Use iPhoto to download, organize, edit, and output your digital images. The program is quite straightforward to learn. Let your mouse linger over the different buttons along the bottom center and and bottom left side of the screen to see what they do. The Help files are also well written. This document supplements the built-in documentation. Most of the time you are in one of two primary modes, either Organize or Edit mode. In Organize, you see a whole collection of your photos. There is a slider in the lower right to adjust the sizes of the "thumbnail" copies. In edit mode, you see one image at a time. You can do some basic editing. In the newest versions of iPhoto, a row of your images from the Organizer appears in the upper part of the screen in Edit mode to help you keep track of where you are. This all becomes clearer by trying out the program. You can now also work in a full screen mode that gives you a larger version of the image you are editing.
Setting up your environment
The first time you use iPhoto, you need to run a utility program to tell the computer that you want iPhoto to automatically load when a camera or camera card reader is attached to your computer. This program is called Image Capture. Run it before you attach any camera or card reader. It can be found in the Applications folder of your Macintosh HD. When you load it, it displays a dialog box saying "No Image Capture Device Detected." Ignore the message. Pull down under the menu (at the top) Image Capture to Preferences. Select the choice that says that when a camera is attached to load iPhoto. You can then quit Image Capture.
Notes:
If you installed software that came with your camera, it may automatically load when you attach your camera or card reader. This can be mildly entertaining. You'll now have several programs loading and competing for you to pick them to download into. Generally, you'll want to go to the Preferences for the non-iPhoto program and turn off auto loading.
If you do some photography work in a non-JPEG format (such as non-compressed TIFF), do not use iPhoto. iPhoto only works well with JPEG images. See IT for help in how to switch between programs in this case. We highly reccomend using Apple's new Aperture program if you will be editing "raw" files." It is a very interesting and powerful system.
Importing Your Photos
Take some photos. Then either remove your media card and insert it into a card reader attached to your computer or attach your camera to the computer with whatever cable came with the camera. In either case, three things will happen. First, your card will appear on the desktop as if it were a new hard disk. Next, iPhoto will launch. Finally, iPhoto will switch into Import mode. You'll see a window like that below. Circled in red are the only two items you will click. First, (ordinarily), click on the button to erase photos after the download. Then click the Import button. Everything after this will be automatic.
After the download completes, you'll see a window like the following. iPhoto automatically shifts into Organize mode. (In the example, there were only two photos on the card.)
The new photos will be stored in the Album listed as "Last Roll." Click its icon (under Source) to see them. Once you have a few thousand photos in iPhoto, this becomes necessary. Finding photos in the general Library can be hard. You'll then want to move your new photos into one (or several) album(s). This is described below.
Adding Albums
You can create as many albums as you'd like. Just click the plus (+) shown in the lower left below the list of albums. Name your albums. Then seloect images and drag them to on top of the album name. You can do this one at a time. This can be tedious. You can also do a Select All (Ctrl-A) and drag them all. Or, you can use a Clik-Shift Click technique to select a group to drag.
IPhoto Preferences
To set iPhoto preferences, pull down under iPhoto to Preferences and set the general preferences as below:
iPhoto Editing -- and/or with Photoshop or Elements
In the iPhoto preferences (which you get to by pulling down under iPhoto to Preferences) , you can select a program to load if you want to edit an image when you are in Organize mode. You should leave this on iPhoto (on full screen as above. In iPhoto you can do cropping, some sharpening, basic levels, and a few other things. But there are many more things Photoshop can do. To learn the basics, try it. (In the image below, we didn't use full screen because it fills too much space for a web page.) Click the adjust icon and try the adjustments. If you want to jump to photoshop (or Elements), Right click (CTRL-click if only one clicker) and choose Edit in an External Editor. When you finish do a Save. When you come back to iPhoto, it will have the changes incorporated. This is really clean.
In full screen view, there is a button in the lower left of the screen named Compare. Use it to get a sid-by-side view. This lets you select the best among pictures and delete the rest or change their Rating. To change rating to say 3 stars, hit the Apple key and the number 3 etc. (To see Ratings, pull down under View to My Ratings. )
Getting Info About a Photo
One of the best things about digital photography is that the computer gets and stores lots of info from the camera about each of your pictures. Each time you click on a photo, a little info appears in the lower left corner of hte iphto screen. You can get much more (see below). When on an image, pull down under Photo to Get Info. A window appears with 3 tabs. Each stores info. Try them. The Exposure tab is illustrated below.
How to properly remove the card:
| But now, you need to be a bit careful. To properly remove the card, note that there is that icon on your desktop for it. You must drag the icon into the trash can on the dock to safely dismount the card. The card is now empty and is ready to be placed in the camera for another round of pictures. |  |
Author: Bob Fry
June 28, 2006