12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent guide to iPhoto 09, July 2, 2009
This review is from: iPhoto 09 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide (Paperback)
iPhoto '09 Visual QuickStart Guide (1.0) by Adam Engst (PDF Version)
This new book comes in two versions; one as a PDF suited to reading on your screen or a Kindle DX, the other the traditional printed version. The PDF version is $15.00 while the print version is $16.49. They both have the same format and content and run to 240 pages. This review covers the PDF version.
A quick note for Kindle users - the PDF version works correctly on the new Kindle DX, although the text which is blue in the print version is a little pale on the Kindle. This book does not work correctly on the 1st generation Kindle and works haphazardly on the 2nd generation.
The book starts with the acquiring of iPhoto and covers all the ways of obtaining it and the updates and offers lots of advice on installing it. The section that covers importing photo's is very thorough, and offered two hints that I was unaware of, to import photo's from Apple Mail attachments and from Safari pictures. Although I am a longtime user of iPhoto I wouldn't classify myself as a power user, since I use Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom. The book goes onto cover creating multiple libraries; an issue that is barely mentioned by Apple, creating backups and then merging multiple libraries when necessary.
Perhaps the biggest subject for users will be dealing with faces, and to some extent places. Faces are largely identified automatically and then you can name them, individually or in groups, and places can be easily identified by GeoTags and then shown on maps. All of this is covered thoroughly.
There's a substantial section on dealing with RAW pictures and editing and saving them as 16 Bit TIFF files. This leads on to creating slideshows of your pictures and adding music to them from iTunes. There's even a brief section on creating them using iMovie (which comes included on the DVD).
For the Facebook and Flickr users there's a chapter on linking and uploading to both these services. Printing is an obvious feature that is still important to many users, and this chapter covers printing to conventional inkjet printers, and using Apple's online services that are accessible through iPhoto, such as printing yearbooks, calendars and the like.
The final chapter covers troubleshooting and offers quite a few trips for specific problems and includes yet another tip that I was unaware of! (Command-Option while clicking on the iPhoto Dock icon forces iPhoto to offer various options to rebuild the library.)
There are two appendices at the very end of the book, one a Deep Background of digital photo issues such as resolution, aspect ratios and the like, and one on taking better photo's.
There are links to various other resources scattered through the book and they are all encoded as proper hyperlinks that work within Acrobat.
Overall I really like this book. Adam is very thorough in his coverage and appears to cover everything in iPhoto 09. His language is thorough yet readily understandable. A wry sense of humor is evident from occasional remarks but this book is nothing like the `... for Dummies' guides which tend to be written down to a low level. At $15 for a PDF version of the book it's tremendous value. You'll learn to use iPhoto well and a learn a few power tricks that will make your life easier and amaze your friends.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The easy way to learn iPhoto 09, June 10, 2009
This review is from: iPhoto 09 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide (Paperback)
The Visual QuickStart series generally does a good job of providing easy-to-use manuals for programs. iPhoto 09 is no exception. The book is a sort of cookbook. Tasks are presented one per page, or on two facing pages. Steps are covered sequentially, with screen shots illustrating the process. You could consider it a sort of cookbook for iPhoto 09.
It works. Adam Engst's explanations are clear. Basics are presented first - with more advanced topics added later. The book is inexpensive for a computer manual. It's even available in Kindle format and as a PDF from the takecontrolbooks website. I have the PDF and find it an excellent manual that I always have with me.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect for both beginner and intermediate iPhoto users, October 12, 2010
This review is from: iPhoto 09 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide (Paperback)
Like other Visual Quickstart Guides, the version for iPhoto '09 is not a manual but a detailed and complete how-to guide. Instead of covering every feature, the book covers those features you'd be most interested in, and the author doesn't disappoint. Rather than answering the question "What does this do?", the book answers the questions about "How do I do this?"
The book covers the following topics in detail in a logic progression of how a new user would approach the topic, and features chapters on installation, importing and managing photos, working with the Faces and Places feature, slideshows, editing, publishing, and printing photos. As a bonus, the book also contains a great appendix on photography techniques to make anyone a better photographer.
Within each topic, details are covered one page at a time with copious screenshots (hence the Visual part of the title) making for a quick read without too much fluff and superfluous information (the Quickstart part of the title). Engst's excellent writing style enabled even the more complex topics to be succinctly and deftly handled in just a few paragraphs. Personally I've always had problems getting pictures to print correctly on photo paper and after reading the short page on Printing Standard Prints and the Troubleshooting guide, I realised what I was doing wrong and no longer have a stack for recycling each time I want a simple 4x6.
The Troubleshooting chapter in particular is an outstanding guide on figuring out what to do when iPhoto acts quirky. It helps you with those functions that should work, but due to current bugs in iPhoto, don't. You won't find this detailed guide anywhere, so serious iPhoto users should buy it for this reason alone!.
Although I consider myself an intermediate iPhoto user, I still found quite a bit of value from this book. I clearly don't use the full potential of iPhoto, and know more about how to use certain functions to my advantage rather than learning for the sake of learning. Both beginner and intermediate users will find just what they need in this book. Rarely can a book walk that line of not talking down to intermediate users and not talking over the heads of a beginning users. Here is proof you can do both.
Pros: Covers the most useful topics within iPhoto in a quick easy to understand format with great tips and tricks along they way.
Cons: Absolutely none
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