18. Burning Photos to CD or DVD from iPhoto ’11
Learn how to burn a large collection of your photos to CD or DVD from iPhoto ’11.
If you want to share a large number of photos with someone else and don’t want to publish your images on an online photo service to do so, one of the more practical ways to accomplish this is to burn your images onto a CD or DVD. After all, when sending high-resolution photos via email, due to file size restrictions on most email accounts, you can’t directly email more than a handful of images at a time. So, if you’re trying to share 25, 50, 100, or more photos with someone, email is not a practical option.
Burning your photos to CD is also useful if you want to view your images on another computer. Transferring the images to a DVD also offers several benefits. For example, you can view your images on a television set that’s equipped with a DVD player. DVDs also hold much more data than CDs, so many more high-resolution digital images can be stored on them.
A single, blank CD-R that’s compatible with the Mac’s optical drive can hold up to 700MB of data. A blank DVD-R that’s compatible with most recent and current-model Mac SuperDrive optical drives can hold up to 4.7GB of data.
Transferring your photos to CDs or DVDs is also useful for maintaining a safe archive of your images. This chapter explains how to transfer images from iPhoto ’11 to a CD or DVD using your Mac’s SuperDrive optical drive (and blank CD or DVD media).
Tip
You can purchase blank (writable) CDs and DVDs from any office supply or consumer electronics store. They typically come in packs of 5, 10, 25, 50, or 100. Be sure to purchase the optical media format that’s compatible with your Mac’s optical drive.
Burning Photos to DVD Using iPhoto ’11’s Share Using iDVD Command
iDVD is a standalone application that is part of the iLife ’11 suite. It’s used for creating DVD presentations that can be burned onto a DVD and then viewed on almost any computer or television set that’s equipped with a DVD player. Like other applications in the iLife ’11 suite, iDVD uses themes, so you can create extremely impressive presentations and distribute them on DVD without having to do any programming or know anything about video production or graphic design.
Caution
iDVD is a powerful program that, like iPhoto ’11, takes some time to learn how to use. For more information about this program, visit www.apple.com/ilife/idvd/.
When you use this application exclusively with iPhoto ’11, you can create engaging slide presentations using your images stored on DVD for easy distribution and viewing.
Start by selecting the images you want to create into a DVD-based slideshow presentation. This process is totally separate from creating a slideshow photo project in iPhoto ’11. In this case, you can choose a group of individual images or use the contents of entire Albums, Events, or folders.
After highlighting and selecting your image selections, access the Share pull-down menu from iPhoto ’11 and select the iDVD option. This launches the iDVD application and exports your preselected images from iPhoto ’11 and imports them into iDVD.
Note
If the iDVD application is not installed on your Mac, the Share Using iDVD menu option in iPhoto ’11 is not available to you.
After selecting a theme for your DVD presentation, you can include titles, subtitles, music, and other effects. iDVD requires that you edit the introductory animated sequence that viewers will see when they insert the DVD into a computer or DVD player connected to a television. This step might include creating separate chapters for your DVD presentation, depending on the theme you select.
You also need to customize the photo slide presentation for the DVD using the customizable options offered by iDVD. This step includes choosing your background music, slide transition effects, and length of time each slide is displayed on the screen. A wide range of customizable options is available.
At any time during the customization process, you can preview your DVD presentation on your Mac’s screen. When the entire presentation is edited and ready for its debut, click on the Burn DVD icon located at the bottom of the iDVD program window, next to the Play Preview icon. Insert a blank DVD into your Mac’s optical drive and follow the prompts.
After your presentation is burned onto DVD, it will play in any DVD player or any computer (including a PC running Windows) that’s equipped with an optical drive capable of playing movie DVDs. The DVD’s intro screen automatically appears when the DVD is inserted into a player and the Play button is pressed (just as it would be when watching any DVD movie).
By combining the entertaining and visually impressive themes built into iDVD with your own digital images, you can create engaging slideshow presentations and distribute them via DVD (as opposed to publishing them online).
