1. Welcome to Digital Photography

To me, this section is worth the price of admission alone. I read through this section of the book just before my trip to the Garden Isle of Kaua’i last year, and the tips and hints offered made a tremendous difference in the quality of my shots. Before even getting into the basics of iPhoto, the authors choose to lean heavily on Derrick Story’s photography knowledge and distill that into a book within a book. (Methinks a non-iPhoto user would benefit greatly from Story’s Digital Photography Pocket Guide.)

Types of digital cameras are discussed, taking into account users’ needs and wants, and tips and tricks are offered to enhance the digital photography experience. I find myself reading through this section again and again.

2. iPhoto Basics

Digital photography tips are great, but you’re buying this book to learn to use iPhoto effectively, right? Pogue and company do not disappoint. The second section is an overview of the application, discussing the compilation and organization of digital photos within iPhoto. The authors discuss iPhoto’s controls, complete with screenshots and diagrams, as well as how to get pictures from the camera into iPhoto.

The iPhoto Library, the core of the digital shoebox, is explained and discussed. The authors talk about organizing photos into film rolls, as well as sorting and displaying through multiple rolls. They cover giving photos titles, sift through the photo Info panel, and walk the reader through adding comments, yet another variable by which film rolls can be searched.

Even though the digital shoebox is full of individual rolls, users can create their own albums in iPhoto, and the Missing Manual authors spend a great deal of time discussing all aspects of iPhoto albums.

The last chapter of this section is devoted to editing photos. Cropping, brightness and contrast, red-eye, and black-and-white are all covered in great detail, as the authors guide the reader through iPhoto’s tools in each of these areas. I converted about two dozen photos from my Kaua’i trip using the black-and-white feature, and it brings out a very Ansel Adams-like quality to the landscape shots. Finally, they cover how to use external applications, such as Adobe Photoshop, to edit digital pictures.

3. Meet Your Public

Now that you’ve got your digital photos imported, organized, and edited, what are you going to do with them? Show them off, of course! With iPhoto, this is possible in many ways. The first chapter of this section covers the iPhoto Slide Show, handy for showing off pics in a montage, with its own soundtrack.

Chapter 8 of the book is all about making prints, and it runs the gamut from doing it yourself to ordering online. The authors thoroughly discuss the do-it-yourself print process, noting paper grade, printer types, and print sizes. This is a great complement to the first part of the book; the authors seek to assist the reader in getting the best picture possible, from the time it is taken, to the moment it is printed.

This section of the iPhoto Missing Manual also covers e-mailing photos, posting them online via .Mac, and exporting from iPhoto in to HTML for publication on your non-.Mac Web site. Pogue and company look at third-party utilities that enhance the latter, and offer tips on burning what they call “Pro-Caliber Photo CDs.”

4. iPhoto Stunts

As you become an iPhoto power user, you will want to extend your abilities, perhaps by building a custom screen saver or myriad desktop pictures. I have all but given up on collecting third-party screen savers for OS X, since I created two custom screen savers of of my own: one from our Kaua’i trip, the other of our infant son. Switching between the two keeps me happy, and draws pangs of jealousy out of the Windows users at work, as well as the one at home I share my life with.

In this section, you will also learn how to export your pictures from iPhoto, including how to get them on to your Palm organizer! The authors also explain how to extend iPhoto’s abilities through AppleScript.

Finally, an entire chapter is devoted to iPhoto’s file management, with attention to building and burning iPhoto CDs and DVDs, as well as making backups and disk images. The authors delve in to managing multiple iPhoto libraries, a must for someone like myself with enormous amounts of digital pictures. (Budding digital photographers will soon learn that you take a lot more photos with a digital camera than you would with film.) Again, there are manual ways to do this, but the authors note third-party software that assists in this area.

I’m still getting to know iPhoto, but I’m getting to know it faster and easier thanks to Pogue, Schorr, and Story, and this outstanding volume in the Missing Manual series. If you’re serious about using iPhoto as your own digital shoebox, this book is a must-have.