Sometimes when you’re around something all the time you take it for granted. You forget what makes it special, what attracted you to it in the first place, the “little things” (that are actually big things) that keep you coming back. Sometimes you just need to get away, spend some quality time with it, and recapture “the fire”.

Now, before you roll your eyes and turn the page, looking for the “real” technology section and not some Dr.Phil feel-good fluff, what I’m talking about here is computer software. Actually, I’m talking about a suite of software called iLife ’06.

iLife is Apple’s suite of “digital lifestyle” applications which is bundled on every Macintosh computer. Most PC users are familiar with the iTunes digital music jukebox that manages music on their computers and iPods. iTunes is the only iLife application that is cross-platform – the others (iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, iWeb and GarageBand) are only available on the Mac platform and are the centerpieces of what makes a Mac a Mac.

There’s nothing like them on Windows. Sure, you can find individual applications that manage photos, edit movies, create DVDs, create web sites, and turn your computer into a home recording studio. However, it’s the integration of the iLife applications that make them a special breed.

It’s been awhile since I did a major project requiring almost all of iLife’s features. Although I’ve written about the different applications, and taught them to various groups, I’ve not needed to do any really heavy-duty work lately. That changed recently, as I was asked to make a half-hour documentary video, consisting of images, video, music, and text graphics, organized into four time periods. I only had a few days to go from scanning and retouching antique photos to the finished product - a DVD playable on any commercial player.

The first step in the project was to assemble the media. I began by scanning the photos into the computer as JPEG images and then importing them into iPhoto. From within iPhoto I could do everything I needed to each photo – cropping and straightening, adjusting levels and colors, sharpening and increasing contrast, removing redeye, and adding comments that would later remind me of the captions required on certain photos.

Even more importantly, I could easily organize the photos into individual albums for each time period, then arrange them within the albums in the order I wanted them to appear in the show. Then, with the click of a button, I created a slideshow of the photos in the album, set to music. The music was stored in my iTunes library, but was accessible from within iPhoto. I could then arrange the order of the photos to match the lyrics and ebbs and tides of the music.

When I opened iMovie and created my project, I could access the photos and music, right from within iMovie. I could even select the individual albums and drag them right into the iMovie timeline, and the photos within were imported in order, saving a lot of time.

Then the editing began. As iMovie uses “non-destructive” editing, I could easily undo editing changes and revert to the original files without having to re-import them. I chose from iMovie’s many bundled effects and transitions (sparingly, of course, as sometimes less is more), and soon had a finished movie masterpiece.

One button click later, I exported the movie into iDVD. While I was selecting a professional-looking theme for the DVD menu, iDVD was busy in the background rendering the movie into DVD format, again saving time.

iLife. I think I’ll keep it.