MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife

G U I D E T O Living the iLife ® By Shelly Brisbin 800 East 96th Street Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 MacAddi...

Author: Shelly Brisbin | Mark Rosenthal

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G

U

I

D

E

T

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Living the iLife

®

By Shelly Brisbin

800 East 96th Street Indianapolis, Indiana 46240

MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife Copyright © 2005 by Que Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. International Standard Book Number: 0-7897-3191-6 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004110334 Printed in the United States of America First Printing: October 2004 07 06 05 04 4 3 2 1

Trademarks All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized. Que Publishing cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. iTunes, iMovie, Sherlock, iCal, and MacTerminal are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. iPhoto, iDVD, GarageBand, and Safari are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.

Associate Publisher Greg Wiegand

Acquisitions Editor Rick Kughen

Development Editor Laura Norman

Managing Editor Charlotte Clapp

Senior Project Editor Matthew Purcell

Production Editor Seth Kerney

Indexer Erika Millen

Warning and Disclaimer

Proofreader

Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is implied. The information provided is on an “as is” basis. The author and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book or from the use of the CD or programs accompanying it.

Wendy Ott

Bulk Sales Que Publishing offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases or special sales. For more information, please contact U.S. Corporate and Government Sales 1-800-382-3419 [email protected] For sales outside of the U.S., please contact International Sales [email protected]

Technical Editor Brian Hubbard

Publishing Coordinator Sharry Lee Gregory

Interior Designer Mark Rosenthal, MacAddict Magazine

Cover Designer Anne Jones

Page Layout Kelly Maish

ii

Contents at a Glance

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

PART I:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The iApps That Start with “i” (and One That Doesn’t)

iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 GarageBand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 iPhoto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 iMovie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85 iDVD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 iChat AV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 iCal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139 iSync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153

PART II: The iApps That Don’t Start with “i”

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Address Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161 Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 Safari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .183 Sherlock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193 Font Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203 Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209 The Terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215 The Little Guys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225 Appendix A

The iApps You Don’t Know You Have . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249

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Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

PART I

1

The iApps That Start with “i” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Bringing Music into iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Play First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Adding Music to the Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Internet Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Organizing Your Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Building Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Smart Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Party Shuffle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Exporting Playlists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Music Ratings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Time-Shifting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Searching and Browsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Changing Track Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 A Peek into the Music Folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Burning CDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Choose Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Get Ready to Burn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Printing CD Case Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 iTunes to the Max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Pump Up Playback with Sound Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Optimizing Encoded Sound Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 The Visual Side of iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 AppleScript and iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Sharing Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Share Your Playlists with the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

2

GarageBand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 Get to Know GarageBand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 The Quick Tour: We’re With the Band . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34

iv

Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35

Introduction to Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Start a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Software Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Real Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Fun with Tracks and the Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Pick a Better Software Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Effecting Real Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Groovin’ in the Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Inside the Track Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Mixing

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44

Mixing Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 Volume Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Timing and Velocity Tweaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Song Volume and the Master Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 A Lean, Mean Mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Sharing Songs and Parts of Songs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 101 Uses for an Exported Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 Importing Music: It’s a Drag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 Turbocharge GarageBand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51

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iPhoto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 Meet iPhoto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 Importing Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 About Image Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 Importing from a Digital Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 Import from a Card Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 Import from Your Hard Drive or a CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 Photo Triage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 Managing Photo Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61 Names, Dates, and Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61 Changing Multiple Photos at Once . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61

v

Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Photo Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 View Your Handiwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Organizing Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Albums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Smart Albums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 Date-Based Albums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 Film Rolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 Customized Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 Arranging Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Editing Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Customize the Editing Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Using Editing Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Sharing and Displaying Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 Printing Your Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 Ordering Prints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Slideshows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 Emailing Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 Web Pages and Slides with .Mac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 Burning CDs and DVDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Exporting Photos

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80

Network Photo Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82

4

iMovie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85 Getting Ready to Build a Masterpiece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 Connecting Your Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 Some Notes About Importing Footage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89 Working with Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 Trimming a Clip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 Cropping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 Splitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 Direct Trimming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 Moving Clips to the Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93

vi

Adding Transitions, Effects, and Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 Video Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94 Pile on the Plug-Ins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96 Sound and Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96 Import from iTunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96 Import from a CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 Import Sound Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 Narrating Your Movie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 Editing Audio Clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98 Working with Still Images

