NVMUG eNews 5/21/2005
Last updated 5/23/2005
iLife '05
Daniel Hollister presented iLife '05, and we talked about Tiger email problems and other things.
1. Warren Walker Picture
Daniel Hollister takes a picture to load into iPhoto
Daniel Hollister began his presentation on iLife with iPhoto which is used for managing digial photos. He was using his wife's 17 inch PowerBook. Daniel began by quickly displaying thumbnails of the 10.7GB of photos in iLife on it. He said it can hold up to about 25,000 photos before it becomes too slow.
Daniel took picture of me taking a picture of him taking a picture on a Sony digital camera to have something to load into iPhoto. As he demonstrated, when you plug digital camera into a Macintosh with iPhoto, it opens auromatically, all set to input pictures.
Geof Gonter said you can name on import something like GrandCanion.001 and iPhoto will name new ones increasing the number for on the name for each.
Someone asked what if something happens to your computer and you lose all those pictures. Daniel showed the physically small hard drive he had and said he backs them up.
As Daniel demonstrated, just double-click on a photo in iPhoto to edit it. Then he ran through a number of edits. Automatic Enhance made a picture a little darker. Retouch removed some scars on one of the Club at the Old Mill's pillars.
Phyllis asked if he could remove a person from the picture. Daniel replied that you could crop the person out, but this is no Photoshop.
iPhoto's red eye removal works well enough as Daniel demonstrated by using it to change red EXIT letters to black.
Then there are a number of Adjustment sliders to adjust in realtime qualities such as brightness, contrast, exposure, and sharpness. Daniel said that for amateur photographers this is great. As he demonstrated, you can change a color picture to black and white, or sepia and undo all of these if you change your mind.
If you would rather do your editing in Photoshop, you can change iPhoto's preferences to select Photoshop directly when you double-click for editing. If you do this, the results of the edit are stored in iPhoto. If you drag an image from iPhoto into Photoshop, iPhoto loses track of it and the result is saved outside of iPhoto unless you put it back in as a new picture.
Daniel then demonstrated how you can drag iPhoto images into albums by dragging some images into an album to create a slide show. iPhoto adds a Ken Burns Effect by default which Daniel does not like, but as he demonstrated you can choose your own transitions.
All of the iLife programs are well integrated. Daniel clicked on music in iPhoto to show the entire iTunes library. Then he clicked on an icon to test the sound before choosing the tune to accompany is slide show.
There are also options for playing the slide show. For example you can shuffle the order, or show titles.
Daniel Hollister demonstrating iLife '05.
iTunes is for music management. Daniel had cleaned out some songs from his wife's library, but there were still 1700 songs in it which used 24.64 GB. Daniel could not demonstrate it in the Club at the Old Mill, but he uses Music store a lot.
He demonstrated playing a song displaying visualizer. He said he set up two PowerBooks with two projectors with visuals of visualizer, and blew the high school students away becaue they did not have anything like that.
Daniel did not bring a CD with him, but Geof lent him one from a case of CDs he had with him so Daniel could demonstrate how easy it is to import songs into iTunes.
Daniel inserted a CD, and iTunes opened ready to import as easily as iPhoto imports images. Daniel said that if he was online it could automatically import names with the tunes.
There is also freeware for importing art work for song covers for free from sources such as Amazon. The art work can be used to print CD covers.
Daniel clicked on just one track to import it to demonstrate, He then select it, and clicked Get Info to open a dialog window so he could name it and add other information.
Geof added that you can select multiples tunes and paste changes to all of them at once.
Daniel sorts his songs by date added. The first song listed can be changed to the last song downloaded or the first with one click. Daniel said he also sort by other information such as the song name, or length of song,
He clicked on an eye icon (top right) to change to the Browse mode which shows the songs by Genre, Artist, or Album.
Daniel said you can burn CDs from your playlists to listen to what you want to hear via CD. Geof has the iTrip, but he does not like it, so burns CDs to play what he wants on his car radio. Someone said there are now two car radios with an adaptors to play iTunes.
Daniel showed a digital movie camera. iMovie can import clips from it as easily as iPhoto imports photos or iTunes imports songs.
Daniel runs an after school video club at the school he works for. He imported movie clips made by the kids. (The credits and bloopers are the kids favorite part. ) In the clip, a hand in the foreground motions for one of the kids in the background to come forward. When the kid gets close enough he gets nocked down.
