Introduction

Taking pictures using any digital camera is fun! With the latest cameras and the technology that’s packed into them, you don’t need to spend too much time at all to learn how to become an amazingly talented photographer.

Snapping candid and posed photos of your family, friends, pets, coworkers, teammates, and the people you interact with in your everyday life (or at special events, parties, or while on vacation) allows you to capture memories that you can later look back on and reminisce about for many years to come.

After you’ve taken your photos, the possibilities for what you can do with them and who they can be shared with are limitless. In addition to creating traditional prints of your favorite photos that you can frame, you can showcase your photos within a traditional photo album or scrapbook or simply give out prints to people.

Thanks to the Internet, you also are able to email photos to one or more recipients, publish them online in a variety of ways, and create many different types of Photo Projects that also allow you to showcase and share your favorite shots in a multitude of ways within cyberspace.

Thanks to the immense popularity of online social networking sites, such as Facebook, you can easily create an online presence for yourself and custom-design your personal Facebook page with the photos you take and then share those images with people you know or even total strangers (depending on how you adjust Facebook’s privacy settings).

Until just a few years ago, managing, editing, enhancing, sharing, printing, and archiving digital photos was a time-consuming, often confusing, and tedious process that required the use of multiple software packages running on a state-of-the-art computer system.

With the Mac and iPhoto ’11 software, Apple has changed all that. Today, the iPhoto ’11 software, which comes bundled with all new iMacs and MacBooks, is a single, extremely powerful, yet surprisingly intuitive tool for handling just about everything having to do with digital photography (except actually taking pictures).

iPhoto ’11 is designed to make importing photos from your digital camera to your Mac a straightforward, hassle-free process. After loading your digital images into the iPhoto ’11 software, you can easily sort and organize them in a variety of ways and then edit your images using powerful photo editing and enhancement tools that can dramatically improve the look of your photos.

These tools are much easier to use than what’s offered in competing digital photography software products. iPhoto ’11 allows you to fix problems with your photos (such as red-eye, blurriness, contrast, or color issues), improve their overall appearance, and add special effects—all with a few clicks of the mouse.

After investing just a few minutes into editing your favorite images, you can share them with friends via email and the Web (without ever leaving the iPhoto ’11 program). Plus, you can print your images using a photo printer, upload your favorite shots and have a professional lab create your prints (and ship them to you), and create a wide range of extremely classy Photo Projects, such as digital slideshows, greeting cards, photo books, calendars, and digital albums, which you can easily share with friends and loved ones.

Best of all, you can do some extremely impressive things with your digital images in just minutes, without having any artistic skill whatsoever. iPhoto ’11 comes chock-full of professionally designed templates that allow you to drag and drop your images to showcase and share photos is some exciting new ways—all without ever leaving iPhoto ’11.

As you’re about to discover, iPhoto ’11 is loaded with new features and innovative ways to edit, showcase, and share your digital photos. Using a combination of text, iPhoto ’11 screenshots, sample photos, video tutorials, and audio-based content, Using iPhoto ’11 helps you get the most out of this incredibly powerful software; plus, it teaches you how to quickly improve your photo-taking skills. In no time, you’ll be proud and excited to share the pictures you take with others!

When it comes to taking digital pictures, you have three main camera options:

• You can use the camera that’s probably built into your cell phone (such as your iPhone or Blackberry).

• You can invest between $100 and $300 on any one of the newer, feature-packed, point-and-shoot digital cameras offered by manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Sony, Olympus, Lumix (Panasonic), Casio, Samsung, Pentax, FujiFilm, Polaroid, or Simga. These point-and-shoot cameras are all self-contained in one unit, have dozens of built-in “auto” shooting modes, and enable you to take extremely high-resolution images in a wide range of situations and in almost any type of lighting—something that was not technologically possible just a few years ago without using extremely expensive, professional-level equipment.

• If you consider yourself to be a hobbyist or want more control over what’s possible as you’re actually taking pictures, you might want to invest in a mid- to high-end Digital SLR camera (priced between several hundred and several thousand dollars, depending on the make and model, and which accessories and optional equipment you purchase).

