By now almost every Mac user has played around with Photo Booth. It is so easy to get caught up in a photo session with friends making funny faces and cool poses. If we look into Photo Booth a tad further, we can find many more alternative uses for it…
Take Great Snapshots
Here is some helpful advice on posing for the iSight from a professional photographer. Find a light source that is not the monitor and position myself facing the light. Alternatively, turn off all the lights in the room, turn your monitors brightness up, and use it for your light. Using a lamp is helpful, since dramatic shadows look great with some of the effects. Position your body at a slight angle to the iSight, meaning do not look at it straight on. This is particularly useful for people who wear glasses, as demonstrated below. The human body at an angle is also more flattering. Stay still when in low light conditions. The flash provided by the screen is rather soft, so be still when a picture is being taken or it might come out blurry. Also, sit at least 1 ft. away from the screen, but still fill the frame. Don’t leave space above my head. Look below at the differences between a poorly shot photo and a decent one, and that’s not even my good side!
Bad photo: Looking straight on. |
Good photo: Positioned at an angle. |
Connect a Better Camera
For those of us with a built-in iSight camera, we have the option of connecting a miniDV camera with Firewire. Just plug in the smaller end of the Firewire cable to camera and the fatter end to the computer. Open Photo Booth and ta da! Photo Booth now uses the Firewire camera instead of the iSight. Now I have more versatility with camera placement and lighting, and should have a better lens and manual control over the picture quality.
Upload Photo Booth to Flickr!
FlickrBooth is a simple plug-in for Photo Booth that will upload snapshots directly to Flickr! FlickrBooth can be downloaded here.
Create a Live Security Camera
Did you know you could be watching your room from the iSight while you are gone via email? Using Automator, I can run a script that makes a new mail message in Mail, takes a photo with Photo Booth, attaches that photo to the email, and sends it to my email. In iCal, I can schedule a recurring timer to run the Automator script however often I want. Take a photo every minute to catch someone tampering with your Mac. Here is a simple script below to automate taking a photo and sending it via email. The only downside to this script is that iPhoto must be open for it to work.
Is anyone out there up to the challenge? Create an Automator / AppleScript workflow that hides Photo Booth during this process or even displays an alternative screen! Be featured on iUseApple.com! Ask Steve Blue for more details.
Change the Photo Booth Effects
I found this awesome article on macosxhints.com that explains how to change the effects in Photo Booth. I must be a little Quartz Composer savvy to make this work. I successfully made this work, but remember to back up the original files so Photo Booth can be returned to it’s original state!
Discover If the Apple Remote is Working
I can point the Apple Remote at the iSight and see the light inside turn on when I press a button. This is handy if I think the Apple Remote is running low on battery or is malfunctioning.
I want to get the most out of my photographs! Scrapbooking family memories with an Apple is a piece of cake, but how do I make the photos look their best? When my pictures reach iPhoto they can be tilted, blurred, overexposed, afflicted with red eye, the list goes on… Well, there are things we can do inside the camera to reduce the amount of problems with our photos. Here is a basic tutorial about good photo composition.
First, let’s review the basics of editing photos in iPhoto. To edit any photo, double click the photo in Library view. A window like the one below will appear.
If I make a change to the photograph I do not like just Undo or hit Cmd+Z. I can not undo the changes once I click Done or move to another photo. iPhoto keeps the original image stored on my Mac. When I make a change, iPhoto creates a whole new image in the Modified folder in the Pictures folder of my user account. iPhoto then links to the edited image in the Library. Making a whole new file for the image is the smart way to go, so I can always reimport the original to the Library if I really do mess up while making alterations. This does hog up disk space though, so I make smart edits and when I am satisfied with them delete the originals on my Hard Drive. Remember to Undo changes immediately if I do not like them! The arrows in the bottom right of the iPhoto window allow me to scroll through my iPhoto Library.
Full Screen Editing is a Must!
Editing in full screen view provides a distraction free environment for me to edit photos in. To edit in full screen, click the full screen icon at the bottom of the iPhoto window.
All the editing tools are still available at the bottom of the screen, with an added bonus! A zoom tool! Slide the zoom slider and a small navigation window will appear. I can zoom into the specific part of the photo I want to retouch.
There are a set of tools available to us at the bottom of the iPhoto window. I am going to explain the problem each tool addresses.
The photo is turned 90 degrees
If I click the Rotate button, the photo will turn 90 degrees. It will keep turning 90 degrees if I click again. Click Rotate until the image is right side up.
