mode, zooming and navigating in the photo, editing it, and saving your changes. You need to perform these general steps when you perform the remainder of the tasks in this chapter.
Select Events, Photos, or an album containing the photos you want to edit.
Click the Edit button.
Browse the photos and select the one you want to edit.
If you are doing detailed editing (such as retouching), use the size slider to zoom in or out.
Drag the box in the Navigation window to focus on the area you want to edit.
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Editing in Full Screen If you want to try editing in full screen, click the Full Screen button (it has two diagonal arrows pointing away from each other). The photo fills the screen. Point to the top of the screen to see the browser and to the bottom to see the editing tools. Press Escape to exit.
Use the editing tools to edit the photo.
Click the Previous or Next button to move to the previous or next photo in the selected source to edit it.
Edit the next photo. Repeat until you’ve edited the photos in the selected source.
Click Done.
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Editing in Full Screen All the Time You can set your default Edit mode (full screen or in the main window) using the Edit Photo pop-up menu on the General tab
of the iPhoto Preferences dialog box.
NOTE
Save? Edits to your photos are saved when you select another photo by clicking its thumbnail, the Previous or Next buttons, and when you click the Done button.
Rotating Photos
This is a simple but extremely useful edit. When you take or import photos in the portrait orientation, they come into iPhoto “on their sides” so that up and down are actually left and right. With the Rotate tool, you can put photos in their proper orientation.
- In Edit mode, select a photo that needs to be rotated.
- Click the Rotate button until the photo is oriented properly.
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Default Direction You can set the default direction of the Rotate button on the General pane of the iPhoto Preferences dialog box. Choose the
orientation that is needed most commonly for photos you take by rotating your camera.
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Changing Directions When you hold the Option key down, the Rotate button switches to the opposite direction. You can also rotate an image by pressing 
-R or Option--R to rotate the photo in the opposite direction.
Applying Effects to Photos
iPhoto includes a number of effects you can apply to photos to enhance their appearance for artistic or other purposes. For many of these effects, you can also choose “how much” of the effect you apply.
- Click the Effects button.
- Click the first effect you want to apply.
- If applicable, increase or decrease the amount of the effect by clicking the arrows at the bottom of the effect’s box.
- Apply and adjust more effects.
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CAUTION
Change Once Everywhere Be aware that when you edit a photo, the changes you make apply to every use of that photo. If you crop a photo that you use in a photo book and a slideshow, the cropped version will be used in
both projects.
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You Can Go Back Again To remove all the effects from a photo, apply the Original effect.
Cropping Photos
Cropping means to cut out parts of a photo you don’t want or to refocus the image more on the part that is of the most interest to you. For example, if you want those who look at a photo to focus mostly on the people in the photo, you should crop it down so that the people fill most of the image. If the background is important, crop out less.
- Click the Crop button.
- To constrain the cropped photo to specific dimensions, check the Constrain check box and choose the proportion you want to maintain on the pop-up menu.
- Drag the crop box by its Resize handle until it is about the size (and shape if you didn’t constrain it) you want the cropped
photo to be.
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Making Copies Earlier, you learned that edits you make on an image, such as a crop, apply to the image everywhere it is used. If you don’t
want this, make a copy of a photo by selecting it and pressing -D. You can edit and use the copy in a project without impacting the versions you’ve used elsewhere.
- Drag the crop box around until the part of the photo you want to keep is within the box. (Everything outside of the box is
cropped out.)
- Continue adjusting the crop box’s size and location until the image is just right.
- Click Apply. The image is cropped.
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Seeing Changes To see the impact of a crop, or any other edit for that matter, press and hold the Shift key down. The most recent edit you made is “undone.” Release the key to see the edit again. Press and hold Shift to see the image without the edit again. This is a good way to see whether you are making improvements (or not).
Straightening Photos
Sometimes, photos aren’t lined up “square” with the frame of reference and so they look twisted. You might want this for aesthetic reasons, but in some cases, you want to straighten the image up so that it better aligns with the invisible horizontal and vertical grid we all use to judge whether something is “straight.”
- Click the Straighten tool.
- Drag the slider to the left to rotate the image to the left or to the right to rotate it to the right. As you move the slider,
the image rotates in its frame; the amount of rotation is shown at the end of the slider bar.
- When the image looks straight, release the mouse button.
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NOTE
Straighten Scans You can import scanned images into iPhoto. When you scan an image or document, it’s not uncommon for the item you scanned
to not be quite lined up correctly in the scanner. The Straighten tool is a great way to fix that in iPhoto.
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Go Back, Way Back iPhoto always keeps the original version of each photo you import into your iPhoto library, so you can go back to it again;
this undoes all the edits you’ve ever made to a photo. To restore a photo to its as-imported version, select the photo and
choose Photos, Revert to Original.
Enhancing Photos
Sometimes photos are too light or too dark. You can use the Enhance tool to have iPhoto automatically adjust an image’s exposure and contrast to improve its appearance. Using the tool is extremely easy.
