The more you work with iMovie, the more you appreciate the way Apple integrates related programs like iTunes. If you use iPhoto or Aperture, you’ll experience another case of synergy.

In iMovie’s Libraries list, the first offering is your iPhoto library. Select it and you see what amounts to iPhoto Lite: a panel of thumbnail images of shots from your iPhoto library. Using the drop-down menu just above the thumbnails, you can browse your photos by event, album, folder, or according to other iPhoto presets (like flagged photos or photos added during your last import). You can filter your photos based on Faces or Places you identified in iPhoto. too. And you can view any Facebook albums you synced with iPhoto.

Figure 12-2. The photo browser displays all the pictures you have in iPhoto or Aperture. Use the drop-down menu to find photos from certain albums or folders only. Use the filter menu to view just photos, videos, or flagged items. Note the search box on the right. As you type into it, iMovie narrows your choices to photos that have matching titles or keywords. It’s an amazingly quick way to pinpoint one photo out of several thousand.

Here are more handy photo browser tips:

Figure 12-3. You can have iMovie display all your iPhoto or Aperture visuals, or restrict them to just photos, videos, or flagged items.

Your Aperture library works in iMovie just like the iPhoto library does. The navigation menu in Figure 12-2 works the same way. The only difference is that it shows Projects instead of the iPhoto-equivalent events. Other than that, everything works identically.

If you don’t have iPhoto or Aperture, you add images to your movie by locating them in the Finder and dragging them into your project window.

Once you add a photo to iMovie, you don’t have to keep track of the original. Behind the scenes, iMovie copies the image to your project (hidden in the huge library file explained on Project Properties). So even if you delete a photo from iPhoto or your hard drive, it still exists in your project files.

Generations of iMovie fans have dressed up their opening credits and chapter titles by creating custom backgrounds, so that text appears in front of red curtains or a Hollywood opening-night spotlight instead of plain black. To save you that hassle, iMovie comes with a handsome set of premade background images (Figure 12-4). Some are even animated; for example, the Underwater background shows shimmering rays of sunlight filtering through the water.

Figure 12-4. Behold the Maps & Background browser. It gives you 24 high-quality backgrounds to jazz up your project.

To use a background image, drag it out of the Content Library’s Maps & Backgrounds browser and into any empty area of your project—between two clips, after a clip, or on top of a clip (which will make it a cutaway; see Adjust the Fade-In and -Out). It appears as a 4-second clip, though you can adjust the timing (see Timing Changes).

If you drag a photo between two filmstrips in your storyboard, you create a photo clip (Figure 12-5, top).

In most regards, the photo clip now behaves exactly like a video clip. You can crop it, rotate it, and make color adjustments to it, as described in Chapter 9. You can also apply the snazzier video effects described in Chapter 8, or superimpose titles and credits on it, as described in Chapter 10. You can even use the Split or Trim commands as described in Chapter 5.

You can also replace photos with other photos, just as you do with video clips: Drag and drop a photo onto the one you want to replace, and iMovie launches the Replace menu, explained on Replace a Clip.

Figure 12-5. Top: Here’s a still image you dragged between two video clips. That turns it into a photo clip, which behaves in almost every way like a video clip (except that it won’t have an audio track, since photos don’t have sound). Bottom: If you drag a photo onto an existing video clip, you create a cutaway.

Alternatively, you can drag a photo above a video clip to make it a connected photo. It works just like a connected video clip, as explained on Reverse a Clip’s Playback Direction.

The most common use of connected photos is as a cutaway (Figure 12-6), a documentary-style effect discussed on Adjust the Fade-In and -Out. When you use a photo as a cutaway, iMovie sticks it right on top of the underlying clip in the timeline.

Of course, it also covers up the video in the movie itself. So if the photo blocks the video, what good is it? Why not just create a photo filmstrip?

A connected photo has four advantages over a photo clip:

Figure 12-6. By dialing back the opacity of a photo cutaway, you can add cool effects, like the “fog” covering the bottom clip. You create this effect with a cutaway picture of clouds set at half transparency. You can use it for a “Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Forest” remake.

Figure 12-7. This effect pops up often in opening credits for TV shows (at least those from the 1970s) and the occasional cheesy movie. Make a graphic in Photoshop that contains cutouts. Select the pieces that you don’t want to be transparent; ⌘-click the “Save selection as channel” button on the Channels palette, and save the result as a PNG graphic with an alpha channel. Drag the resulting file right off the desktop above any filmstrip in iMovie. Once it becomes a photo cutaway in iMovie, the underlying video plays through the holes!

Use this trick to put a pair of nose glasses or a funny hat on someone. Or create text titles, like Batman-style “BAM!”s and “KAPOW!”s superimposed on your footage. As long as you use the PNG image format (which recognizes transparency), a little creativity can lead to all kinds of cool effects. (iMovie also supports transparency in TIFF files.)

Long ago, iMovie’s designers made the decision that the optimal length for just about any clip or photo is 4 seconds. That’s why, when you add a photo to your project, the proposed length is 4 seconds. (iMovie even used to scold you with a warning if you added a whole video clip from the Event browser instead of selecting part of it.)

This default timing quickly becomes a pain if you’re making a photo slideshow and want each photo to last, say, 5 seconds. Save yourself the hassle of adjusting each photo by changing the standard timing before you add photos to your project. Go to Window→Movie Properties (⌘-J)→Settings and move the Clips slider to anything from 1 to 10 seconds. Now all the photos you add will show up at the length you set.

To retime a photo already in your storyboard, drag the end to add or subtract time from it (Figure 12-8). This works just like adding or subtracting video footage (Resize Clips). iMovie displays a window that tells you how much time you’re adding or subtracting. You resize photo clips and connected photos the same way. Unlike video, however, it doesn’t matter which end you drag, because whatever iMovie adds or trims will look the same.

iMovie’s Ken Burns controls are pretty easy to get the hang of. Here’s how you use them:

Here’s how you extract a still frame from your video:

Although you can move a still frame you created, you can always keep the photo in place as a true freeze frame, to great effect. Just imagine that moment when Baby Tommy finally smiles into the camera. You could freeze on that spot for a second or two, and then have your video keep going. The smile has 10 times the impact if you can dwell on it just a little.

Figuring out how to handle the audio in such situations is up to you, since a still frame should have no sound. That’s a good argument for starting your closing-credits music during the final clip, and making it build to a crescendo for the final freeze frame.

Figure 12-10. Top: Add Freeze Frame is one of the commands available from the shortcut menu when you right-click a video clip. Bottom: iMovie splits the video clip in two and sticks the freeze frame in the middle. Note that iMovie assumes that you want a still image, so it doesn’t apply the Ken Burns effect.