Welcome to the Digital Darkroom
If you have a Mac and you like photography, this is a great time to go digital. The latest software makes working with images easier than ever. Here’s a look at some of my favorite digital camera companions--and at how Apple’s new Mac OS X version 10.1 enhances the picture.
Transferring images. The first step to working with silicon snapshots is to transfer them to the Mac. Many of the transfer programs that accompany cameras are, to put it kindly, garbage. There are better alternatives.
If you’re using Mac OS 9, check out Juri Munkii’s Cameraid. Available at https://www.cameraid.com, this $15 shareware program supports dozens of digital cameras and transfers images quickly and reliably. With Cameraid’s processing features, you can reduce the size of images before e-mailing them, which is considerate for recipients using a dial-up connection. Cameraid also can turn a folder of images into a Web photo album: The program generates small, thumbnail versions of each photo and then creates a Web page containing the thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail, and the full-size version appears.
Mac OS X version 10.1 is a digital photographer’s dream. Connect a digital camera to the Mac, and OS X’s Image Capture program automatically starts up. Image Capture supports most current cameras that connect to the Universal Serial Bus port. You can select which images you want to transfer, or move the entire lot with one click. Image Capture also can create a Web photo album or resize images. Image Capture’s image-manipulation features rely on AppleScript, an autopilot technology that has been part of the Mac’s system software for years. Apple’s Web site contains many free AppleScripts, some aimed at digital photography. For example, one script adds a Browse button to the toolbar in OS X disk and folder windows. Open a folder of photos and click Browse, and OS X creates a simple Web page that lets you view each image. Get these scripts at https://www.apple.com/applescript.
Retouching images. Your photo of Aunt Mary would be perfect were it not for the telephone pole impaling her head. Time for a digital darkroom.
Some cameras include Adobe’s Photoshop LE, a “lite” version of the legendary image editor. If yours didn’t--or if you’d prefer more hand-holding than Photoshop LE provides--I recommend Adobe’s $99 Photoshop Elements, which wraps Photoshop’s imaging features in a friendly interface that guides you through common tasks.
Cataloging photos. Digital photos may not end up in bulging shoeboxes, but they still can be hard to find on a cluttered hard drive. Image-cataloging programs tame the clutter by creating searchable catalogs.
My favorite cataloging program is the $50 iView Media Pro, at https://www.iview-multimedia.com. Drag images into iView’s window, and you can browse them and add searchable comments. You can then quickly find, say, all sunset photos taken at the beach. IView also can make Web photo albums and display full-screen images as a slide show. And it runs natively in Mac OS X.
Sharing. Yes, you can print digital photos, but it’s time-consuming and expensive. I prefer to share images digitally--photos are more vivid on screen, and you have several distribution options.
Photography sites such as PhotoPoint, at https://www.photopoint.com, provide free online photo albums, as does Apple’s iTools service. Upload your photos (iView Multimedia’s $15 PhotoMover is ideal for this), create an album and then tell the world.
The problem with Web albums is that photos tend to be small and slow to download over phone connections. The ultimate way to share digital images is to burn them to a DVD using Apple’s iDVD software and a Mac containing the SuperDrive DVD burner. Suddenly, my slide projector seems as archaic as Super 8 film.
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Jim Heid is a contributing editor of Macworld magazine. He can be reached at jim@jimheid.com.