Posts Tagged ‘iPhoto’

Digital cameras are pretty cool, making multiple trips to the photo lab unnecessary and giving you the ability to know whether you got a good picture of Zira with her birthday cake before she tears into like a crazed baboon, but what makes them even better is that they record a ton of info you may not even be aware of…yet!

Go to iPhoto and select a picture you’d like to see more info about, now from the Menu Bar, choose Photos>Show Extended Photo Info (COMMAND+OPTION+I) and you’ll get a wealth of info about this shot.

The information here is divided into 5 sections:  Image, File, Location, Camera and Exposure.  If any of those sections isn’t showing you info, click the small right-pointing triangle next to the word to roll down its details.  Likewise, if there’s a section you don’t necessarily want to look at, click its triangle (now pointing downwards) to roll its details up and out of your way.

In the Image section, you’ll find the physical dimensions of the photo as well as the original time and date of the photo.

In File, you’ll find details about the file, itself, including File name, size, the date it was imported and the date it was last modified.

Location is super-handy if you have a camera with a GPS function in it.  Higher end SLR’s may have this feature and the iPhone 3G does as well.  If you’ve imported from a GPS-enabled camera, you’ll see longitude and latitude listed here.  If you’re not using a GPS camera, this information can be added using Places in iPhoto 09 and iPhoto will translate your ‘Place’ info into the Longitude and Latitude.  Awesome.

Camera shows you the make and model of the camera which can be handy if you’ve taken shots on vacation or at an event on multiple cameras and you’re trying to determine which shots cam from which camera.

Exposure lists all the details about the settings of the camera and the lens used when taking the photo.  This information can be incredibly valuable to some people and totally useless to others. If you find it useful, have fun; if you don’t, just know that its there and its totally cool to look at.

iPhoto is an extraordinary tool for organizing your photos and sharing a several photos at a time is really easy with iDisk and Facebook.  Sharing a one or two individual photos can be just as easy by emailing them using the Photo Browser in Mail. 

The Photo Browser is an interface built into Mail that acts as a window to your iPhoto library, allowing look through your Events and Albums and find the photos you’re looking for. 

To start, open Mail and start a New Message by clicking the New Message button in the toolbar or using the shortcut COMMAND+N.  Click in the message section of this window to let the computer know that is where we’re going to put the photo.  (If you want the photo to be in the middle of your message, write the first part before inserting the photos.) Now look across the Toolbar, all the way on the right hand side and you should see the Photo Browser button.  Click it to open the Photo Browser.

(If you see two little arrows instead of this button, it means that you need to open that window wider to reveal it.)

Once the Photo Browser opens, you’ll notice that the organizational system in this window is almost EXACTLY the same as the sidebar in iPhoto and has links for both Event and Photos.  Scroll down that list and you’ll see all your Albums, Smart Albums, Mobile Me Galleries, Facebook Galleries etc…  Click on which ever event or album has the photo you want to email and you’ll see its contents on the bottom half of the Photo Browser window.  Find the photo you want, drag it in to the New Message window and drop it where you want the photo to appear.

When the photo first comes in, its probably going to be solid blue or grey.  Don’t panic. The solid color is just a highlight indicating that the photo is ‘selected,’  click somewhere else in the Message window and the highlight will go away.

Repeat this step for another photo or two if you want to send multiples, but keep in mind that some people have difficulty receiving multiple photos at one time and that most email providers have limits on the size of emails.

Once you’ve got your photos in, look at the bottom edge of the Message window, on the right hand side, and you’ll see “Image Size” with a drop down box next to it.  You can change the size of the photos you’re sending to help with speed and ease of download of the recipient here.  Sending three photos?  Let’s choose Small.  Just one photo for Grandma and we know she’s probably going to print it?  Choose Actual Size.

Try out various ways of attaching your photos to find your own style.  Do you like the photo at Actual Size at the top with your message underneath?  How about a message that has Small photos peppered throughout it?  Mail and the Photo Browser gives you the ability to be as creative with your email as you like, quickly and easily.

Once you’ve done all the heavy lifting by creating Keywords and Smart Albums, sharing photos to your iPhone is quick and easy.

To share your photos to your iPhone, we actually need to be in iTunes.  Plug in your iPhone and iTunes should launch automatically.  Once the Sync screen is up, look for the Photos tab, it should be the fifth tab across the top of the page.

To sync all or part of your iPhoto library to the phone, put a check mark in the box next to ‘Sync Photos from:” and make sure the next box says iPhoto.  Then, choose whether you want to sync all your photos or just some of them. 

Although its nice to have your entire photo library at your fingettips, I think its very cumbersome to flick through thousands of pictures looking for a specific I want to show to my friend, so I highly recommend using Smart Albums to organize this process so that you can find specific photos quickly.

