Photo Editing for Macs?

[Stephanie218]

Hi all,

My DF just got me a Mac, and besides the fact that I'm not super-good at using it yet, I am still working on learning i-photo which is driving me nuts! All the pictures seem to be put together.

I'm looking for advice on a photo editing program though - it doesn't appear that the computer came with one. I really just want basic alterations - color, saturation, crop, and then I really like the programs that have a bunch of options to change the picture (black/white, old photo, artsy). I tried downloading a trial of Aperture today, but was a little overwhelmed - not sure if that's what I'm looking for. What do you other Mac users use? Thanks for the advice!

 

[SharonLowe]

I use CS3 and Lightroom. You might want to try Lightroom or PS Elements. You will learn to love your Mac - I will never go back to a PC!

 

[bostran1]

I'm looking for advice on a photo editing program though - it doesn't appear that the computer came with one.

If it is a brand-new mac it should have come with iPhoto. That will do everything you listed that you wanted to do. On the bottom dock, its the icon that has a gray camera in front of an orange-colored photo.

I use Aperture though and I love it. It is very daunting at first but I quickly learned what was going on. iPhoto is pretty good too though.

 

[BorisMD]

Hi Stephanie,

The Mac and iPhoto are great for what you want to do. I wouldn't get any additional software yet.

If you open iPhoto, and go to the help menu, there will be some things there you can read. Also, if you go to the apple.com website, and click on support, and then click on iPhoto, they have some video tutorials.

I am assuming you have the new version of iPhoto that came in iLife '08? If not, some of the tutorials won't apply.

In any event, when you are looking at your photos in iPhoto, you only need to double click on a photo, or select it by only clicking on it once, and then click the edit button at the bottom left, and your picture will be in "edit" mode. The palette of choices should then come up. That palette will have simple, intuitive controllers to do what you want to do.

Don't be afraid to just click around when you have double clicked a photo. There are lots of editing options, and iPhoto saves a copy of the original, so you can always go back to the unedited version if you wish.

Enjoy, and have fun.

Regards,

Boris

 

[Michele]

I just got a new Mac in July. I found iPhoto hard to figure out at first, but watched some of the video tutorials and now it's great.

iPhoto does have those setting adjustments you asked about, double click on a picture to get into the edit mode then click on the adjust button at the bottom of the screen, here you can adjust saturation, temperature, exposure, highlights, shadows and a few other things. If you have iLife '06 the straighten is on this screen as well. If you have iLife '08 straighten has it's own button down on the tool bar as does crop.