Digital photos are one of the most common reasons that people use their computers. Whether it’s emailing Grandma the last picture of Susie’s ballet pageant or printing this year’s Christmas card picture, computers have made sharing our memories easier than ever. The problem with digital photography lies in how to organize it. There are a million sites such as Shutterfly and Flickr that offer a solution for sharing your photos online, but what about keeping them organized on your Mac? Every Mac comes pre-installed with iPhoto as part of the iLife suite.
In this article, the first in a new series of articles for Mac beginners, we will talk about how to get the most out of iPhoto. iPhoto has many of the features that you have come to expect from Apple’s application. You can rate your photos, organize them into different albums, create slideshows and search for photos with an iTunes-like interface. The best part about iPhoto is how easy it is to use. From uploading your pictures to creating photo albums and having them delivered to your door, Apple makes preserving your memories fun and simple.
Importing Photos
The first thing you have to do is get your pictures on your Mac. To do this, you will need to hook up your digital camera to your computer. Simply take the USB cable that came with your camera and plug one end into your camera and connect the other end to your Mac. After a few seconds, iPhoto will recognize your camera and launch automatically. Your iPhoto screen will tell you that it is ready to import items.Note: This is the same if you have a memory card reader. Just put your card into the card reader and plug your card reader into your Mac.
On this screen you can also label the album and give a description of your photos. What you type here is up to you. I tend to label my album something like “Christmas 2005” and leave the description blank. Whatever you type in here will be attached to every picture that you are uploading. So, if you have several events on one memory card it might be best to do this for each individual picture instead of the entire roll.
When you are done with this, go ahead and click the “Import” button. Now, it will take a few seconds for your pictures to upload depending on the speed of your computer and the amount of pictures you are trying to transfer. You will notice that thumbnails of your pictures appear as they are uploading. After your photos are finished uploading you are ready to dig deeper into iPhoto.
Editing Your Photos
There is one more iPhoto feature I want to talk about: editing your pictures. It is slightly more advanced and not all that necessary if you are just playing around with family photos, but we’ll dabble in it anyway. I am going to recommend that you learn the same way I did: trial and error. I’ll get you started, but don’t be afraid to just play around with different settings. You can always undo things that you don’t like.
Note: Before editing anything it’s important to make a copy of the picture you are working with so that you don’t lose the original. To make a copy go to Photos -> Duplicate.
The part you are going to need to play with is the advanced editing feature. To get to this you are going to want to select a picture and double-click it. The options at the bottom should change and you should see an advanced button. Click on that. Here is where you can edit the contrast, saturation, tint, brightness, etc. Play around with this buttons and figure out what they do to your picture.
Other things you might want to edit are red-eye, blemishes or what is in the picture. To eliminate red-eye click on the button and then click in the center of the affected eye. This should erase the problem. Sometimes it can also get areas surrounding the eyes, so be sure you are as precise as possible. You can always undo what you did and try again.
Retouch is another tool you’ll want to be familiar with. I have to say that I haven’t had the best results with retouch, but we’ll give it a try. Again, pick the picture you want to work with. Find the problem area and click on the retouch button. Use this tool just like a paint brush. Run it across the problem area a few times and it should be fixed. Like I said, this doesn’t always work for me, but that’s how it’s supposed to be done.
Finally, let’s play with cropping. This is one of my favorite tools because it can get rid of the silly people in the background of your pictures. Get the picture you want ready, then click and drag your mouse across it. You will notice that one area of the photo is being highlighted. Position the mouse so that you are highlighting only the part of the picture that you want to keep. Then click on crop and your photo should resize to be exactly what you want.
