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And why not? Digital models now match film cameras for quality in practical terms for enlargement sizes the vast majority of users care about. You get instant results, and you never have to pay a cent for film or processing if you're content to store and display your images digitally, which is quite cheap if you burn them to CDs. With an inexpensive and ink-jet printer, you can make your own hard copy prints and enlargements for fraction of what photofinishers charge, and you only need to print the shots you like.
Not only that, you can crop, retouch, enhance, and otherwise manipulate your digital images to your heart's content before printing or otherwise displaying, even make your own greeting cards.
However, one dark cloud in this sunny garden of delights is the technical learning curve that must be climbed. It's one thing to have a digital camera, a computer, image editing software, and a printer, but quite another to know how to use them effectively.
Apple Computer has addressed this problem in its usual integrated and elegant way. Every new Mac and copy of OS X that has shipped since January, 2002, comes bundled with an application called iPhoto, which Steve Jobs unveiled at Macworld Expo San Francisco nearly two years ago. iPhoto version 2 was released in January, 2003, with a raft of improvements and enhancements.
iPhoto has no pretensions of challenging the digital image editing software colossus Adobe Photoshop, or even the "lite" Photoshop Elements consumer-oriented program. Instead, it is targeted at users who don't want to become digital graphic artists, but rather just want to get the best from their digital snapshots.
That's not to say that iPhoto is not a powerful program -- it is. There are a wide range of tools and shortcuts for editing and enhancing your digital photos, plus database and photo-presentation features to help you keep your digital photos organized and display them to their best effect.
Unfortunately, like most software these days, iPhoto is very light in the documentation department, so many users will probably never discover or learn to use more than a fraction of iPhoto's potential.
Enter the subject of this review: "the book that should have been in the box" -- iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual, by David Pogue, Joseph Schorr, and Derrick Story. Before I address the book itself, let me say a few words about the authors, who constitute something of a "dream team" in creating this type of book.
David Pogue probably needs no introduction if you've been around the Mac community for any amount of time. A New York Times computer columnist, former columnist for Macworld magazine, and author/co-author of more than 30 computer books, including six in the "Missing Manuals" series and six "For Dummies", editions (including Opera For Dummies and Classical Music For Dummies -- he's a former Broadway conductor and professional pianist). Pogue has an entertaining writing style that quickly makes you feel right at home with his prose.
Joseph Schorr is another Macworld magazine veteran who has previously collaborated with David Pogue on the superb Macworld Mac Secrets series of books, a of which there are now six, and which rank among my favorite Mac volumes ever.
The third member of the of like iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual" troika is Derrick Story, managing editor of the O'Reilly network (Pogue Press, publisher of the Missing Manuals series is an imprint of O'Reilly and Associates), and creator of the MacDevCenter for O'Reilly and Associates, as well as being manager of his own commercial photography business, Story Photography. Story is also the author of the Digital Photography Pocket Guide, which I reviewed here last week.
I don't usually dwell this long on author biographies in my book reviews, but these three guys as a team are something extraordinary. Now, on to the book.
iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual is structured in five parts with 14 chapters, three appendices, and an Introduction. It follows the tried and true "The Missing Manual" motif with lots of screen shot illustrations and informative sidebars amplifying technical points in the main text, as well as, befitting the subject matter, in this case a lot of photographs.
Part one, comprising the first three chapters, is a book-within-a-book entitled "Digital Cameras: The Missing Manual."
Chapter One, " Welcome To Digital Photography," is what it sounds like -- an elementary overview of the topic, with tips on choosing and buying a digital camera; notes on image resolution, memory capacity, different types of memory, battery life, lens quality and zoom options, various external features and accessories, and of course price.
Chapter Two, "Composing Brilliant Photos", addresses basic composition techniques.
Chapter 3, "Beyond The Simple Snapshot," covers sports photography, portraiture, low light photography, self-portraits, kid photography, theater photography, underwater photography, travel photography, flash, landscape shots, weddings, sunsets, the home studio, nighttime photography, time-lapse photography, and digital movies.
Part Three, "iPhoto Basics," moves beyond the camera equipment and its use to the main focus, so to speak, of the book -- storing, organizing, and adjusting your digital photos using iPhoto, and transforming them from a random collection of snapshots into professional-looking slide shows, prints, movies, Web pages, posters, email, Desktop picture sets, or bound books.
Chapter 4, "Camera Meets Mac," tells you how to get your photos from the camera into the computer, and introduces you to the iPhoto application. Points covered include system requirements, how to get iPhoto (as noted, it's been bundled free on every Mac sold since January 2002, and can also be downloaded from Apple's Website, also for free), and getting your pictures into iPhoto.
Chapter 5, "The Digital Shoebox," addresses working with your photos; sorting, displaying, info and titles, searching, deleting, albums, keywords, and movies.
Chapter 6, "Editing Your Shots," gets you started using iPhoto's image editing tools to enhance and improve your pictures by making use of the Enhance button, cropping, retouching, adjusting brightness and contrast, fixing red-eye, using black and white, and retouching, as well as customizing the iPhoto tool bar and some notes on moving beyond iPhoto to more sophisticated image editing applications.
Part Three: "Meet Your Public," is all about displaying your photographs.
Chapter 7, "The iPhoto Slide Show," is a basic tutorial on setting up slide shows with digital photos, including such niceties as adding sound tracks using the iTunes digital jukebox application.
Chapter 8, "Making Prints," tells you how to get the best results from photos you decide to print out yourself or order online.
Chapter 9, "Photos Online," continues the thread, and covers displaying and sharing your photos over the Internet via email or publishing on websites, as well as burning photo CDs.
Chapter 10, "Publishing An iPhoto Book," fills you in on using Apple's Book online service to create bound hard copy books of your photographs and having them look professional.
Chapter 11, "From iPhoto to QuickTime," introduces you to the wonderful world of multimedia -- making movies with your digital photos.
Chapter 12, "iDVD Slide Shows," is especially for lucky folks with either a DVD burner, or a super drive equipped Mac who are able to burn DVDs.
Part Four: "iPhoto Stunts," contains Chapter 13: "Screensavers, Desktop Pictures, And AppleScript," which among other things tell how to get photos into your Palm organizer, and included a short tutorial on how to use the AppleScript programming language to automate functions.
Chapter 14, "iPhoto File Management," is about exporting your digital photos to CDs and DVDs, making backups, managing and sharing photo libraries, and going beyond iPhoto.
Part Five: "Appendices," includes three of them, "Troubleshooting,"iPhoto, Menu By Menu, and "Where To Go From Here." There is also a seven-page Index.
I've learned to expect a lot from the Missing Manuals series books, and as usual, iPhoto: The Missing Manual does not disappoint. If you have a digital camera, a Mac, and the iPhoto software, this book is guaranteed to improve your picture-taking results. At $24.95, it costs about as much as buying and processing a couple of rolls of 35 mm film. It's eminently well worth the modest price.
iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual
By David Pogue, Joseph Schorr, Derrick Story
May 2003
Series: The Missing Manuals
0-596-00506-7, Order Number: 5067
304 pages,
$24.95 US, $38.95 CA, �17.50 UK
For more information, visit:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/iphoto2/
Tags: Reviews ï Book Reviews ï MooresViews ï