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100

Importing Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 The Ken Burns Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 Creating Stills from Your Movie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 Sharing and Exporting Movies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102 Compressed Movies: Web, Email, and Direct to QuickTime . . . . .102 Export to Tape or iDVD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103

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iDVD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Preparing to Work in iDVD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 Create and Save a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 Start in iMovie

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110

Or Start in iDVD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 Working with Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 Editing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 Adding Movies or Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113 Slideshows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 Working with Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 Using Submenus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115 The Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115 Customizing Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115 Editing Menu Backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 Adding or Editing Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116

vii

Editing Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 Saving Favorite Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117 Archiving and Burning DVDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118 Archiving a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118 Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118 Burn a Disc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119

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iChat AV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 Getting an iChat Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 Chat the .Mac Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 AIM Free for All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 Basic Accounting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 Using Multiple Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127 Find Some Buddies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127 Buddy Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128 Customize the iChat Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128 Custom Text

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128

Chat Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 Get Some Buddy Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 Buddy Actions and Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 Text Chat

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130

Editing, Spell-Checking, and Emoticons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 Group Chats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 Sending Images and Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 Audio and Video Chat

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132

Speak Your Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132 See and Be Seen with iSight or a DV Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132 Video Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .134 Rendezvous with Destiny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135

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iCal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139 Getting Started with iCal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142 Understanding Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142 Importing Information

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142

Custom Viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142

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Calendars and Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143 Editing Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143 Copying and Removing Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145 Customizing the Event View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145 To-Do Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145 Printing and Exporting Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146 Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146 Exporting Calendars and Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 Searching in iCal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 Sharing Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 Subscribing to Shared Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148 Publishing Your Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148 Synchronizing Your Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149

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iSync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153 Syncing Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 iSync Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 Sync Two or More Macs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 Sync Your Mac to an iPod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 Sync Your Mac to a Palm PDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 Sync Your Mac to a Cell Phone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156 Sync Your Mac to a Pocket PC Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156 Setting Up for Syncing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156 .Mac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156 iPod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 Palm Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 Cell Phones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157

PART II

9

The iApps That Don’t Start with “i” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159

Address Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161 Enter and Import Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164 Adding New Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164 Importing Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165 Working with Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165

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Using Address Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166 Finding Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166 Address Book and Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167 More Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167 Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167 Printing Address Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168

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Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 Setting Up Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172 New Mail Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172 Adding Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172 Sending and Receiving Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174 Addressing Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174 Email Stylin’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175 Spell-Checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176 Signatures

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176

Reading Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176 Replying to Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .177 Working with Attachments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .178 Managing Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .178 Mailboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .178 Special Mailboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .179 Making Your Own Mailboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .179 Setting Up Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180 Dealing with Spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181

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Safari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .183 Setup and Browsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .186 The Safari Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .186 Setting Browser Window Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .186 Just Browsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187 Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188 Organizing Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189 Imported and Synchronized Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .190 Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .190

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AutoFill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .190 Cookies, Security, and Other Black Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191

12

Sherlock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193 Meet Sherlock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195 Searching with Sherlock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195 Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195 Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195 Stocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .196 Movies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197 Phone Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197 eBay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197 Flights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .198 Dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199 Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199 AppleCare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .200 Customizing Sherlock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .200 Customizing the Toolbar and Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .200 Adding More Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .201

13

Font Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203 Fonts in OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .204 Font Book Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .205 Collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .205 Previewing Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .206 Installing Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .206 Resolving Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .206 Using Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .208 Character Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .208

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Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209 Preview and PDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .210 Document Viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .210 Navigating Multipage Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211 Copying Content from a PDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211

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Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211 PDF Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .212 Preview and Image Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .212 Converting and Exporting Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .212 PostScript Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213 Associating with Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213

15

Unix and the Terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215 Unix Under the Hood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217 The Unix Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217 Time Out for Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .218 Understanding Commands and Their Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219 Some More Basic Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219 Man Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .220 Unix and Aqua Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .220 sudo Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .221 The Power of Unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .221 Text Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .222 Internet Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .222 Apache Web Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .222 Working with the Terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .222 Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .222 Terminal and the Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .224

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The Little Guys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225 Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .227 Chess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .227 DVD Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .228 Image Capture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229 Internet Connect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229 QuickTime Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .230 Stickies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231 iTextEdit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231

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A

The iApps You Don’t Know You Have . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233 Activity Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .234 AirPort Admin Utility

