iPhoto

There are a number of methods for organizing and cataloging your iPhoto '11 library. You can dump photos into albums, and you can set criteria for ever-evolving smart albums. You can use the Faces and Places features to sort by people or locations. You can flag photos. And you can use Events to sort photos taken during a certain time period.

The above methods are very effective for helping you locate photos in a sprawling iPhoto library, but for a more granular approach, I suggest you try keywords. Keywords act like tags, which help you quickly search for a particular photo.

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As with Facebook, there may be photos in your iPhoto library that you don't want the whole world to see. Now, you could delete those photos or remove them from iPhoto, but an easier and more temporary solution would be to simply hide them. It's a snap to hide photos in iPhoto '11. Hidden photos remain in your iPhoto library--they are just removed from view for those times when you are showing photos to a friend or family member who doesn't necessarily need to see the full breadth of your photographed life. You can hide individual photos, or you can hide an entire iPhoto Event. You can also hide photos based on iPhoto's Faces and Places features.

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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. That seems to be Adobe's approach to the entry-level photo-editing customer on the Mac.

Instead of trying to replace iPhoto with its Photoshop Elements image-editing software, Adobe is repositioning a version of the product as a complement to iPhoto in an interesting strategic move. Photoshop Elements 9 Editor is a less expensive, Organizer-free version of the product available only through the Mac App Store.

Making PSE as frictionless a step-up editor option for iPhoto makes a lot of sense, though I suspect a lot of Windows users will be baffled by … Read more

iPhoto makes sharing photos on Flickr a snap. The process is so simple, in large part, because there isn't a great deal of functionality built into iPhoto's Flickr integration beyond the capability to upload photos. True, you can also delete photos on Flickr from within iPhoto, and you can add a title and a description in iPhoto before or after a photo is uploaded that will appear on Flickr. And there is two-way syncing, so if you move photos among your various sets on Flickr, those changes are reflected in iPhoto. Let's take a quick look at the Flickr sharing options in iPhoto, starting with the first step of linking iPhoto to your Flickr account.

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iPhoto '11 introduced more tightly integrated Facebook features. No longer do you need to export photos from iPhoto to your desktop, and then go to your Facebook page to upload them. Directly from iPhoto '11, you can publish photos or videos to your wall, as an album on Facebook, or as your profile picture. And from iPhoto, not only can you easily see which photos you've shared on Facebook, but you can also edit how they are shared or delete them.

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Smart Albums are among the most powerful features of iPhoto. Last week, I wrote about creating a Smart Album to separate out the videos in your iPhoto library. In the process of writing that post, I discovered a Hipstamatic filter hidden within the conditions for creating a Smart Album. It's a great way to isolate the shots taken with the iPhone's Hipstamatic app that you've imported to your iPhoto library.

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Apple has released a few updates for its iLife suite of media creation and management applications, which have been made available through the Mac App Store as well as by conventional means. Because of the way Mac App Store applications are coded, the version of iLife distributed through it will require updates issued through the store instead of via Software Update. Therefore, if you have installed iLife via the Mac App Store, you will need to use the Store to update your applications, and if you have iLife installed by conventional means then you can download updates either via Software … Read more

When you import videos to iPhoto from, say, an iPhone, the videos get dumped in with all the snapshots you've taken. Thankfully, there is an easy way to separate out the videos by using a Smart Album.… Read more

If you are overwhelmed by the sprawling features of Photoshop or another high-powered editing application, iPhoto offers simple yet effective editing tools for amateur photographers. In fact, performing edits in iPhoto can be as simple as pressing a single button. Don't be afraid to get in there and experiment; iPhoto editing is nondestructive, meaning that you can always return a photo to its original, unedited state.… Read more