To sync specific albums, click the button next to ‘Selected Albums’ and then put a check mark next to the albums you want to sync.  You can also click on the Album titles and drag them to put them in a specific order. 

Once you’ve gotten all the albums selected and arranged, just click the ‘Sync’ button in the bottom right corner of the iTunes window and iTunes will sync up the photos to your iPhone.

Now you never have to be caught without a photo of your new grandchild, puppy or spouse again!

If you found this info helpful, you may also want to check out these other, related articles:

Using Keywords to organize your iPhoto library

Organizing Photos Using Smart Albums

Creating a ‘Speed Dial’ on your iPhone using Favorites

Making New Things with the + Button

Smart Albums are really cool because they update themselves based on a set of criteria that you define and now that we’ve created and applied Keywords to our important photos, we can use Smart Albums to organize them for us!

Create a new Smart Album using the + Button at the bottom of the left side of to window, when the New Item box pops up at the top, click Smart Album and give it a name, preferably one that corresponds with one of your new Keywords.  Now in the Conditions row, we want to set the first two boxes to be KEYWORD and IS then, in the third box, select the appropriate Keyword.

Now, anytime we add this keyword to a photo, the photo will automatically be added to this Smart Album.  Repeat this process of making Smart Albums for all the loved ones in your life. 

Repeat these steps for each of the important Keywords you’ve created and you’ll have a collection of Smart Albums that help you quickly find the photos you’re looking for.  Also, you could use these Smart Albums to easily sync your favorite photos to your iPhone.

iPhoto provides many great ways to organize photos for showing off the new photos of your favorite monkey to family and friends, but the continuous process of updating albums can be a little cumbersome: keeping track of which new photos have already been dragged into an album can get confusing and time consuming.  Fortunately there’s a simple way to keep all your photos organized using Keywords!

Keywords add identifying tags to photos to help us find them more easily.  To assign keywords to photos you should first make there’s a checkmark next to View>Keywords in the Menu Bar; next, go to Window>Show Keywords (Command+K).  Show Keywords will bring up a list of pre-existing keywords you’ve got in iPhoto already; most of these were probably built in to iPhoto when you got it.  We want to add some Quick Groups to help organize your photos; click the Edit Keyword button and then use our old friend the + Button to make new Keywords.  I have always recommended making a Keyword for each of your kids, your pets and, maybe, for places you’ve gone on vacation.  Once you’re done, click the OK button to return to the Keywords list.

Now, go through your iPhoto library and add keywords appropriately.  When you put your mouse over a picture, you’ll now notice a place to ‘add keywords’, click on that space and start typing in your keyword and iPhoto will fill it in for you based on your list of Keywords.  Too lazy to type?  Me too!  We can also add keywords by selecting one or more pics (remember the Shift and Command keys for multiple selections) and then just clicking the appropriate keyword in the Keyword window.  We’ll see it turn blue to let us know its been applied.  You can apply more than one Keyword to each photo, so if both kids and the dog on in the picture, apply all three Keywords.

Once you’ve applied all the Keywords you want or need, you can quickly look up those photos by using the Search field at the bottom of the screen.  Before searching, click on the little magnifying glass and choose Keyword instead, quickly move your mouse over the keyword buttons that pop up to keep them in view.  If you miss them the first time, its pretty quick, just click on Keywords again in that search field to get another try at it.  

Click on the Keyword you want to look up and iPhoto filters your library to only include that keyword.  You can also click multiple buttons to further filter your results.  For example, to show only photos of Dr. Zeus choose the Keyword with his name, to only show photos of him on vacation, choose both DR.ZEUS and VACATION keywords.

iPhoto has always been a fast and easy way to organize, edit and share your photos and now with iPhoto 09’s Faces feature and Facebook interfacing, it has never been easier to share all your photos online with your friends and family.

First, create a new Album or Smart Album that you’d like to share.  (Remember to look for the + button in the bottom left corner to ADD a new thing!)  Once you’d done that, name it and drag the photos you want to share into it.

When selecting photos to drag over, don’t forget that you can select a range of photos by using the Shift key, or a selection of noncontiguous photos by using the Command key while selecting.

Now that the photos are in the album, you may want to ‘tag’ your friends using Faces if you haven’t done so already.  This is also a good time to adjust the titles of the photos if you’d like.

Once everyone has been tagged and we’re happy with our album, let’s look for the Facebook button on the bottom right corner of the iPhoto window.  Click it and sign in to Facebook to upload your pictures!

You’re going to get a screen that asks you if its OK for iPhoto to have access to your Facebook, if you say ‘yes’, then any time you add, delete or edit the album in iPhoto, those changes will map over and be reflected automatically on Facebook.  Likewise, if someone tags a person in your photo on Facebook, that tag will automatically map back to Faces in iPhoto!