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235

AirPort Setup Assistant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235 Audio MIDI Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .236 Bluetooth File Exchange/Serial Utility/Setup Assistant . . . . . . . . . . . .237 ColorSync Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .238 Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239 DigitalColor Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240 Directory Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240 Disk Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241 Grab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .243 Keychain Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .243 NetInfo Manager

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .244

Network Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .245 ODBC Administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246 Printer Setup Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .247 System Profiler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .248 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249

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About the Author Shelly Brisbin has written about technology for 17 years. Her specialties include the Macintosh, networking, and the Internet. She is the author of nine books, including Mac Answers: Certified Tech Support, Build Your Own Wi-Fi Network, Adobe GoLive for Macintosh, and Windows Visual QuickStart Guide. She has also written hundreds of articles for magazines, including Macworld, MacWeek, NetProfessional, The Net, NewMedia, WebTechniques, and SunWorld. Her most recent day job was as Managing Editor/Technology at Powered Inc. in Austin, Texas. Previously, she served as networking editor for MacUser Magazine. Shelly has also worked as a webmaster, system administrator, and consultant. In her free time, she manages a music-related website and mailing list.

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Dedication This book is dedicated to the world’s most excellent twins, Lauren Olivia Jones and Evelyn Margaret Jones, born March 21, 2003. Their life’s journey is just beginning and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds in years to come.

Acknowledgments This book has been a collaboration from start to finish—a product of the collective brainpower and curiosity about the Macintosh of all involved. I would like to take a bit of space to thank as many of the people involved as possible. I have to start with the crew at Que Publishing, who partnered with MacAddict to bring this book to you, and provided constant support and encouragement as I wrote it. Acquisitions Editor Rick Kughen brought the vision of a magazine in book form to life, and gave me a chance to write it for you. Development Editor Laura Norman kept the project moving in so many ways, but more than anything, she was a Mac-savvy colleague in a PC world. Production Editor Seth Kerney and Technical Editor Brian Hubbard kept me on my toes, checking everything over to make sure it was both grammatical and true. Thanks also to Indexer Erika Millen and Proofreader Wendy Ott. Mark Rosenthal—colleague, co-conspirator, and MacAddict Art Director—developed a terrific design for this book, and went way beyond the call of duty when it came to finding inventive ways to make the text and pictures fit together. Mark accepted my design ideas, and improved on them. He also was a source of encouragement when deadlines loomed. Thanks Mark. I’ll buy you that breakfast taco the very next time you come to Austin. While we’re on the subject of MacAddict, I owe a heaping helping of thanks to Editor-in-Chief Rik Myslewski, who suggested me as author for this little tome. He hired me at MacUser 12 years ago and can’t seem to get rid of me. All of us who love the Mac owe thanks to the folks at Apple. Specifically, though, I had a lot of help from Derick Mains, who handles iLife PR, and Keri Walker, loaner of fabulous products. This book is about Apple’s iLife, but the countless hardware gadgets and software tools from other companies are the vegetables in our iLife stew. I received help and gadgets from the following stand-up guys and gals: Glen Aspeslagh (Ecamm), Andrew Green (Griffin Technologies), Lisa Price, and Dawn Walters. My agent, Debbie McKenna, of Moore Literary Agency, also had a hand in making this book happen. She took care of the paperwork while I did the writing. Thanks, Debbie. Finally, the personal thank yous. As always, my husband, the Fabulous Frank Feuerbacher, was patient and supportive. My friends and family helped out, too, by posing for photos they never imagined would end up in a book. My sister Wynde Jones, her husband Kevin, and their beautiful children, Lauren and Evelyn, are among the stars. Other photogenic folks include: Emma Brisbin (my mom), nieces Heather and Stephanie Hatherly, Dave and Starly Alley, Dawn Walters, and Jeremy Lowery. You guys rock! Shelly Brisbin June 2004

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We Want to Hear from You! As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator. We value your opinion and want to know what we’re doing right, what we could do better, what areas you’d like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom you’re willing to pass our way. As an associate publisher for Que Publishing, I welcome your comments. You can email or write me directly to let me know what you did or didn’t like about this book—as well as what we can do to make our books better. Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book. We do have a User Services group, however, where I will forward specific technical questions related to the book.

