iPhoto Basics

iPhoto makes it easy to store and organise photos and other images on your Mac.

Mac Tip #144/07-April-2004
iPhoto Basics

iPhoto was designed for the ordinary person to organise the pictures on their Mac. This includes photos imported from a digital camera, pictures scanned in and those which arrive by email or from a CD or from being downloaded from a website.

If your camera’s not digital and you can’t plug it in to your Mac then next time you take a film in to be developed ask to get the pictures also put onto CD. This will cost only a few extra dollars and give you plenty of scope for having some fun, emailing photos to friends and so on.

Apple’s iPhoto software requires Mac OS X, so you won’t find it running on older machines. What’s more there are three versions, and you should check which version you have. I’m using iPhoto 4, which has introduced many slick new features.

If I drag pictures onto the iPhoto window they'll be imported.

To discover which version you have, open iPhoto and visit the iPhoto menu and choose About iPhoto.

Now let’s get some photos into iPhoto by importing them. Do one of these things:

Plug in a digital camera. iPhoto should open automatically, switch to the “import” tab and show information about a camera being attached. Click the large blue Import button over on the right-hand side.
Open iPhoto and make the window small enough to be able to see some of your desktop. Open a window containing pictures (for example, a photo CD, a folder of pictures you’ve received by email or scanned in). Click on one picture and choose Select All from the Edit menu. Drag the pictures onto the open iPhoto window. The screenshot in the archive shows this.

Read more Tips tagged with: digital camera • images • iPhoto • photos • scans

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* 4 comments… read them below and tell us what you think.

tommy holecek 23 August 2004 at 06:17:21: Scanned a photo using canoscan 970u, saved as jpeg. Can’t import to iphoto. Using G4 tower iPhoto 4 and ox10.2.8. I scanned a photo in the past and WAS able to import it.

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kaeli 25 October 2004 at 12:26:17: How do I download photos from an email to my computer? When I open the email and click “Scan and Download” it opens the picture without giving me the option to save…

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Tomas Oliva 29 July 2007 at 05:38:22: iphoto will NOT open a CD. The CD just pop out.

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Miraz Jordan 6 August 2007 at 18:49:23: Tommy – check the jpg format. Is is the same as when it did work?

Kaeli – what email software are you using? If all else fails, you should be able to save the photo to the Desktop and then drag it on to iPhoto.

Tomas – try the CD in someone else’s Mac. Does it just pop out again? The CD may have a physical problem, or your computer’s CD drive may be a bit sensitive.

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