iPhoto® ’09 For Dummies®

Chapter 8. Making Basic Photo Adjustments

In This Chapter

• Manipulating the size and shape — rotate, crop, and straighten

• Correcting the most common photo faults

Ansel Adams used to say that if he got 10–12 quality photographs a year, it was a good year. Only those shots were worth the time, effort, and materials he would expend to deliver a classic photograph. We're not likely to be in his league. So what's my point?

My point is we can mimic a professional approach to obtain the best photos we can. That means

• Take lots of photos of a subject.

• Be aware of how each photo looks and try to make each one better by altering location, exposure, composition, and so on.

• Be critical when reviewing photos — reserve the best for advanced editing and the others for basic editing to make them the best they can be.

I cover advanced editing in detail in Chapters 9 and 10. But before you do anything advanced, you need to understand and practice basic editing, and that's what this chapter is all about.

Tip

The editing examples are shown within iPhoto's Edit mode. While Edit mode is a perfectly fine way to apply edits to a photo, I recommend you do any editing that has to be exact in Full Screen view — this makes it much easier. See Chapter 7 for more on Full Screen view.

Warning

When you use any of the tools described in this chapter (Crop, Rotate, Straighten, Enhance, Red-Eye, or Retouch) to edit a photo, the ...