When you write, please be sure to include this book’s title and author as well as your name, email address, and phone number. I will carefully review your comments and share them with the author and editors who worked on the book. Email: Mail:

[email protected] Greg Wiegand Associate Publisher Que Publishing 800 East 96th Street Indianapolis, IN 46240 USA

For more information about this book or another Que Publishing title, visit our website at www.quepublishing.com. Type the ISBN (excluding hyphens) or the title of a book in the Search field to find the page you’re looking for.

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Introduction Are ya livin’ the iLife? If you’ve bought a song from the iTunes Music Store, imported a photo into your Mac from a digital camera, conversed with a pal via iChat, emailed that photo to your mom using Mail, or visited a favorite website with Safari, you most definitely are an iLifer! Here’s a question for you—several, in fact. Are you getting the most from your iLife? Have you turned digital video into a movie with kick-butt effects? Burned a DVD that’s making the rounds at work? Does everyone in your family want a CD of the slideshow you ran at the reunion—the one with the White Stripes soundtrack? Does your iChat icon feature a picture of you? Do you manage your calendar with iCal and synchronize it to your Palm PDA with iSync? The iLife is about exercising your creativity, having fun, and using lots of cool Mac OS X apps together for the maximum iLife experience. This book is your guide to the iLife, a MacAddict-style look at what you can do with the software you already have, tips that help you use it better, and some really fun projects designed to fire your imagination.

Learn it, love it, live it. It’s about your Mac, your life, your iLife

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife

What’s an iLife? Apple sells a box of software called iLife ‘04. Inside are the company’s marquee applications, the ones you read about and hear about—the ones that sell lots of Macs. The five are cool and integrated. We love each and every one, and we have lots to say about all of them, but when we say iLife, we’re also thinking outside the box. The way we look at it, all of the software you get with your Mac and Mac OS X, from iChat to Mail, to Terminal, to Printer Setup Utility, has a part to play. It’s about your iLife, not just your iWeekend! When you get a new Mac or install Mac OS X 10.3 (a.k.a. Panther), you get an Applications folder that’s chock full of fun and useful tools. In fact, most of what you’ll learn about in this book comes with the Mac; no need to pull out your credit card to get a copy of iTunes, iChat, or Mail, or to surf the Web with Safari. Tools like iCal, iSync, and Address Book keep you organized and in touch. There’s more, of course—Font Book, Preview, Terminal, and a fistful of other gadgets. That iLife ‘04 box we mentioned—yours for what we honestly believe is the irresistibly low price of $49.95—contains iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and iTunes. You can download iTunes free from the Apple site, but iLife is a darn good deal, whether you count four or five. If you’ve got the older versions of iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD that came with previous versions of Mac OS X, you’ll probably want to get the iLife ‘04 upgrade. Much of what you’ll learn in this book does apply to those older versions, although not all.

Think Inside the Book We had so much fun with box metaphors earlier that we couldn’t resist the above subhead. The book you’re holding is intended as a full chronicle of the software included with Mac OS X and iLife ‘04. Our goal was to give you both a thorough overview of each app, and a dose of MacAddict tips, tricks, style, and savoir-faire in the bargain. We’ve included lots of resources and links to software and hardware that will help improve your iLife even more. Some are products you can buy, and some are fabulous freeware and shareware goodies developed by fellow Mac lovers. There are sidebars, too, highlighting tangents to the main subjects of each chapter, with tips, buying guides, and even more resources for better iLiving. Part I brings together all of the apps with an “i” in front of their name, and the fabulous GarageBand, too. We start with the nearly ubiquitous iTunes (Chapter 1), faithful friend to all music fans, especially iPod owners. Next comes Chapter 2, GarageBand, the music-making software that turns guitar-strummers and keyboard plunkers into music producers. Get your digital camera ready for some quality time with iPhoto (Chapter 3), an industrial-strength picture management tool. If you like your images a bit more active, come along to Chapter 4, where we clue you in about iMovie’s video editing and sharing powers. Just as surely as Macworld Expo San Francisco follows the New Year, iDVD (Chapter 5) is the logical next step for moviemakers who want to share their projects with a breathless public. Leaving the creative sphere for the collaborative, we move along to iChat AV and Chapter 6. You’ll learn how to express yourself with text, audio, and video for fun and/or profit. Chapter 7 explores the power of iCal to put your schedule at your fingertips. To synchronize that schedule—along with your contacts and bookmarks—to another device, get to know iSync in Chapter 8. Each chapter in Part I ends with a Project that walks you step-by-step through a real-world task. We’ve used our eight projects to plan and host a fabulous dance party, complete with music, photos, movies, and a DVD. We use iChat, iCal, and iSync to follow up the big event, and to plan another, even more spectacular shindig.