Digital SLR cameras, from companies such as Canon and Nikon, have interchangeable lenses, external flash units, and a variety of optional accessories; plus, they provide better manual controls in all shooting situations. These cameras typically also have much better quality lenses than point-and-shoot cameras, which results in more detailed photos that showcase richer colors, greater depth, and more detail in each of your shots.

Regardless of what type of digital camera you use, after your photos are shot, iPhoto ’11 for your Mac offers extremely cutting-edge and powerful tools for importing, organizing, editing, enhancing, sharing, printing, archiving, and creating a variety of Photo Projects with your favorite images.

With this amazing software package (which is part of Apple’s iLife ’11 suite of applications) at your disposal, you’re about to discover how rewarding digital photography can be. Plus, you can benefit from all the relatively new ways you can enjoy and share your photos after they’re shot.

How This Book Is Organized

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of digital photography when using iPhoto ’11 for the Mac as your primary tool for managing, editing, sharing, printing, and archiving your photos.

Using iPhoto ’11 also provides two chapters that are chock-full of valuable advice about how to improve your picture-taking skills. So, after you enhance your ability to take visually impressive and professional-quality photos and combine this skill with the power and state-of-the-art features built into your digital camera and the tools offered in iPhoto ’11, your ability to shoot and create truly eye-catching images that you’ll be proud to share with friends and family is well within your reach.

Using iPhoto ’11 offers you the following:

• An overview of all new features, functions, and commands built into the latest edition of Apple’s iPhoto software for the Mac.

• A step-by-step guide for importing your digital images into iPhoto ’11 from your digital camera and a variety of other sources.

• Complete information about how to properly organize your digital photo collection so individual images are easy to find and view.

• Tips and strategies used by professional photographers for taking better pictures using any digital camera.

• Everything you need to know about using each of iPhoto ’11’s menus and accessing the various functions and commands built into the software.

• Information and step-by-step tutorials for editing and enhancing your photos using the tools built into iPhoto ’11.

• Instruction on how to export your images for use in other applications and how to publish your images on the Web.

• A comprehensive discussion about how to print your photos and create a variety of Photo Projects (including slideshows, photo books, greeting cards, and calendars) using iPhoto ’11.

• The information you need to safely and securely back up and archive your complete digital photo library.

Using This Book

This book allows you to customize your own learning experience. The step-by-step instructions in the book give you a solid foundation for using iPhoto ’11, while content, including video tutorials and audio sidebars, provide the following:

• Demonstrations of step-by-step tasks covered in the book

• Additional tips or information on a topic

• Practical advice and suggestions

• Direction for more advanced tasks not covered in the book

Here’s a quick look at a few structural features designed to help you get the most out of this book.

• Chapter objective: At the beginning of each chapter is a brief summary of topics addressed in that chapter. This objective enables you to quickly see what is covered in the chapter.

Many topics are connected to other topics in various ways. Cross-references help you link related information together, no matter where that information appears in the book. When another section is related to one you are reading, a cross-reference directs you to a specific location in the book where you can find the related information.

Let Me Try It Let Me Try It tasks are presented in a step-by-step sequence so you can easily follow along.

Show Me Show Me videos walks you through tasks you’ve just got to see—including bonus advanced techniques.

Tell Me More Tell Me More audios delivers practical insights straight from the experts.

Special Features

More than just a book, your Using product integrates step-by-step video tutorials and valuable audio sidebars delivered through the Free Web Edition that comes with every Using book. For the price of the book, you get online access anywhere with a Web connection. You have no books to carry, content is updated as the technology changes, and you get the benefit of video and audio learning.

About the Using Web Edition

The Web Edition of every Using book is powered by Safari Books Online, allowing you to access the video tutorials and valuable audio sidebars. Plus, you can search the contents of the book, highlight text and attach a note to that text, print your notes and highlights in a custom summary, and cut and paste directly from Safari Books Online.

To register this product and gain access to the Free Web Edition and the audio and video files, go to http://quepublishing.com/using.