Time Machine is great way to backup your entire Mac, but what if you want to make a single backup of your recently imported photos in iPhoto? Well, Automator for Leopard is here to help with this task. In this how-to, I will show you how to find photos taken in the last 2 months and burn the resulting photos to a disc for safe keeping.
Continue reading to learn how to create this Automator workflow.
Today Apple posted the schedule for Apple Camp. Apple Camp is held at Apple retail stores for kids 8-12 to go learn about creative things like: making presentations with Keynote, taking and managing photos with iPhoto, creating music with GarageBand, and making movies with iMovie.
Each sessions lasts about 3 hours and is available at all Apple retail locations. Kids attending will receive a DVD or CD with their creations on it, field guide, t-shirt, and will be able to get other giveaways. Best of all, Apple Camp is free though registration is required.
If your father is anything like my father, he loves getting Father's Day gifts with that personal touch ... but since monogrammed golf clubs are a bit out of my budget range this year, I'm going with an iPhoto book instead. Nothing dresses up a coffee table like a professionally printed book full of pictures of the grandkids all slathered in mud.
Apple is ready to help with the giftgiving; there's a 20% book discount (use code 'springbooks' at checkout) through June 15. Standard shipping books need to be ordered today (June 3) for delivery by Father's Day, and express shipping gets you an extra few days (June 8 order deadline).
Apple just released an update for RAW camera support for Mac OS X Leopard, Aperture 2, and iPhoto '08. With this new update, the following list of RAW-format cameras are supported:
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/Kiss Digital x2/450D
Epson R-D1
Leaf AFi 7
Leaf AFi 6
Leaf AFi 5
Pentax K200D
Pentax K20D
You can download this update by opening up Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update) or by downloading the installer package from the Apple Support downloads site.
This is pretty much genius. Like Albert, I have a bunch of "membership cards" in my wallet -- they're those cards with a barcode or number on them that you get from places like the local grocery store, or some other retailer. They're useful to have around, but they tend to pile up after a while, and pretty soon, your wallet gets to be a brick of barcodes rather than anything you'd actually want to carry around in your pocket. Albert's solution was to scan all of his barcodes into the iPhone, front and back, as an iPhoto album. And lo and behold, just like the paperless boarding passes we posted about a while back, it worked. All of the barcodes were scannable, which means no more countless membership cards -- just a gallery in your iPhone.
We've already heard of barcodes reading both on and off of the iPhone, of course, and we'll hopefully see more of this when the SDK drops in just about a month here (maybe, in the future, someone will write an app to generate barcodes from numbers, so you don't even need to get a clear scan). But even without an external app, this is pretty handy solution to clearing up some of the clutter in your wallet. Obviously, for anything important (driver's license, credit cards), an iPhone scan won't do. But just to get the membership prices down at the Jewel-Osco, scanning wallet cards into an iPhone seems to work just fine. Very nice.
If you've been looking to get the perfect Mother's Day gift, Apple says to look no further than iPhoto or Aperture. It's that special time of year when we celebrate our mothers (of course, if you ask Mom every day is Mother's Day), and Apple is cutting us a break! You can now get 20% off of iPhoto books when you use the promo code LoveMom at checkout.
This promo code is valid for iPhoto or Aperture users in the US and Canada and is good until May 11, 2008. Apple recommends that you order by April 30 for standard delivery and May 4 for express delivery so that you get your book in time for Mother's Day.
If you love Aperture (or iPhoto) like we do, then you know that there are some nice plug-ins that allow you to export pictures to differing photo sites (i.e. Flickr, etc.). However, if you use Gmail's web based e-mail service, then you are out of luck ... until now!
Aperture2Gmail (or iPhoto2Gmail) allows you to export your photos in a new e-mail directly to Gmail. You can also resize on-the-fly, just like you can in Mail.app.
I held the phone tightly in my right hand. With my left, I rubbed my dry, tired eyes. I looked at the clock in my Mac's menu bar. I had been on the phone for forty-five minutes, with no indication that I'd be hanging it up any time soon.
"OK," I said in a slow, deliberate tone. "Let's start from the beginning. Click on the Mail menu. A list should appear. Do you see it?"
