It’s a dark and stormy night. You’re invited over to a friend’s house for dinner. After dessert, you discover your hosts have ulterior motives for your presence there. No, they don’t want you to become a part of their new-found pyramid-shaped staircase to “financial independence”. It’s even more sinister, even more terrifying than that. That’s right. They want to show you slides from their summer vacation! NOOOOO!!!! Your mind goes into high gear, trying to concoct some reason to leave. You…left the iron on. No, wait. You…have to get up early in the morning (even though tomorrow’s Saturday). Something, anything, to get you out of there before the mind-numbing torture begins.

Let’s face it. Taking great photos is certainly fulfilling, but sharing them with others, be they family or friends, is the best! Last time we talked about iPhoto ‘05’s considerably improved organizational and editorial skills. This week we’re talking sharing, where iPhoto ’05 really shines with four ways to share: slideshows, prints, books, and online. First slide, please…

Slideshows. You now have twelve cinema-like transitions to choose from, and you can assign different transitions to each photo if you wish. Borrowing from iMovie, ‘05 can now assign motion, drama, and emphasis to each photo using the “Ken Burns Effect”. iPhoto ’05 also creates slideshows separate from the albums on which they’re based, so you can create differently styled shows from the same album. Since iPhoto is integrated with iTunes, you can easily grab the perfect music and iPhoto automatically adjusts each slide’s duration to fit the music. You can set the durations yourself if you wish.

Prints. iPhoto offers an assortment of print templates (like greeting cards, multiple photos on one page, etc.) to use with your home printer. Don’t have a high-end printer at home? Kodak has a few around their place, and you can order 4”x6” prints from them, through an internet connection managed within iPhoto, for 19 cents a piece (other sizes are available, of course). I recently did this with a 125-photo order and it shipped in two days.

Books. Wow. Gorgeous. Classy. Heartwarming. Less expensive (how often do you hear that?). $29.99 now gets you twenty (ten double-sided) 11” x 8.5” pages of your photos, placed within beautiful new themes of your choosing, printed on high-quality, acid-free photo paper, and professionally bound in hard linen cover. Or, choose the same book in a softcover version for $19.99, or a smaller (8” x 6”) softcover for $9.99. Spread the joy even further with 3-packs of 3.5” x 2.6” softcover books for $11.99. Although iPhoto will build the book for you if you wish, the final layout is totally customizable. Nobody does this better for the price.

Online. Select a photo, or a group of photos. Select “Share”, and “Email”. iPhoto sizes each image, and composes the email for you in the email application of your choice. All you have to do is address and send. If you have a .Mac account, iPhoto will create (again using stylish templates) a great-looking website, and publish it on your .Mac web space, viewable by any browser on any platform anywhere in the world. iPhoto will also help with notifying the world that your photos are there. Have a house with a couple of Macs in it, sharing the broadband internet connection wirelessly? Using the Mac’s Rendezvous networking system (Macs see other Macs on the network and connect with no configuration hassles), others can access and view your iPhoto library and albums through iPhoto installed on their Macs, wirelessly.

Next time: your home movies in high definition. Be there. Aloha.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski