About Iphoto

One of the great things about Iphoto is that it has very easy color correcting tools. So you don’t have to be a Photoshop Guru to make your pictures look beautiful, colorful and vibrant. For purposes of this demonstration, I’m using Iphoto ‘08.  From what I can see in Iphoto ‘09, everything looks the same. As I said, I  plan on upgrading soon! Bad me.

Basics

Open up a picture

Basic Color Correcting

What I like about Iphoto is that if I’m in a hurry I don’t have to open Photoshop up and play with curves and levels. All I have to do is click on ADJUST and it’ll open up a palette where I can start making color corrections right away. Sometimes I even like how my picture looks corrected in Iphoto better than I do in Photoshop! But then again, maybe I just didn’t calibrate my monitor right.

When you click on ADJUST  a palette will pop up and you’ll be able to manually adjust the exposure, contrast, temperature ,etc.

You can lighten or darken the picture playing with the exposure, levels and contrast. Levels gives you the histogram for easy guidance. The top peak in the middle is probably a good level of light and dark areas of the picture. As you drag the middle button to the right, you will see the peak move to the right as well as see your picture lighten up significantly. This is an indicator of where you might have too low of an exposure or if you drag the middle button to the left, you’ll see too high of an exposure.

Highlights and Shadows: You can play around with these features to pinpoint areas of the picture to enhance. For instance, if you want to enhance some of the lighter areas of the pictures you would adjust its highlights.

If you drag the bar to the right, really light areas of the picture will darken and the opposite is true for shadows.

I suggest you play around with all of the lightening tools until you find the desired effect. You can always reset the picture if you want to start over.

Saturation, Temperature and Tint: When color correcting in Iphoto, these are the three areas you’ll want to focus on. Saturation will allow you to enhance all the colors—saturating them!  If you want black and white, simply move your slider to the left and it will remove all the colors!

So your yellows will be more yellow, greens more green, red more red. Temperature–I like this one alot. You can make your picture look warm, more yellow in appearance.  This is great for beach photos where you have a nice sunset. Playing with the temperature gives a nice warm feel to the picture. Tint—it will enhance the greens or reds in your picture, so use this one sparingly unless you want a washed up looking photo.

All of these effects are created by moving the sliders back and forth — super easy! If you don’t like it, press RESET and start over again. Don’t press DONE until you are sure you are finished, otherwise you will need to re-import the picture unless you have a duplicate.

If you want to see how this is done live–check Apple’s video on Iphoto ‘09 Improving Pictures. Click on Improve your photos. Now if you have many “birds” you’d like to kill with one stone, try Iphoto Batch Enhance 3.

Color Correcting Multiple Pictures – Iphoto Batch Enhance 3

Feroxsoft has an application that can color correct pictures in batches. It’s called Iphoto Batch Enhancer 3. It’s compatible with Iphoto ‘04 and up. It only takes 3 steps

1. Select the Photos to be processed

2. Click one or more options in the Iphoto Batch Enhancer and apply

3. Watch each picture get enhanced—recommended not to use any other programs while this process completes.

Download Iphoto Batch Enhancer 3

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