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Digital Photo Management
From Mac vs. Windows
Consumers using digital cameras greatly outnumbers those using traditional film. Even most cell phones sold today come with some kind of digital camera built in. With so many users storing their photos in digital form, Mac OS X and Windows Vista come installed with tools to assist in importing photos from digital cameras, making adjustments, and sharing with others.
Besides the tools bundled with Mac OS X, Apple also offers iPhoto as part of their iLife suite of applications. iLife is not part of Mac OS X and has to be purchased separately. However, all Macs come with it installed.
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Importing Photos
Mac OS X Leopard
When a user connects a digital camera or its memory card to their Mac, Image Capture launches to guide them through importing their photos. Users have the option to quickly download all their photos or only certain ones via the Download Some button.
Choosing Download Some opens a browser window showing all photos available to be downloaded. The Image Capture browser window behaves very similar to the Finder. Users can CMD-click or SHIFT-click pictures to select them. They can also drag and drop them to a desired location on the hard disk.
A nice feature of Image Capture is that it lets users perform post-processing actions that can be applied to photos after they have been imported. Post-processing actions are really just AppleScripts and include cropping, resizing, and building a web page. Users can create their own custom actions using Automator or Script Editor.
Mac OS X iPhoto
iPhoto offers to replace Image Capture as the default application for managing digital photos when installed. Users can import photos into iPhoto three ways
- Connect a digital camera or its memory card
- Drag and drop photos on to iPhoto's dock icon
- Go to
If importing via a digital camera or memory card, iPhoto will check if all photos should be imported or some. iPhoto can also detect duplicates it has already imported and offer to skip those as well. After the import is done, the "Last Import" album will be refreshed.
Windows Vista
Connect a digital camera or insert its memory card. This this will trigger the auto-play dialog. Choose the "Import Pictures" task. Windows will scan the device and gather all available photos to import.
A small dialog will appear that lets you assign a tag (keyword) to the group of photos you are importing. Choose "Options" to configure additional options such as save location and file name settings. Windows Photo Gallery will launch when import process is complete.
User's can also import photos directly from within Windows Photo Gallery by going to File > Import from Camera or Scanner in the command bar.
Browsing Photos
Mac OS X Leopard
Out of the box, Mac OS X lacks an application to store and manage a user's collection of digital photos. Users will have to fall back on the Finder for organizing and browsing the photos on their Mac. While the Finder does offer thumbnail and larger sized previews of images, it's still not a proper replacement for a dedicated photo library application such as iPhoto (discussed later below).
There are only two display modes in the Mac OS X Leopard's Finder suitable to browse photos: icon view and coverflow.
Icon view displays thumbnail previews for each photo in a folder. Thumbnails can be scaled up to a maximum of 128 pixels. Users can adjust the grid spacing between thumbnails and display a photos resolution (Item Info) under
Coverflow in the Finder is similar to the [Coverflow view in iTunes]. Photos inside a folder appear on a 3D carrousel users can slide through. Photo thumbnails in Coverflow can scale much larger than those in icon view allowing for more detailed previews.
No matter which Finder view is used, users can view larger previews of their photos using Quick Look. When a photo is selected in the Finder, pressing the space bar activates Quick Look. In addition to displaying the photo, there are buttons to view the photo full screen or import into iPhoto (if installed). If more then one photo is selected before activating Quick Look, additional buttons become available to navigate between them such as slideshow controls and an index sheet.
Users can also use Preview to view a folder of photos. Preview handles opening multiple pictures in a clever way. Rather than opening each picture in a separate window, it loads them into a drawer on the side and displays the selected photo in the main part of the window. This takes up less screen space and makes flipping through multiple images very quick.
Mac OS X iPhoto
Those with iPhoto installed enjoy an iTunes-esque approach to managing their photo collection. Just like with iTunes, contains a source list showing different ways of viewing one's photos along with any albums (aka playlists) created by the user.
Albums lets users view a specified set of photos from their iPhoto library. Users can create their own albums by clicking the + button in the bottom left hand corner of the window and then manually drag in photos.
A few special albums are created by default: last import, last 12 months, flagged. These albums are automatically managed by iPhoto and change dynamically. Users can create their own special albums with similar functionality through smart albums. Just like iTunes and its smart playlists, users can create smart albums that display photos from their iPhoto library that match specific criteria. The criteria for selecting photos can be anything such as a photo's rating, its assigned keywords, or text in its title/description.
Users can view the photos in their iPhoto library all at once or choose to have them divided up into events for quick browsing. iPhoto defaults to grouping photos into events that were taken during the same time period. Users can preview the photos inside an event by scrolling over an event from left to right.
Users can add keywords to categorize their photos. Quickest way to add a keyword in iPhoto is to begin typing in the keyword box underneath a photo. If the keyword already exists for another photo, iPhoto auto-completes it saving the user time.