Introduction

3

Part II of our trip takes you through the Applications folder, concentrating on indispensable Internet tools, along with some unsung workhorses of Mac OS X. You will use several of these tools every day, some without even trying. Wondering what we mean by that? Address Book, as explained in Chapter 9, works fine as a standalone contact management program, but you will probably use it more often in concert with iChat or Mail, a pretty snazzy email application described in Chapter 10. Entering the Internet realm, we move on to the Safari web browser (Chapter 11), your online surfboard. In Chapter 12, the spotlight shines on Sherlock, the Swiss army knife of Internet search tools. Font Book (Chapter 13) is another of those tools that works behind the scenes. Use it to manage your fonts, or to choose typefaces and styles in other Mac OS X apps. Chapter 14 digs into Preview, Apple’s PDF (Portable Document Format) reader application that does double-duty by opening JPEGs, GIFs, and any other image format supported by QuickTime. Terminal is the least flashy and most powerful application on your Mac, if you know how to use it. Chapter 15 is your introduction to using Terminal to interact with the Unix operating system that runs your computer. Finally, in Chapter 16 we present a grab-bag called The Little Guys. Image Capture, Chess, and QuickTime Player (and the five others) don’t necessarily require chapters of their own, but they’ve each got a job to do, and we’ll give you the full scoop. For the last tune on our hit parade (Appendix A), we open the Utilities folder (it’s inside Applications) and take a look at some tools that help you connect with networks, troubleshoot Mac problems, calibrate your display, print your documents, and lots more. We hope you enjoy your excursion into the iLife. Our goal is to show you the extraordinary tools you have at your fingertips, and how you can use them to create, collaborate, roam the Internet, and keep your Mac running smoothly. We’ve had a great time putting it together for you, and we think you’ll have an even better time getting to know all the iLife software.

Part I

The iApps That Start with “i” (and One That Doesn’t)

W

hy do you love the Macintosh? Chances are it has something to do with those fabulous iApps—easy-to-use tools that turned you into a music-playin’, photo takin’, movie-makin’ fool. Did you line up at an Apple store to get your copy of iLife ‘04, complete with the amazing GarageBand? Is your charge card smoking after too many trips to the iTunes Music Store? Do you spend your evenings video chatting with friends, and your days scheduling appointments with iCal and copying them to your cell phone with iSync? If you love the iApps, or would like to form a long-lasting relationship with them, read these chapters. You’ll learn how to set up and use Apple’s marquee software, and pick up tips, tricks, and resources that will take you beyond the basics.

Chapter 1

iTunes What’s so special about iTunes? Not too much. It’s only the application that started the online music revolution—and scared the bejesus out of a lot of fat-cat record execs. Besides giving Mac (and Windows) users an easy way to play CDs from their desktops, iTunes gave us all a tool to create and manipulate an electronic music library, to share tunes with friends, and even to burn custom discs. And this little program is still leading the revolution with the iTunes Music Store, a place where you can hear music before you buy it, then purchase one song or a whole album. If you’ve got an iPod, you also know iTunes as the gateway between your Mac and your pint-sized player. The beauty of iTunes is that it is both ridiculously simple to use and very powerful. It’s a personal MP3 player, a DJ booth, and a compact disc factory. As you will learn later in this book, iTunes also has your back when it comes to adding sound to other Mac-based creative endeavors, such as photo slideshows (Chapter 3, “iPhoto”) and movies (Chapter 4, “iMovie”). In this chapter, we’ll show you how to uncover all of iTunes’ secrets, including how to turn your audio CDs into the best-possible-quality digital files, how to listen to the radio online, how to move your iTunes Library to a bigger disk, how to share your iTunes Library with other Macs, how to play iTunes music on your stereo, how to set up “allowance” accounts in the iTunes Music Store, and iTunes—music at your fingertips. much, much more.