A pause. "Yes," my mother said.
"What do you see in that list?" I said.
"File ... About Mail ... Preferences ...."
"Good. Do you see 'Quit'?"
"Yes."
"Excellent. Click on 'Quit' and we'll start again."
Welcome to my personal hell, circa 2006. Pull up a chair. Get comfortable. We're going to be here for quite a while.
If you happen to be a photographer who likes to take digital photos using the RAW format, then Apple has just released an update you might want to take a look at and, perhaps, even apply. Appearing today in Software Update is what Apple calls the "Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.0."
According to the notes in Software Update, this new update "extends RAW file compatibility for Aperture 2 and iPhoto '08 for the following cameras:
Hasselblad CFV-16 Hasselblad H3D-31 Hasselblad H3D-31II Leaf Aptus 54S Leaf Aptus 65S Nikon D60 Olympus E-3 Pentax *ist DL2 Pentax *ist DS2 Pentax K100D Super Sony DSLR-A200 Sony DSLR-A350
If you're curious, you can also find more info on this update, which according to this page seems to be a bit of a security update as well, by going to the Apple support site. Of course, as always, if you decide to apply this update and your Mac explodes or something, be sure to let us know.
Fire up Software Update and you'll see iPhoto 7.1.3 which, according to Apple, "...Addresses issues with wire-bound books and cards." At least that's better than "Bug fixes."
If you've been having trouble with wire-bound books and cards, it looks like the nightmare is over. If you experience any trouble after downloading this update, let us know.
One particularly annoying thing about plugging in my iPhone is that it always launches Aperture and prompts for permission to import photos. While you should be able to turn this off (in the preferences of the Image Capture application), what if you still want iPhoto (or Aperture, Lightroom, etc.) to launch when you plug in your camera or memory card? Capitalizing on the fact that Image Capture lets you choose any application to run automatically, Sam Stephenson over at 37signals has cooked up a fancy AppleScript to do just this. Once set up it looks to see what you've plugged it; if it's your camera it will launch iPhoto, etc.; if it's your iPhone it won't. The script is slightly complicated and must be customized for your particular camera model, but if you want the convenience of auto-launching your image management application for your camera, without the annoyance of the iPhone, it's worth a look.
iPhoto users in Australia and New Zealand can finally purchase iPhoto books, calendars and cards from Apple. You'll need iLife '08 with iPhoto at version 7.1.2. Picture Books start from $39.99, calendars are $26.99 and postcards and greeting cards range from $1.99 to $2.69.
Now that you've got access, here are some cool things you can do
In the transition from iLife '06 to '08, one of the shifts in iPhoto functionality was the deprecation of photocasts in favor of .Mac web galleries. Sure, your friends and family can still subscribe to an RSS feed of your pictures (and what kind of loving grandparent doesn't want a newsfeed full of Halloween costumes and messy-breakfast snapshots?), but despite the enhanced gallery views in '08, some key features didn't roll forward -- in particular, while '06 photocasts could include original size, full-res picture files for downloaders, '08 web galleries downsized and/or recompressed most photos. Some may not have noticed the degradation in quality, but for the photo purists, including my colleague Jeff L., this was not an improvement.
Today Jeff came by my desk practically jumping for joy. Tucked away in yesterday's iPhoto update to 7.1.2, where you'd least expect it, is a slender button on the web gallery dialog box: "Show Advanced," and we all know that means good things for Jeff and his poor pictures. There are two new options in the Advanced section: a checkbox to hide the title of the gallery on your .Mac galleries page (handy for those who have a photography 'hobby,' nudge nudge say no more), and a choice between optimized and actual-size photos for downloading. Huzzah!
If you've got a web gallery that could benefit from higher-quality download files, try the new setting and let us know your results.
In the hustle and bustle of product introductions today, another couple of software updates slipped out the door. The 16 MB iPhoto 7.1.2 update promises the "overall stability" we all crave, while the ProKit update (no link on Apple's site yet) "improves reliability for Apple's professional applications and is recommended for all users of Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Express, Aperture, Logic Studio and Logic Express."