Another way to assign keywords to photo is through the keyword inspector . Click any keyword to add it to the currently selected photo(s). Keyboard shortcuts can setup for any keyword for those who prefer using the keyboard.
Users can search for photos by any keyword they have created. Other criteria such as date, title, description, rating, etc are also searchable. The search box changes based on the item the user is searching for.
Windows Vista
Windows Photo Gallery is Windows Vista's default photo viewer and library manager. The navigation bar on the left side of Windows Photo Gallery lists the different "views" a user can browse their photo library by...
- Type -- Either pictures or videos (since most digital cameras record videos as well)
- Tags - Keywords the user has assigned to their photos
- Date - Date the photo was taken
- Ratings - A user specified ranking applied to photos (up tp 5 stars)
- Folder - Where the photo is located on the user's computer
Items in a view can be filtered via the search box at the top of the window. User's can search by a photo's name, assigned tags, or caption.
Editing Photos
Mac OS X
Preview comes with an assortment of photo manipulation tools to rotate, resize, crop, and adjust color. Annotations can also be added over photos such as text boxes, arrows, and oval outlines.
Advanced users will appreciate Preview's various selection tools to extract elements out of a photo. For simple photos, Instant Alpha can automatically knock out the background of a photo. But for photos with lots of objects or busy backgrounds, the Extract Shape tool is far more effective. With this tool, users can draw precisely draw around an object (such as a person) they wish to cut out of a photo.
Despite all these tools, there remains no tool to remove red-eye from photos.
Mac OS X iPhoto
In edit mode, users have several tools available to manipulate their photos.
- Effects - Applies a filter (such as sepia) or mask (blurred edges)
- Red-eye removal - Lets a user remove the red-eye effect cameras can sometimes cause.
- Retouch - Can remove blemishes, dust, or other imperfections in a photo.
- Adjust - Adjust the exposure, sharpness, temperature, and other elements of a photo.
A nice addition to the adjust palette is the copy/paste feature. Suppose you make some adjustments to a photo and would like to apply those same adjustments to a series of other photos. Just press the copy button to copy the adjustments, select some other photos, and click the paste button to apply those same adjustments.
Windows Vista
Choosing "Info" from the Windows Photo Gallery command bar lets users edit the metadata for a picture such as tags they might wish to assign, name, caption, rating, or date.
Selecting a photo and choosing "Fix" from the Windows Photo Gallery command bar offers various options for adjusting color/exposure, cropping, and removing red eye.
A shortcoming of Windows Photo Gallery is that you can't edit or adjust images using Windows Photo Gallery unless they are in the JPEG format. This means that if you have an image in PNG and would like to crop it, you first have to convert it to a JPEG or use another application like Microsoft's Paint.
Slideshows
Mac OS X Leopard
The Finder doesn't offer a lot in terms of photo-specific features with one exception. Select one or more photos, Control-click (right-click), and choose Slideshow from the contextual menu. The selected photos will playback in a full-screen slideshow mode with on-screen controls. This same slideshow mode is available in Preview as well. Open a series of photos using Preview and go to View > Slideshow.
Mac OS X iPhoto
Slideshows can be setup for any album in a user's iPhoto library. Transitions between photos can be customized as well as music to be played during the slideshow. Music can be selected from the user's iTunes library. All slideshow settings for an album are saved allowing users to have different options for each album.
Windows Vista
At the bottom of the Windows Photo Gallery window are slideshow playback controls. Clicking the play button will begin a slideshow of the photos currently being displayed in the window. Slideshows are full-screen and include on-screen playback controls.
Users can also start a photo slideshow directly in Explorer. Select one or more pictures in a folder and choose the "Start Slideshow" in the command bar.
Odds & Ends
Mac OS X
- You can share the contents of your digital camera over your local network via Bonjour. Once you enable web sharing from Image Capture's preferences, other computers within your subnet will automatically see a link to your digital camera's images in Safari's Bonjour bookmarks menu (which may need to be turned on in Safari's preferences). This feature can also be password protected. You can even remotely control supported cameras (read more about this in the following Apple support article).
Mac OS X iPhoto
- Users can create calendars and photo books in iPhoto from their photos. Calendars and photo books can be printed out using the user's printer or sent to Apple to be professionally printed (for a fee of course).
Windows Vista
- Microsoft also offers windows live photo gallery, which is part of the Windows Live Suite[1] of software. It's very similar in operation to Windows Photo Gallery. It includes integration with various Microsoft online services (live spaces, live photosynth, MSN soapbox) and Flickr. Windows Live photo gallery also includes a feature for facial recognition for easier tagging of photos, a panoramic stitching tool, and easy integration with Windows Live Movie Maker to quickly make a movie out of your pictures
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