Import, play and organize your music with iTunes

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife PREVIOUS, PLAY/STOP, NEXT BUTTONS

TRACK DISPLAY

PLAYHEAD

BROWSER PANE

SOURCE PANE

iTunes quick start

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SHARED MUSIC SMART PLAYLIST

STANDARD PLAYLIST CONTENT PANE

ARTWORK PANE

ARTWORK

SHUFFLE

CREATE PLAYLIST

REPEAT

INFO DISPLAY

Chapter 1 iTunes

BROWSE/IMPORT/BURN DISC SEARCH

Easy Navigation

EQUALIZER

VISUALIZER

EJECT DISC

Most iTunes’ features are available from the main window. Several toggle buttons have two or more functions. Click the text at the top or bottom of the window to change the info displayed.

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Bringing Music into iTunes Getting started with iTunes is as easy as popping a disc into your Mac’s CD drive. Unless you’ve altered the default settings in OS X, inserting an audio CD causes iTunes to open. After a few seconds, your CD’s contents appear. Another easy way to get started, assuming you have MP3 music files on your Mac already, is to start up iTunes for the first time and allow it to find and import those files. Either way, we assume that there’s some music available in iTunes’ main window. Let’s take a very quick tour of iTunes’ playback features, and then it’s on to bigger and better things.

Play First

Figure 1.1: Skip a track by clicking the check mark next to its name.

Figure 1.2: Drag the playhead to skip forward or backward in the current track.

Click the Play button (the right-facing arrow in the upper-left corner of the iTunes window) to hear the first track. (You can also double-click the song in the Content pane.) Adjust the volume with the slider below the playback controls. Click the Next Song button (to the right of Play) to move to the next track. As you might have guessed, the Previous Song button takes you back one track. If iTunes plays your CD’s tracks out of order, the Shuffle option is enabled. To toggle Shuffle on or off, click the Shuffle button in the lower left corner of the iTunes window, or choose Controls → Shuffle. To skip a track, click the check mark next to its name (see Figure 1.1) to uncheck it. To repeat a track, use the Repeat Toggle (next to Shuffle) button or one of the three options on the Controls menu. A few CD player controls aren’t as easy to spot: To skip ahead within the track you’re playing, click and hold the Next Song button, or drag the playhead, as shown in Figure 1.2. Each of the two lines in the track display toggles to show a variety of information about a track. Click the top line to toggle between song title, artist, and album. By default, the second line shows Elapsed Time for the current track. Click to see the Remaining Time, and click again to see the track’s Total Time— although that info is also available in the main window. While you’re exploring iTunes, take a gander at its Dock menu. Click and hold the iTunes icon on the Dock and you’ll see the CD controls, along with what’s playing at the moment. Finally, meet the Zoom command (Window → Zoom). It shows the upper portion of the iTunes window and hides the rest. You’ll learn more about playing tunes throughout this chapter, but for now let’s concentrate on importing music into iTunes.

Adding Music to the Library

TIP If iTunes does not open when you insert an audio CD, choose System Preferences from the Apple menu and click CDs and DVDs. Choose iTunes from the When You Insert a Music CD menu.

The beating heart of iTunes is the iTunes Library—a database that stores information about your music, including track name, artist, album, genre, and more for each track, as well as the path to the file on your hard drive. When you import music into iTunes, it is added to the Library. From there, you can search and sort your music, make playlists, or export Library info to a text or XML file. In most cases, adding to the Library means copying a music file into the iTunes Music folder on your hard drive. We say most cases because it is possible to add song files to a library without copying them—such as when they’re stored on a secondary hard drive. But for now, assume that when we say importing, we mean copying a music file to the iTunes Music folder, located in your home folder (Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music). iTunes supports five audio formats: AIFF, MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless Encoder, and WAV. You can import a file from any of the five formats into any other supported format. In most cases, you will convert AIFF files to MP3 or AAC, or copy MP3s without converting them. You can also noodle with