I want my photo to be sized for an 8 1/2 x 11
The constrain tool will allow me to crop the image to the specific dimensions needed to print the following proportions:
Select the appropriate size for my photo in the Constrain menu. I can even select a custom size, if I need something specific for a collage or a scrapbook. A clear box will appear above the photo, with greyed out regions that represent the part fo the photo we will crop off when resizing. Fine tune the crop marks by dragging the clear square around the photo with the mouse. Click Crop.
I need to cut off part of the photo
The crop tool will allow me to select a region of the photo I want to keep and throw away the rest. Click and hold the left mouse button to drag a rectangle around the section of the photo I want to keep. Fine tune the selection by hovering the mouse over the edge of the rectangle and moving the edges to and fro. Click the Crop Icon.
There is red eye in my photo
Red eye is easily eliminated in iPhoto. Click the Red Eye icon and then click the centers of the eyes that need to be corrected.
There is an undesirable word in my photo
In the iPhoto window example above, I had to retouch the man’s name tag so it wouldn’t display his name. I did this with the Retouch tool. This tool masks undesirable parts of the image by magically painting the pixels around your brush to fill in the bad part. This is only good for small swipes, but does not really compare to the Clone Stamp Tool in Photoshop. Click the Retouch Tool and paint over the bad part of the photograph.
How do I add photo studio effects?
Click the Effects Tools and a window with nine thumbnails will appear.
Click on a thumbnail of the desired effect. Click again to see the effect happen even more. Click multiple effects to see who they work together. For instance, click B+W, Black Vignette, and Boost Color. Click Original to return to the original image.
My photo is too light or too dark
Even professional photographers can battle with over or underexposed photos. There may be a little fine tuning necessary for the photo to have brilliant colors. iPhoto has a very basic tool called Enhance for this very problem. More in depth Adjustment tools are available in the Adjust tool. Usually iPhoto gets it right the first time, so Click the Magic Wand Enhance Tool to see your photo brighten up and the colors become more distinct. This only works to a certain point however. If my image is well balanced, meaning the darker values have as much representation as the lighter ones, then iPhoto will easily correct it. That is to say, there are as many blacks as midtones as whites in the photo. The Enhance tool works correctly only if the entire image is overexposed or underexposed. If the image is extremely contrasty, then we may need to resort to some manual fine tuning of the exposure.
Enhance Didn’t Work, So What Do I Do Now?
Immediately Undo (Cmd + Z) the enhancement to return to the original photo. Click the Adjust tool and a set of tools will appear. I suggest tweaking all of these settings to see what they do. Just Undo anything undesirable or Click the Reset Sliders Button. In terms of Exposure, there are a few sliders here that will be useful to us.
Color correcting requires a keen eye when looking at the photograph. Ask these questions: Are the blacks truly black in the photo? Are the whites really white? If what is supposed to be white appears grey, this means the photo is underexposed. If everything casted a certain color? Does everything appear shifted toward blue, for instance?
How to read the graph
The Graph labeled Levels at the bottom of the Adjust Tools is a representation of the amount of Red, Green, and Blue from dark to light values. Exposure is represented in the height of the graph. The most ideal graph would be a bell shaped curve that spikes suddenly on each end. If the histogram is short, this means the photo is entirely underexposed. When the histogram is too tall and busting out the top of the graph, this means the photograph is entirely overexposed. If there is a lot of dark blue in my photo, the blue histogram will spike on the left side of the graph. If there is a significant amount of light red in my photo, this will be represented by a spike on the right side of the graph in the red histogram.
How to correct the photo using Exposure and Levels
The Exposure slider will adjust the overall exposure for the photo. Slide the Exposure slider so that the histogram fills about 3/4 of the graph vertically. I can adjust what iPhoto thinks is white and black manually. If the histogram already reaches the ends of the graph horizontally, then the photo is probably overcontrasted. But, if the graph doesn’t reach the edges there is still hope! The idea here is to tighten the graph horizontally. Slide the right slider beneath the graph left to adjust the whites. Slide the left slider beneath the graph left to adjust the blacks. Keep an eye on the photo, making sure all the midtones do not get lost in the adjustment.
That’s it! Those are the basics to editing photos in iPhoto. Search in the right sidebar to find more articles on iUseApple concerning how to use iPhoto. There will be more blog posts to come soon: including how to impress friends with a slideshow and how to submit a photo album to be printed by Apple.
Importing images from my camera is so easy! All I need is my digital camera, USB cable, and the application iPhoto to be open to import photos automatically to my Mac. This method should work with pretty much any consumer or professional camera on the market including Kodak, Canon, Nikon, FujiFilm, and even more.
