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Keeping hundreds of photographs on your Mac is not as simple as it sounds. You take the photos on a digital camera, plug it into your Mac and transfer them to a folder you will most likely never look at again and if you do happen to come across them again, you most likely won't remember where they were taken or who half of the people in them are. This is where Apple's iPhoto steps in. Organising, editing and sharing digital photos is so simple even the beginner has no excuses for not emailing you photos of their trip to Europe. New Features
iPhoto 2 adds many new features to the previous version. These include the ability to email photos to friends and back up photos onto either a CD or DVD. These archive disks then show up as a disk with the other albums. Photo colour and contrast can be quickly corrected with the Enhance button and unwanted blemishes can be removed with the Retouch brush. Users can now transfer slideshows to DVDs easily with the click of a button. New printer templates help the creativity challenged users.  | Fixing Those Hazy Looking Photos
Perhaps one of the greatest features in iPhoto 2 is it's ability to 'enhance' or correct photos. While this feature is not always accurate, it will normally work without too much trouble. More advanced photographers can change the way that iPhoto handles editing in the preferences and have photos open in Adobe Photoshop or other advanced image editing programs. The 'Red-Eye' tool is the same as in version one of iPhoto and can be quickly used to remove 'red eyes' caused by the camera flash with the click of a button. The Retouch tool in iPhoto 2 comes in really handy once you have had a bit of practice with it. Not only can it be used to remove unwanted marks on the face but also small pieces of dirt on clothes and anything else which is destroying the beauty of your photo, including small marks on the lens and very small objects which can easily be blended out. When The File Is Not Enough
Sometimes an image on a screen is just not enough. iPhoto makes it really easy to share photos with friends and family. Unfortunately Mac users in New Zealand cannot yet use the print and book ordering functions. It is possible to export a photo which can then be sent to a print shop via the internet for traditional printing. Users can of course print photos on their home printer (A full list of supported printers is available at Apple's website). Apple has supplied six printing templates that can be customised to suit the user's needs. These include a 'Sampler' template and a Greeting Card template which can be set to single fold or double fold depending on your preference.  | Hard copies not what you had in mind? Never fear, iPhoto 2 has a great selection of 'digital' solutions. Photos can be emailed with the click of a button and iPhoto will automatically resize the image depending on your needs. The Mac desktop can also easily be changed to your favourite photo with a simple click of a button. Users of Apple's .Mac suite of web services have a number of other options including the ability to create a web page with HomePage or create a .Mac slide show that any Mac OS X 10.2 user can view. Photos can be archived onto a CD or DVD which also stores the date, time, comments, keywords and other information relating to the photo. Photos can also be quickly transformed to a slideshow for a DVD with, like most features in iPhoto 2, a click of a button. A SuperDrive is required to do this.  | The only part of iPhoto which may annoy users who want to have maximum control over their photos is the fact that when iPhoto imports photos it places them in folders according to the date on which they were imported. Photos in an album are easily accessed, however the originals take a great length of time to find. Of course you can get iPhoto to export another copy but this wastes space and time. iPhoto 2 is a great application and is definitely worth a look. It's ability to share photos and enhance photos so easily is great for beginners but more advanced users will also find it's features impossible to live without. Requirements:
iPhoto 2 requires that users have Mac OS X 10.1.5 or higher installed on their Macs with at least 256MB RAM, 33MB of hard drive space for installation, a G3 or G4 processor, a spare USB port for plugging in your camera and it is also recommended that users install Quicktime 6. A list of supported cameras, media readers and printers can be found on Apple's website. iPhoto 2 is available as part of Apple's iLife suite of 'iApps' which include iPhoto 2, iTunes 3, iMovie 3 and iDVD 3. iLife costs US$49.00. iPhoto is also available as a free 32.1MB download from Apple's website.
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