- Click the Enhance button. The photo’s contrast and exposure are adjusted.
- Continue clicking the Enhance button until the photo begins to look worse.
- Press -Z. The most recent enhancement is undone. The photo should look as good as the tool can make it look.
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Going Back to the Previous Version Sometimes as you edit an image with various tools, save it, and then come back to edit it again, you actually make the image
worse. You can restore an image to its most recently saved version (the one prior to the current editing session) by choosing
Photos, Restore to Previous.
Removing Red-Eye
Red-eye is probably the most common problem with photos taken with a digital camera using flash. Nothing spoils a good photo like the evil-looking appearance of eyes when their centers are glowing red. Fortunately, iPhoto includes a Red-eye tool that can help decrease the impact of red eyes. The tool has two modes: Automatic and Manual. Try the Automatic mode first. If that doesn’t work, use the Manual mode.
- Zoom and navigate to focus on some glowing eyes.
- Click the Red-eye button. The Red-eye tool appears.
- Click the Auto button. iPhoto attempts to remove the red-eye. If the problem is corrected sufficiently, you’re done. If not, continue.
- Press -Z to undo the automatic red-eye correction.
- Drag the slider until the size of the circle (which is the pointer on the screen) is about the size of the red circles in
the first eye you want to correct.
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Zoom on Red As you evaluate red-eye correction, make sure you zoom out to see the photo at the size you’ll typically view it. Red-eye
correction doesn’t look its best when you are zoomed in.
- Move the pointer over the red part of the eye. Click the mouse button. The red in the circle is replaced with black.
- Move the pointer out of the way and look at the result.
- If you’re happy with the eye, move to the other eyes in the photo and repeat the process. If not, press -Z to undo the change, make the pointer circle smaller or larger, and try again.
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NOTE
Seeing Red The red-eye effect occurs because pupils can’t close fast enough when a flash occurs. The light from the flash passes though
the pupil and hits the fundus at the back of the eye, which reflects red. The red-eye effect is more pronounced in light-colored
eyes.
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Prevention The best cure for red-eye is to avoid it. Because flash is the cause of red-eye, avoid needing to use flash by using direct
or indirect lighting instead. If you have to use flash, don’t point the flash in a straight line with the eyes.
Retouching Photos
Photos sometimes end up with blemishes, often from a problem with the camera’s lens, such as it being dirty or scratched. You can use the Retouching tool to hide the resulting blemishes in a photo.
- Zoom and navigate to focus on the blemish.
- Click the Retouch button. The Retouch tool appears.
- Drag the size slider until the pointer, which is now a partial circle, is about the size of the blemish.
- Move the pointer over the blemish.
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NOTE
Smudge It The Retouch tool works by smudging or smearing the blemish so that it blends in with the surrounding part of the image.
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Less is More For best results, you want to use as little of the Retouch tool as possible. The more retouching you do, the larger area
you “smudge” or “smear,” and the retouched area can be worse than the blemish was.
- Drag the pointer over the blemish. As you drag, a brown swath shows you the part of the image that you are dragging over.
- When you’ve covered the blemish, release the mouse button.
- Move the pointer out of the way and evaluate the results.
- If the blemish is gone, you’re done; if not, repeat the process until it is.
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Click instead of Drag Instead of dragging over a blemish, you can just click on it repeatedly. Try both methods to see which has the best result.
NOTE
Improving Scans Scanned images are more likely to have blemishes than images you capture with a digital camera. Using the Retouch tool is
a great way to clean up these images.
Adjusting Photos
The Adjust tool is the most complicated because it has many controls that are somewhat technical, such as Contrast, Saturation, and Temperature. Plus, each time you adjust one control, it can impact the appropriate setting of the other controls. Using the Adjust tool is a balancing act of sorts.
- Click the Adjust button. The Adjust tool appears.
- Drag the tool on the screen so that you can see it and the photo you are editing.
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NOTE
Technicalities The properties that you can adjust are fairly technical and can be difficult to understand. Some, such as Contrast (which
is the amount of distinction between dark and light areas), aren’t too difficult to grasp, but others, such as Definition,
are harder to define (pun intended).
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Experiment The best way to see what impact changing a property has is to drag its slider all the way to the left and then slowly drag
it all the way to the right, while looking at the photo.
- Use the sliders to change various properties of the image by moving them from the left to the right. As you move a slider,
you see its impact on the image. The relative amount of change is indicated by the position of the slider and the numeric
value at the right end of its bar.
- To try to remove color cast (poor whites) from an image, click the Eyedropper button.
- Point to the neutral gray or white and click the mouse button. iPhoto attempts to reset the colors accordingly.
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Copying is Good If you find a set of adjustments that work well, click Copy. Move to a similar image and click Paste to apply those same adjustments.
NOTE
Try, Try, and Try Again The impact of adjusting the same property on different images can be unpredictable because the property’s significance can
be lesser or greater on different images. Using the Adjust tool well requires a lot of experimentation.