Daniel dragged a clip down from the clipping area into the movie track. He cut it, then dragged another clip next to it - a lot easier than splicing film. He showed the two clips as a short movie with no transition. Then he dragged a classic fade in and inserted it before the first clip to demonstrate. He dragged a transition and inserted it between the two clips to demonstrate. Then he added a fade out at the end to finish the film.
You have to be careful when you play the movie because, if you have any clips or a transitions highlighted, only the highlighted clips will play when you play the movie.
Daniel demonstrated adding effects, which the kids use, including as an earthquake, electicity, and fairy dust. They were previewed on a little screen because they run too slow on the full screen until they have been incorporated into the movie.
Daniel also changed a clip to black and white and made it look like an old time movie. Then he sped it up.
Daniel said that, if space is available, he makes and saves a clean copy of all the clips so he can restore any clips if needed.
Daniel works with two after school groups, a 4, 5, and 6 grade group, and 1, 2, and 3 grade group.
Daniel imported music from iTunes while iin iMovie, previewing songs as he had in iPhoto. He imported into an audio timeline track. He said it is amazing how much difference music makes in the mood of the movie.
To add to the demonstration, Daniel imported a Burnie Sanders photo with the Ken Burns effect. He added a title over this photo "Bernie Sanders Senate '06." iMovie even spell checked the title.
Stephen said he heard that titles should be left on the screen twice as long as it takes to read it aloud. He had noticed that one of the demonstration titles was not on long enough for him to read.
Daniel showed the final film by kids, to general applause.
There will be a media literacy camp in Montpelier where kids will make public service videos. Daniel was asked what software they should buy. He suggested that instead of paying more for software, they buy three or four Mac Mini's and they will have all the software they need. (Daniel's Mac is the only one in the school system he works for.)
Geof said that Newport area teams are bringing kids in to create videos before going into the class next year. Someone said that kids are making PowerPoint presentations all the time, so why not this.
Leigh said she needed an animation for use in her pdf ebooks. They can import a window into a pdf page and have a movie in it showing, for example, how to mill a piece of s solar cell. She was amazed because they thought they would have to spend a lot of money on software.
Daniel said that at the end of the year, club kids gat a DVD of the movie they have made.
Daniel showed a DVD they made last year to show how cool an iDVD presentation is, "Doty Memorial School Presents Attack of the Killer Stuffed Animals." The kids all write this stuff.
DVD is a great way to save and share movies complete with bloopers, and credits. A DVD can hold up to 120 minutes with chapter and scene selection. Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4, supports dual layer DVDs, and support for external DVD burners is new in 10.4.
Daniel played the musical keyboard that is new in GarageBand2, part of iLife. Stephen said you can make corrections in GarageBand2, so even he can play this piano.
Daniel said the new tuner in GarageBand2 works very well. He demonstrated whistling into the internal microphone, and said it works better with an instrument plugged in.
2. More From the Meeting and New eBooks
Richard Smith furnished the projector for use in the meeting. Geof Gonter may be able to bring a 17" iMac G-5 to the June 18 meeting.
Before the presentation on iLife, Veer-Tess brought up mail problems in Tiger, particularly when sending mail. Most of the time there is no outbox mailbox display, but sometimes there is. Sometimes there is a woosh sound when the mail has gone out, sometimes there is not. You can be pretty sure your mail was sent when it appears in the Sent mail box, But, when it is not yet sent, it often does not appear in any mailbox - it just disappears,. It seems always to be still there somewhere. but it is unnerving.
I had a new problem with Tiger email today. I forwarded a document with three attached images. The document in my sent file contains the attachments like it is supposed to. But none of the people received more than a question mark in place of te images on the several emails I sent out. I do not know what caused it or how to avoid it happening again.
Stephen said there are three ways to install Tiger - erase everything and do a clean install, do an archive and install, or do a simple upgrade. There is no consensus on which is best.
Some people recommend a clean install: Backup anything you want to keep on an external hard drive or DVDs. Reformat your system drive which erases everything. Install Tiger. Then reinstall software from the original disks where possible, and selectively put your user files back in. It is a lot of work, but you are then starting fresh with a clean system.
Some people recommend the new archive and install which archives all your old system stuff while installing the new system. Then after you install the new system, you can bring just the archived files that you want back in. The key to a successful archive and install is to be sure your old system is in good shape first. Run a program like Cocktail, or use your Disk Utility program to repair disk permissions, and start up with your Install CD or DVD and run Disk Repair before you Archive and Install.
I elected to run these two programs to make sure my current system was OK, the did a simple upgrade to Tiger. In the process I found that I had a lot of language stuff that I did not need in there from a previous upgrade, so some space was wasted, but it seems to have worked OK and it did not require much work on my part. The I repaired disk permissions again just to be sure the new system was OK.
