iPHOTO
|
iPhoto lets you organize and manage a library of possibly thousands of photographs.
Photos
At the simplest level, each photograph is a separate file (something.jpg, something.tif, etc.). You can look at any and all of the photos within the iPhoto Library by clicking Photos.
Usually, though, photographs come onto your computer in bunches, either from plugging in your camera and importing whatever's on the memory card, or from receiving photos attached to an email message you received, or from dragging & dropping one or more photos into iPhoto directly from some other application (the Desktop, Finder, Safari web pages, and so forth).
Events
More often than not, the photos within a batch will be related somehow, especially those coming from a camera. iPhoto refers to such relationships as Events. Generally, iPhoto will group all photos it receives from one batch into one Event. If your camera card contains photos from more than one calendar day, iPhoto may automatically create a separate Event for each day.
Regardless, you can follow up and combine or split Events as you see fit (say if the camera card held photos from two completely unrelated happenings). This customizable yet automated grouping by Event lets you quickly find all photos which involve a particular time or happening.
Places
It's increasingly common for cameras to know where they were when taking photos. As a result, photos taken by such a camera have the location written within them. iPhoto can take notice of that information as it imports photos. If the info exists, iPhoto will assign a Place on a map to photos in that Event. When photos lack that information, you can still manually assign a Place to an Event. This customizable yet automated grouping by Place lets you quickly find all photos which involve a particular location.
Faces
iPhoto can recognize faces within photos with a fair degree of accuracy. It automatically groups photos based on what it believes to be the same Faces. A photo showing two people will be included in two Faces groups. iPhoto lets you make corrections, either to faces which it has wrongly identified or to faces which it admits it cannot identify. This customizable yet automated grouping by Face lets you quickly find all photos which involve a particular person.
Albums
Finally, iPhoto lets you group photos by whatever other relationship you wish. Examples include Lighthouses, At Night, Green Things, Autumn, etc. You name it. You can create one or more Albums within iPhoto, then assign photos to that Album. In addition to the Faces group of all photos which include Blake, you might create an Album for photos of Blake Doing Gymnastics, and another for photos of Blake Not Doing Gymnastics.
One Photo, Many Groups
One photo can belong to multiple groups. Choose, for example, one particular photo displayed under Photos. It may appear in the Blake Doing Gymnastics Album, and in the Blake Face, and in the Raleigh Place, and in the July 22 Event, but it is still just the one photo. When you delete a photo from an Album or a Face or a Place or an Event, the photo remains alive and well in Photos. Even when you go into Photos and move one photo to the Trash, that photo goes into iPhoto's own local Trash and not all the way to the Mac's Dock Trashcan.
Organized and Categorized
So far, iPhoto has let you assemble possibly thousands of photographs in one place. It's let you group the photos by time/happening into Events. It's let you group photos by geography into Places. It's let you group the photos by person into Faces. It's let you group the photos by any other subject into Albums. You now have a very firm grip on your thousands of photos. You can browse through them onscreen to your heart's content. But then what?
Editing
You may have noticed that lots of photos could do with a bit of touching up. The camera rarely captures a perfect picture. Often there's extraneous stuff in the background. Or the ocean recedes to a horizon which is leaning off-angle. Or the children's eyes are glowing red (and, for no readily apparent reason, the dogs' eyes are glowing green). Happily, iPhoto provides a number of ways in which you can Edit a photo, altering its dimensions, orientation, colors, etc.
Whether you select a photo for editing from an Album or a Face or a Place or an Event or directly from Photos, you are editing the one and only photo of that name. Your edits will change that photo in every group in which it is listed. And while you shouldn't necessarily trust that this next point will always hold true, you can later decide that you don't like your edits and you can Revert the photo to its Original condition.
If you like to know what's going on under the hood, you can see where a particular photo is stored on your computer by pulling down the File menu and choosing Reveal in Finder. The menu then lets you open a Finder window showing the Original File in its folder, or the Modified File (if it has been edited) (the distinction is four nested folders up: Previews versus Masters).
Creating
Okay, you've got your photos organized and doctored to your satisfaction. Now it's time to start creating things with them.
Slideshows
A Slideshow is a group of photographs displayed fullscreen one after the other at a pace of every so many seconds, possibly repeating until told to stop. To create a Slideshow, decide in advance which group of photos you'd like to use: an Event, a Place, a Face, an Album, or a set of photos you manually highlight from within one of those other kinds of groups. Once you've selected the photos you want, click Create at the bottom right of iPhoto, then select Slideshow. iPhoto will automatically include the first photo in the group twice, using the duplicate as a Title slide. You can leave both slides, or delete one or the other slide, as you see fit. You can choose a more complicated Theme by which to display the sequence of photos. You can change (or remove) iPhoto's choice of background music. You can change other Settings as well, such as the time each frame will be displayed.
As is, this Slideshow will remain available within your Mac's iPhoto app, listed on the left below Events, Albums, etc. To send this Slideshow beyond your Mac, you first need to Export it (File menu, Export...) as a movie file, a slideshow file, or whatever other format is best for the person or machine you're sending it to.
Facebook
iPhoto makes it easy to publish your photographs onto Facebook. Through the Share icon at the bottom right, select Facebook... and give iPhoto the information needed to connect it to your Facebook page. From there, you can push photos out to the web, set a new profile page, etc.
Paper Projects
iPhoto also helps you create photographs you can hold in your hands. Through the Share icon at the bottom right, you can Order Prints of individual photos which will then be mailed to you. Through the Create icon at the bottom, you can design Greeting Cards, Calendars and even bound Books. Whether it's to celebrate this year's holiday season, or to see next year at a glance, or to be able to relive someone's wedding for the rest of their lives, iPhoto can help you compose and then print it, in any quantity you wish.
We regularly provide introductory classes in iPhoto. Please contact our Training department (800) 467-9820 x6, or (336) 768-9820 x6, or training@computertree.com) for more information.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
(800) 467-9820 x6
(336) 768-9820 x6
Email
|
|