Open iPhoto. If iPhoto is not in the Dock, I can find it by opening the Finder and navigating to the Applications folder.
Connect the smaller end of the USB cable to my camera. The bigger end goes into my Mac.
Wait a few seconds. iPhoto will respond by displaying a black window asking if I want to import the photos from my camera.Click Import. This may take a few minutes. A progress bar will appear at the bottom of the iPhoto window and a thumbnail of each image will appear as I import them. That’s all there is to it!
Now I can organize the photos in Photo and view them individually or even make a slide show with Audio!
iPhoto places imported images into a specific folder on my hard drive. This folder is located at User: Pictures: iPhoto Library: Originals: Year: Roll #. So, if I want to give these pictures to a friend, I can navigate to this folder and then burn the image files to a CD. If I edit a picture in iPhoto, iPhoto places the edited version in a separate folder located at User: Pictures: iPhoto Library: Modified: Year: Roll #. This will be important to remember for the next blog post about iPhoto.
Importing Photos from a CD or Hard Drive
If a friend gives me pictures on a CD, I can import them to my iPhoto Library in a similar way. Select Import to Library… from the drop down File Menu.
Select the images and Click Choose. The photos will now be imported to my iPhoto Library.
Check back soon for a follow up to this article about editing photos with iPhoto.
Sometimes when I want to upload photos to a site there are size restrictions. The photos my digital camera takes are enormous in file size, so I need to trim them down to put them online. If I resize the dimensions of the image to be smaller, then the filesize will decrease.
Image files a digital camera takes can have big dimensions. My 7.0 Megapixel camera takes pictures 3072×2304 @ 72 dpi. What does this mean? The image’s dimension is 3072 pixels wide and 2304 pixels high. The image’s resolution is 72 dots per inch. 72 dpi is the web standard for image resolution. Any higher resolution significantly increases file size. If I pack 300 dpi into the same image, there are many more pixels, making the changes in color more detailed. 300 dpi is good for printing an image, but that’s a whole other discussion.
Since most digital cameras’ resolution is 72 dpi, all I really have to worry about are the dimensions when resizing a picture to give it a smaller filesize.
To check an images information in iPhoto, select an image in the library and hit Apple+I.
To resize a photo in iPhoto 6 I must first select the file or files I want to resize. I can resize more than one image by cherry picking images in the library by holding down Apple as I select images. Or if the images are in a list, click the first image, hold down Shift and select the last image.
Once the images are selected:
In iPhoto 6, go to the top menu and select File: Export.
In older versions of iPhoto, go to the top menu and select Share: Export.
A settings window appears. This is where we will change the filesize of the image to be more appropriate for the web.
Different websites have different guidelines for the maximum filesize an image can be. A good and standard dimension to make a photo for the web is 1024×768. This gives the ability for others to even use the images as a decent wallpaper. Images exported as a 1024 x 768 JPEG will most likely be around 500 - 600 kilobytes in filesize. This is still under a megabyte. I noticed MySpace has a 600 megabyte rescriction for photos. If the filesize needs to be smaller, make the image 800 x 600.
Select JPG from the format selector.
Enter 1024 into the width dialog. iPhoto automatically knows the height should be 768.
Make sure use file extension is checked.
Check Use filename if I want the image’s filename to be the same. In the next dialog you can even give the image a different filename. Or if you want to rename the images based on the album they are in, select Use album name.
Click Export.
Choose the folder where I want to export the picture(s).
In this box, make sure .jpg is at the end of the filename.
Hit OK.
Here is a cool Automator trick that displays an iPhoto Browser anywhere in OS X.
Open Automator
Select iPhoto in the library browser.
Drag and drop Ask for Photos into the well on the right.
This action opens an iPhoto Browser. I can also open the pictures I select in the browser window in Preview so I can edit them.
Select Preview in the library browser.
Drag and drop Open Images in Preview into the well, underneath Ask for Photos.
Select File: Save As Plug-in. Name the plug-in Browse Photos and select Script Menu as the type of plug-in.
Now, if I click the script menu in the menu bar and select Browse Photos my iPhoto Library appears. If I don’t see a script icon in my menu bar, then follow the instructions at the end of this post. I can now drag and drop images to any application. Maybe I want to send a few pictures to a friend. I can just drag and drop the pictures I want into my email in Apple Mail from the browser. If I Hit Choose in the browser, Preview will open the image so I can edit it.
I found this tip on Automator.us: http://www.automator.us/examples-07.html
