The group is called iPhotographer. Due to limited space it will probably be a group-in-flux without a massive archive. I'm hoping to see members best work attached to each post. I think the change can keep it fresh.
You don't need be a paying .Mac member to join. Sign up for a trial account and you'll still have group access after it expires. This includes PC users, even though PC users really can't benefit from iPhoto 5.
At this point you'll need to be invited to join. Email me and I'll send you an invite.
The apps include:
Photofloes. 6 drag and drop photo processors. Work with most image formats. Drag the image on the the icon and it puts an effected copy on your desktop. Drag photos from anywhere, including iPhoto. To import the images to iPhoto, just drag them to the iPhoto icon on your dock. There are 6 Photofloes: B&W, Monotone, Blue, Sepia, Flip, and Posterize.
Background Sound. This was the first app I made. Uses the iTunes visualizer to create a new unique desktop background every time you double click the icon.
ShuffleNote. Turns a text note of most any size to an audio file spoken by Mac's own Vicki and puts it on your Shuffle. I haven't tried it with War and Peace yet. It creates a rather large AIFF file first, so you'd need a lot of free drive space to process a book. Also, the Shuffle has issues with high-quality AAC files beyond an hour in length. This app works with any iPod, including the Nano.
TrackWhacker. This one may be the most useful. It's like iPhoto Diet for iTunes. Finds any stray CD AIFF files or GarageBand tracks and converts them to much leaner near-CD quality AAC files. Only AIFF files are affected. Copy your high-quality GarageBand tracks elsewhere before use.
These apps have not been officially released yet, but they're done and available for download. And they're all free.
I've had requests from a few of those those who bought a copy of Serious Editing in iPhoto 5 to reveal the identity of the lady in the psychedelic posterizing effect on page 68. One reader swears he saw this image on an album cover in a record store in Boulder, Colorado in 1968.
This much of the mystery can be revealed: This image was taken in June 2005. The square shape does give it the same dimensions as an LP cover. I thought the reader might have been confused it with Joni Mitchell's Blue cover, but that was released in June 1971. Hmmm.
Incidentally, I've been working on some Automator apps that can do six of the tricks in the Serious Editing in iPhoto 5 by dragging and dropping images from iPhoto. They work with photos not in iPhoto as well and do batch processing. They add a few more effect possibilities to iPhoto. A link will appear here soon when they're polished up.
TigerPreview offers some a few new tools not in iPhoto: Gamma, White Point and Black Point. Gamma used in conjunction with the Exposure slider can produce come interesting tone effects. The Black and White points can do some wild color effects. And the Sepia slider gives you more control brown tones. The next edition of Serious Editing in Iphoto 5 will probably include some tricks using these added sliders.
Tiger's Preview now can be used as your external editor in iPhoto. This really doesn't give you a lot more editing power than PhotoShop or GraphicConverter would, but it gives you quick access to Preview's features, like saving in more image formats. And it's seamless, so it saves image back into your iPhoto Library. You can Apple-comma to call up Prefs. Choose Preview from your Apps folder as your external editor.
Core Image is Tiger's new image engine. It's beauty is that a huge amount of photo processing power is built in. For instance, a developer won't have to write massive code to create a Gaussian blur. Gaussain blur is one of the many filters built into Core Image and can be summoned with a simple call. What this means is you'll see a slew of Image apps popping up for Tiger. Even an amateur developer can write them, so expect a lot of these apps to be inexpensive or free.
This also means is that future versions of iPhoto have amazing effects and image processing power available. But don't expect the next version of iPhoto to offer the full power of Core Image. iPhoto will probably remain conservative in it's effects. I'm sure Apple will feel there's really no need to recreate Photoshop Elements.
The first two Core Image offerings are LiveQuartz and Image Tricks. You'll need Tiger to run these apps. Just click on the icons for more information and downloads. Both still feel primitive and only offer the simple tricks Core Image can do. Many similar effects are covered in Serious Editing in iPhoto 5 and can be done with just iPhoto. Still, these offerings are impressive freeware for round one.
You can't really fix this. There are programs that can strip this info from each image. But you will most likely have to export all your photos, strip the info, then re-import them into a new iPhoto library. And this data you'd be losing could become valuable to you in the future. Many new cameras are adding MakerNotes to their images. iPhoto may eventually be able to analyze this data to give the Enhance button more accuracy at correcting an image. Meanwhile there are a few things you can do to improve the speed of iPhoto:
• Shut down other apps before opening iPhoto. Do this on every desktop that's open. This frees up RAM. (You could also add more RAM.)
• Make sure you have at least 10 Gigs free on your hard drive. OSX uses a lot of virtual memory behind the scenes. If you don't have gigs to spare, this greatly slows down OSX. To make space, empty all your trash in the Finder, iPhoto, Mail and every app that has a trash, delete stale emails and attachments you don't need, delete photos you'll never use, delete apps you've added but don't need, etc. Moving data over to a firewire drive will also also help. (You could also upgrade to a bigger hard drive.)
• Delete slideshows and books you're not using. The Library.iPhoto file also stores data about these. Deleting them can make a dramatic increase in speed. (My startup time was cut in half by deleting one slideshow and empty book.)
• Create more than one Library. Press the Option key while opening iPhoto. This allows you to create a new Library. To change between libraries, press Option when opening iPhoto and click on Choose Library. By opting for multiple smaller libraries, you also have smaller Library.iPhoto files to load.
• Make sure the Sharpness slider is your last edit. (Other sliders can work against sharpness.)
• Before saving, press the number "2" key. This blows the image up to full size.
• Then scroll up or down on the image. You only have to move it a tiny bit. Now when you double-click on the image or press the Done button, your sharpness changes will now be saved.
J. Kevin Wolfe