HOME
TOPICS
ABOUT ME
MAIL

 
iPhoto can do much more than you might expect. It can be ideal for a photo database -- if you know how to keep it from degrading your JPEGs.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Secrets of Apple's iPhoto software


Sept. 23, 2002


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt

   If you're doing photo editing on the cheap on a Mac OS X computer, you're probably using iPhoto. If so, I have a tip can help keep your pictures looking better than ever.
   Even if you only use iPhoto for image cataloging, this tip should be a big help. It's all about the way iPhoto saves your images.
   I'm sure most people who use iPhoto don't know what I'm about to explain. I'm convinced most experts who have written about iPhoto don't know this either. Apple has kept iPhoto's inner workings hidden from just about everybody. The program's not only easy to use; it's easy to misunderstand.
   The first rule of image editing, in my view, is to save all images in a lossless format. Lossless formats such as TIF (also called Tiff) and PNG are "recoverable" file-storage methods. If you save an image as a TIF or PNG, you get exactly the same image, pixel by pixel, when you open it later.
   But lossy image formats such as JPEG (or JPG) can't ever do that. They throw away some pixels and change others every time you save the image. Reopening a JPEG image that you've edited and saved never produces an exact copy of the original, and subsequent re-editing merely makes things worse.
   And that's what Mac users need to understand when they use iPhoto. Any time you crop or edit a photo in iPhoto, the image is saved as a JPEG. If you open it again to do a little more editing, your photo will lose essential detail. Do that more than one or two times and you end up with a damaged photo.
   But the news isn't all bad. Surprisingly, iPhoto has an almost secret method of avoiding image degradation. Follow my explanation carefully and you'll be able to do image editing without endangering any of your pictures.
   You might have assumed that iPhoto stores all its images as JPEGs. But that's not the case. It stores images in the same format they are in when iPhoto imports them. So if you drop a folder full of TIF images onto the iPhoto "Organize" window, iPhoto will import all of them and store them as TIFs. If you drop a folder containing PNGs, iPhoto will save the imported pictures as PNGs, and so on. (You don't need to use the drag-and-drop method; you can use the "Import" function and choose the TIFs or PNGs that way.)
   But iPhoto is a slave to image-format fashion. If you do what most iPhoto users do and import JPEGs into iPhoto, it will store them as JPEGs. After all, JPEG is the nearly universal image format for Web-page photos and has become the standard way images are stored in digital cameras. Many iPhoto users probably use JPEGs exclusively, and most may not even realize that other image formats exist.
   Using JPEGs for this sort of thing is not a good idea. You can force iPhoto to keep all your photos in a lossless format, even when you edit them. And you won't have to spend a cent extra.
   First, if you don't already have it, download and install the excellent freeware image editor, PixelNhance, from www.caffeinesoft.com.
   Next, set up iPhoto so that it uses PixelNhance as its image editor. Do this in the iPhoto Preferences window.
   Now you are ready to edit without using JPEG. Make sure your originals are in a lossless format before you import them (TIF is best unless you're tight on disk space, in which case you should use PNG). Then do all your importing into iPhoto.
   When you want to edit a photo, click the Edit button to have iPhoto automatically hand the editing chores to PixelNhance. The picture will open in PixelNhance, ready to be cropped, sharpened or otherwise edited.
   When you've finished editing the photo, choose "Save As" from PixelNhance's File manu and save the photo with a new name in a lossless format (TIF or PNG, for example). It will be located in one of your folders. Then import that newly saved version into iPhoto.
   Editing the image in an external image editor keeps iPhoto from manipulating the image as a JPEG. Importing the edited image back into iPhoto forces iPhoto to store the new version in a lossless format. (Remember, iPhoto stores images in its own database in the format they were in when they were imported, so a TIF or PNG image will remain in a lossless format in iPhoto.)
   Feel free to come up with your own variations on this technique. You could, of course, choose another image editor. I like PixelNhance because it's free, well behaved and easy to use, but you could also use Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 or even Photoshop itself as the image editor for iPhoto.
   But keeping the project to the freeware minimum seems to make sense. It's a no-cost way to provide professional-level processing to your digital photos and scans. You'd have a hard time finding a better value than that.