Meanwhile, in a separate security bulletin (link as in the image), Apple acknowledged an iPhoto vulnerability that would allow a maliciously-crafted photocast to hijack your machine, if you were to subscribe to it; said vulnerability is now fixed in 7.1.2. Yikes. Full details after the jump.
The Eye-Fi is an interesting concept: it integrates a WiFi radio into an SD memory card, allowing you to upload images directly from your camera to your computer or to a web photo service. In conjunction with Macworld, the company has announced an update that adds Mac compatibility to the card for direct wireless import into iPhoto in Leopard (as well as setup with Safari). It remains compatible with 19 online services including flickr, Picasa and others, but sadly not .Mac yet.
The 2GB Eye-FI card costs $99.99. The Mac update is compatible with existing Eye-Fi cards and is available for download now.
Time Machine is great way to backup your entire Mac, but what if you want to make a single backup of your recently imported photos in iPhoto? Well, Automator for Leopard is here to help with this task. In this how-to, I will show you how to find photos taken in the last 2 months and burn the resulting photos to a disc for safe keeping. 
Today Apple posted the schedule for Apple Camp. Apple Camp is held at Apple retail stores for kids 8-12 to go learn about creative things like: making presentations with Keynote, taking and managing photos with iPhoto, creating music with GarageBand, and making movies with iMovie. 
If your father is anything like my father, he loves getting Father's Day gifts with that personal touch ... but since monogrammed golf clubs are a bit out of my budget range this year, I'm going with an iPhoto book instead. Nothing dresses up a coffee table like a professionally printed book full of pictures of the grandkids all slathered in mud.
Apple just released an update for RAW camera support for Mac OS X Leopard, Aperture 2, and iPhoto '08. With this new update, the following list of RAW-format cameras are supported: 
If you've been looking to get the perfect Mother's Day gift, Apple says to look no further than iPhoto or Aperture. It's that special time of year when we celebrate our mothers (of course, if you ask Mom every day is Mother's Day), and Apple is cutting us a break! You can now get 20% off of iPhoto books when you use the promo code LoveMom at checkout. 
If you love Aperture (or iPhoto) like we do, then you know that there are some nice plug-ins that allow you to export pictures to differing photo sites (i.e. Flickr, etc.). However, if you use Gmail's web based e-mail service, then you are out of luck ... until now! 
I held the phone tightly in my right hand. With my left, I rubbed my dry, tired eyes. I looked at the clock in my Mac's menu bar. I had been on the phone for forty-five minutes, with no indication that I'd be hanging it up any time soon.
If you happen to be a photographer who likes to take digital photos using the RAW format, then Apple has just released an update you might want to take a look at and, perhaps, even apply. Appearing today in Software Update is what Apple calls the "Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.0."
Fire up Software Update and you'll see iPhoto 7.1.3 which, according to Apple, "...Addresses issues with wire-bound books and cards." At least that's better than "Bug fixes."
One particularly annoying thing about plugging in my iPhone is that it always launches Aperture and prompts for permission to import photos. While you should be able to turn this off (in the preferences of the Image Capture application), what if you still want iPhoto (or Aperture, Lightroom, etc.) to launch when you plug in your camera or memory card? Capitalizing on the fact that Image Capture lets you choose any application to run automatically, Sam Stephenson over at 37signals has cooked up a fancy AppleScript to do just this. Once set up it looks to see what you've plugged it; if it's your camera it will launch iPhoto, etc.; if it's your iPhone it won't. The script is slightly complicated and must be customized for your particular camera model, but if you want the convenience of auto-launching your image management application for your camera, without the annoyance of the iPhone, it's worth a look.
iPhoto users in Australia and New Zealand can finally purchase iPhoto books, calendars and cards from Apple. You'll need iLife '08 with iPhoto at version 7.1.2. Picture Books start from $39.99, calendars are $26.99 and postcards and greeting cards range from $1.99 to $2.69.
The Eye-Fi is an interesting concept: it integrates a WiFi radio into an SD memory card, allowing you to upload images directly from your camera to your computer or to a web photo service. In conjunction with Macworld, the company has announced an update that adds Mac compatibility to the card for direct wireless import into iPhoto in Leopard (as well as setup with Safari). It remains compatible with 19 online services including flickr, Picasa and others, but sadly not .Mac yet. 
