Getting Started
Welcome to the official Apple training course for iPhoto for Mac and iPhoto for iOS. You don’t need any special background to get started, other than having a Mac and/or an iOS device and perhaps a healthy curiosity about what you can do with photos using Apple products.
Learning iPhoto will teach you how to integrate your Mac and iOS device comfortably into your home, school, and work by weaving digital and mobile photography into your daily life.
In this book, we concentrate on how real people use iPhoto. We may even skip some of the more advanced functionality with an eye toward having fun, achieving quick success, and forming a foundation of confidence on which you can build your own uses.
What iPhoto Does for You
There was a time when your photographs were in a shoebox in the closet or, maybe more recently, just stored on your computer or mobile device. Organization wasn’t even a consideration, so finding a particular photo was a chore.
But when all your photos are digital, keeping them organized is streamlined, sharing them is easy, and presenting them in a variety of stunning ways is simple and fun.
A Mac is designed to sit at the heart of your digital life. It’s a computer designed for creativity. Furthermore, your iPhone is one of the most popular cameras in the world. Because Apple includes iPhoto with all current Macs and iOS devices at no charge, you have no better time to learn how to take advantage of iPhoto.
iPhoto teaches you visual literacy: the ability to communicate effectively through photos, a skill that is different from speaking or writing. Making professional-quality photo books, web journals, and slideshows is a skill you can apply throughout your life. Once you develop these skills, you’ll be stunned by how often you use them, whether for personal pleasure or professional advantage.
Learning software isn’t always fun; but sharing photos or creating slideshows, promoting your business, and building a creative report for school can be. You’ll end up learning the iPhoto software along the way.
The Methodology
This book moves through lessons by progressively increasing the complexity of what you do with photos. You start by importing and viewing still images, and then move to organizing and perfecting them, turning still images into moving (dynamic) images and exploring the possibilities of the Apple iCloud web service.
Above all, these lessons are meant to be practical—not esoteric projects to show off the software, but real-life projects for real-life people with time constraints and well-used equipment. The lessons cover iPhoto for Mac and iPhoto for iOS in two separate sections.
iPhoto for Mac OS
In Lessons 1 through 9, you’ll work with photos from the provided iPhoto library. You’ll import pictures from your digital camera, organize, fix, enhance, and back up your library of photos. In Lesson 10, you’ll share photos using iCloud and your Mac.
iPhoto for iOS
In Lessons 11 through 13, you’ll get a thorough walkthrough of iPhoto for iOS devices. In these lessons, you’ll use your own photos to follow the detailed exercises. You’ll learn how to move photos from your Mac to iOS, and how to tag and edit photos. Then you’ll share your images through photo books, slideshows, and unique web journals. In Lesson 14, you’ll share photos using iCloud and your iOS device.
A Word About the Lesson Contents
Often, training materials are professionally created using actors and elaborate productions requiring multiple cameras and a crew. The results may be of high quality, but probably bear little similarity to the kind of photos most families take or business owners can afford.
To make this training as real-world and practical as possible, all the media used in this book was made in precisely the way you make your own photos. The quality of the pictures (for better or worse) is comparable to what you can achieve with point-and-shoot cameras and the iPhone; and the sophistication of the projects is precisely what you can achieve using iPhoto with the same settings (and challenges) you will commonly encounter yourself.
We tried to make sure the events depicted here were recorded in the way you are being taught to work. Ideally, this will give you clear and realistic expectations about what you can do with your newfound skills.
System Requirements
This book is written for iPhoto 9.5.1 on OS X 10.9.2, which is included with any new Macintosh computer. It also covers iPhoto 2.0.1 for iOS devices running iOS 7.7.1 or later. If you have an older version of iPhoto, you will need to upgrade to the current iPhoto version to follow along with every lesson. The upgrade can be purchased through the Mac and iOS App Stores.
Before you begin the lessons in this book, you should have a working knowledge of your Mac, OS X, your iPhone or iPad, and iOS 7. You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to know how to use the mouse, standard menus, and an iOS 7 touch screen.
You should feel comfortable with opening, saving, and closing apps and files on the Mac, and know how to tap, swipe, and pinch in iOS. You will need a working understanding of how OS X organizes files on your computer. If you need to review any of these techniques, see the printed or online documentation that came with your device.
Some exercises will require an Apple ID and an Internet connection.
Copying the iPhoto Lesson Files
The Apple Pro Training Series: iPhoto lesson files must be downloaded to OS X to complete exercises in Lessons 1 through 9. After you save the files to your hard disk, each lesson will instruct you in their use.
To download these files, you must have your book’s access code, which is provided on a card in the back of the printed editions of this book, and on the “Where Are the Lesson Files?” page in electronic editions.
Note
For complete download instructions, go to the section “Downloading an iPhoto Library” in Lesson 1.
Resources
Apple Pro Training Series: iPhoto is not intended to be a comprehensive reference manual, nor does it replace the documentation that comes with the applications. Rather, the book is designed to be used in conjunction with other comprehensive reference guides. These resources include:
Companion Peachpit website: As iPhoto is updated, Peachpit may choose to update lessons as necessary. Please check www.peachpit.com/APTSiPhoto.
The Apple website: www.apple.com
Apple Pro Training Series books:
Apple Pro Training Series: iMovie, by Dion Scoppettuolo, is an excellent companion to this book. Learn how to use iMovie to create first-class movies, advanced slideshows, and fun movie trailers on both OS X and iOS 7.
Apple Pro Training Series: GarageBand, by Mary Plummer, is an in-depth look at GarageBand, in which you build songs, podcasts, and movie scores from scratch, and explore some of the advanced mixing and arranging features of GarageBand.