Tip
As you already know, all the applications built into iLife ’11 are designed to work together seamlessly. So, if you want to create a presentation that combines video footage, still images, music, sound effects, titles, subtitles, animated transitions, and a wide range of other production elements, you can produce it using iMovie in conjunction with iPhoto. You then can use iDVD to create DVDs of your movie presentations, which can incorporate your still digital images currently stored in iPhoto ’11.
Copying Photos to CD or DVD Using the Burn Command
When you use the Burn command to copy image files to a CD or DVD, your Mac treats the optical media as it would any other external hard drive or flash drive, allowing you to export files and copy them to another location. This process copies the images you select to a CD or DVD, but the photos can be viewed only on another Mac running iPhoto.
After the CD or DVD is inserted into your Mac’s optical drive, and you’ve accessed the Burn command from the Share pull-down menu, at the bottom of the iPhoto screen you see a prompt asking you to enter a name for the disc. The default option is iPhoto Library – [Today’s Date]. Directly under this prompt, you see the number of images to be copied and the available space remaining on the disc.
To continue the Burn process, click on the Burn icon located in the lower-right corner of the screen. A confirmation window with the heading Burn Disc appears. From this window, if you click on the small blue and black downward-pointing arrow icon, the window expands and several additional Burn options are displayed. You can customize these options by changing the pull-down menu and check box selections, or you can simply leave the default selections intact. Again, click on the Burn icon to continue.
A progress window is displayed as the disc is being burned. How long this process takes depends on the read/write speed of your optical drive and the number of images being copied. Keep in mind that you’re creating a copy of your images. Thus, the images being burned on the disc also remain intact in iPhoto ’11, stored in their original Event folders.
When the burn process is complete, the disc is ejected from your Mac. Place the disc in a CD box or envelope to protect it from getting scratched. Again, the CD or DVD you just burned can be read only by other Macs running iPhoto.
Caution
To burn a CD or DVD that allows your iPhoto images to be viewed by any computer (including PCs running Windows), you must first export your images from iPhoto using the Export command under the File pull-down menu and then use the Burn Disc command available in the Finder. See the following “Show Me” and “Let Me Try It” sections for step-by-step directions on how to do this.
SHOW ME Media 18.1—Burn photos to a CD or DVD that can be read by any computer, including PCs running Windows
Access this video file through your registered Web Edition at http://www.quepublishing.com.
LET ME TRY ITBurning Photos to a CD or DVD That Can Be Read by Any Computer
The Burn command available in iPhoto allows you to create a disc that contains image files readable only by a Mac running iPhoto. To create a disc of your images that can be read from any computer (including PCs running Windows), follow these steps:
- Select and highlight the images, Events, Albums, or folders you want to copy to the disc.
- Use the Export command under the File pull-down menu to export the images from iPhoto and store them in a directory on your Mac’s internal hard drive (or on an external drive). See Chapter 10, “Exporting Your Images,” for directions on how to do this. The files are exported in a file format that you select and that can be read by Macs and PCs, regardless of what software is being used to access them from the disc. The most common file format in which to export digital pictures is JPEG. (Choose the highest quality when exporting to have the most flexibility with the images later.)
- Using the Mac’s Finder, locate the directory where you exported the photos. Either select the entire folder containing your images by clicking on it once or double-click on the folder to open it and view thumbnails of the images the folder contains.
- With the images or folder selected in the Finder (not in iPhoto ’11), access the Burn to Disc command under the File pull-down menu. To continue the process, insert a blank disc into your computer’s optical drive. Make sure the comprehensive file size of all images does not exceed the capacity of the disc; otherwise, an error message is displayed telling you to choose fewer images to burn to the disc.
- A window appears prompting you to enter a name for the disc. Below the Disc Name field is a pull-down menu allowing you to select the burn speed. Click the Burn icon in the lower-right corner of the window to continue.
- A progress window is displayed as your files are being copied and burned onto the disc. The disc is ejected from the drive when the burn process is completed. This process takes several minutes, depending on the read/write speed of your Mac’s optical drive and the number of images being copied.