Top 6 Things I Learned...

while working on the iPhoto 6 Missing Manual

She's done! She's printed! I'm happy to say that the iPhoto 6 Missing Manual is ripe for purchase. As always, it's truly a joy to work on the Missing Manual series, and for this book I was honored to serve as production/tech editor and screen shot goddess.

No matter how well I think I know an application, David always teaches me something new. Here are select tidbits I learned about iPhoto 6:

• Your photo collection is sure to grow at warp speed so take a moment to rate them using the keyboard combination of Command 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to apply 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 stars (in slideshow mode, just press the numbers themselves). This proves invaluable for sorting -- just choose View > Sort Photos > By Rating. What a great tool for those who *sell* their prize-winners to a stock photography company like, oh I don't know, iStockphoto.com and for marking photos destined for future photo books and calendars (great gift ideas!)
  
  
• Turning off the drop shadow in iPhoto > Preferences > Appearance makes scrolling faster.
  
  
• Reclaim hard drive space by emptying the trash. When you trash photos, they go into the iPhoto Trash which you must manually empty by choosing iPhoto > Empty Trash.
  
  
• Maximize your monitor real estate by editing in full screen mode. When in editing mode (accessible by double-clicking a photo or pressing the Edit button on the bottom menu bar), just click the full-screen button shown below. Mouse down to the bottom of your screen to bring up a wealth of controls, then mouse up to the top to see other photos in that particular album or in your library. Super sweet!
  
  
• After editing a photo, pressing the Control key let's you toggle between the the before and after versions. Very handy indeed.
  
  
• When cropping, Option-drag to change the cropping box from horizontal to vertical orientation.

Top 1 Thing I Hate About iPhoto 6

iPhoto 6 is a wonderfully powerful tool and I love using it for photo importing and organizing, and for editing when I just don't have the time to play in Photoshop (or Elements) for more serious editing. My one complaint about this new version is that Apple is trying to force me into using iWeb for posting web photo galleries. That's right, they took away the "Publish to Home Page" option completely. Now I have to export web-friendly sized photos, then upload them onto my iDisk, *then* use the web interface on Mac.com to create a photo gallery. Super ugh. It's a pain, but I suppose it will make me start using iWeb, which is exactly what they want. And I guess by using iWeb for my photo galleries I'll be motivated to start that podcast that I've been planning sooner rather than later.

(sigh) Maybe the blasted Mothership knows best :)