One member reported that a person had problems after doing a clean install, and when they then did an upgrade it worked. Another member said had a problem with an upgrade, and then a clean install worked. Fortunately most people do not have problems no matter which system they choose.
Another suggestion was to do a clean install on an external hard drive, and then move it over to your computer only when you know it works. There is a backup program called SuperDuper for people who want to do this.
TIDBITs has announced 4 new ebooks, the first being on upgrading to Tiger:
Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger
by Joe Kissell
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-upgrading.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0017-TCANNOUNCE
Leading our pack is Joe Kissell's Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger,
an all-new version of his best-selling guide to upgrading Mac OS X. It walks you through the seven steps necessary before upgrading, which of Tiger's three installation options is right for you (hint: Joe's advice has changed from his Panther ebook, thanks to new tools from Apple), how to perform the actual upgrade, and the four tasks you must perform after the upgrade finishes. Worried that something might go wrong? Joe provides practical troubleshooting tips for the most common problems, step-by-step instructions on how to downgrade to your previous system if necessary, and in-depth discussions of what exactly each installation option does (and does not do). Frankly, if you're going to read only one thing about Tiger, this ebook should be it. 87 pages, $5.
Take Control of Customizing Tiger
by Matt Neuburg
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-customizing.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0018-TCANNOUNCE
With Take Control of Customizing Tiger,
Matt Neuburg picks up after installation, helping you maximize your productivity by customizing Tiger for your needs. Matt shows you how to configure and use Spotlight efficiently for finding files on your hard disk, and once you've found them, he helps you set up Smart Folders that automatically organize your files. Matt also helps you make the most of Dashboard, which gives you instant access to mini-applications. In other parts of the ebook, you'll learn how to manage the status menus in your menu bar, how to customize keyboard shortcuts (and even disable the Caps Lock key!), and how to get started with Automator. 100 pages, $5.
Take Control of Users & Accounts in Tiger
by Kirk McElhearn
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-users.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0019-TCANNOUNCE
In Take Control of Users & Accounts in Tiger,
Kirk McElhearn explains everything you need to know about user accounts in Tiger, such as why every Mac should have at least two accounts, how to create the right types of accounts for different people, the best ways to use Tiger's new parental controls, and more. Learn how to use a troubleshooting account to solve maddening problems, make the best use of Fast User Switching, and share files between users. Kirk also reveals tricks for sharing music and photos among multiple users on your Mac using iTunes and iPhoto. Newly updated for Tiger, this ebook explains and uses Tiger terminology throughout. 73 pages, $5.
Take Control of Sharing Files in Tiger
by Glenn Fleishman
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-sharing.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0020-TCANNOUNCE
In the detail-packed Take Control of Sharing Files in Tiger,
networking expert Glenn Fleishman makes file sharing easy, whether it's between a pair of Tiger-equipped Macs (via Ethernet, AirPort, or FireWire), among a mixed-platform office workgroup, or between far-flung computers on the Internet. Learn how to set up Tiger to share files with Macs, Windows, and Unix machines using AppleShare, Samba, FTP, the Web, and WebDAV. Glenn also shows you how to avoid the risks of sharing files across the Internet, provides instructions for accessing shared files from common operating systems, and explains how to enhance Tiger's file sharing with SharePoints. 122 pages, $10.
Stuffit does not come in Tiger, and it is not certified to work with Tiger. There will be no stuffit engine on your system if you do a clean install. The Macintosh now has its own archive system, with happens to be the PC favorite .zip. But, a new free Stuffit Expander is available on the Internet.
The Epson 740 may have trouble with the Cusp printer driver that comes with Tiger. The fix is just to uninstall and reinstall it. Stephen said it worked, but before dumping the old driver he recommended that you check with www.macintouch for conflicts, etc.
Daniel reported that the new Microsoft X-box uses a G-5 processor. He said when Microsoft first showed it to people, most of them thought Apple or Sony had designed. So they knew they had a winner.
Finally, a better camera does not make up for worse photographic technique. I forgot to use fill flash when I took pictures at the meeting. My new Nikon Coolpix 5900 has something called D-link to flash after the fact when that happens. So I used that to process the images in the camera. The resulting lighting was wrong, so I used a photographic filter in Photoshop CS to adjust the color. Then I used the Shadows/Highlights Adjustment in Photoshop CS. After all that, the resulting images are not as good as if I had just set the camera right before taking the pictures