Chapter 1 iTunes

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iTunes’ quality settings to get the best sounding file possible. The following list gives you a thumbnail sketch of each format. We’ll describe file format quality controls in the “iTunes to the Max” section of this chapter. • AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format): Audio CD tracks are stored in AIFF. A typical four-minute AIFF file is 40MB, or 10 times the size of an MP3. Even though AIFF provides higher quality than MP3, large file sizes make it impractical for storage on MP3 players or even hard drives, and certainly for transfer over the Internet. • MP3 (Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3): MP3 is the standard for music files on the Internet. It is a highly compressed file format, and doesn’t provide all of the audio fidelity that AIFF does, although it sounds pretty darn good to most ears. Saving files as MP3s is a great way to get a lot of music onto a computer or an iPod, though. • AAC (Advanced Audio Coding): Apple wants you to learn to love AAC. They bill it as a better alternative to MP3, because it offers both a high level of compression and better sound than the older format. AAC is a subset of the MPEG-4 family of formats. Music you download from the Apple Music Store is in AAC format, and AAC files work on the iPod, too. If you import to AAC in iTunes, you won’t be able to use those files with other music software, or with nonApple MP3 players. You can convert AAC to MP3, though, if you need to transfer them to a PC, CD, or MP3 player. • Apple Lossless Encoder: The newest Apple audio format boasts the same sound fidelity as AIFF or WAV, but at about half the file size. Apple Lossless files are still significantly larger than AAC or MP3 files, and can be played, like AAC, via iTunes or iPod. • WAV (Waveform Audio File): We’re loathe to talk about a Windows standard, especially because most of the music you are likely to encounter comes in some other file format, but iTunes will let you import WAVs. Sound effect files are often saved as WAVs, and Windows users who convert cassettes or vinyl records to digital often use WAV as an intermediary between the original and MP3 or AIFF. Figure 1.3: iTunes adds track information from CDDB to your music library.

There are three ways to add new songs to iTunes: • Import from an audio CD • Drag or double-click files • Gather music using iTunes

Import from a CD. When you insert an audio CD into your Mac’s drive, several things happen. OS X recognizes the disc as an audio CD and iTunes opens, unless you’ve told your Mac to take some other action. Next, iTunes makes contact with the CDDB (Compact Disc Database), the mother ship of CD track information. CDDB delivers title, artist, and genre information to iTunes. For this to work, of course, you must be connected to the Internet, and CDDB must know about your audio CD. You might occasionally encounter a CD that is unknown to the mother ship. If that’s the case, you can add the info to the iTunes Library manually. We’ll have more to say about that later in this chapter. Figure 1.3 shows a freshly inserted CD.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife

iTunes Music Store Buy and Add Music to Your Library

Sample songs, then click Buy Song to save the ones you like.

The music you want is just 99 cents and a few clicks away at the iTunes Music Store. You can find, sample, and buy songs, and add them to your iTunes Library. Such a deal! When you click on the Music Store item in the Source pane, iTunes connects to the Internet and loads the store. You’ll see featured artists, a menu of genres for browsing, and lists of music genres, new releases, and more. Clicking on an album brings up a browser with available tracks and links to related albums. Double-click a track to hear a 30-second sample. If you like it, click Buy Song to add it to your shopping cart or buy it instantly with 1-click. To find specific music by artist or title, use the iTunes search box. For a more advanced search, click Power Search in the Music Store browser and use as many criteria as you like. Not sure of the exact title of a song? Type an approximation in the Song field and see what comes up. To find more music by an artist in your library, click the arrow button to the right of the name. Buttons next to song and album titles also lead to the Music Store. When you add music to your shopping cart, iTunes asks you to log in. If you have ever registered with Apple for any reason, use your Apple ID to activate your account. Otherwise, click Create New Account and enter your personal and payment information. When this step is complete, the song you want appears in a shopping cart. Leave it there until you’ve finished shopping, or buy it right away. Because songs remain in the

cart until you buy or delete them—you can return to iTunes later. When you do buy music, iTunes copies your purchases to your hard drive, adding them to your iTunes Library, as well as the new Purchased Music playlist. From here, you can work with the purchased music just as you would with any item in the Library—burn it to a disc, or copy it to a playlist or iPod. Apple places some limits on the way you use purchased songs. You can only burn a playlist containing a purchased song 10 times, although you can burn it again from different playlists. You must authorize (up to three) computers running iTunes in order to play a purchased track. To use a fourth machine, de-authorize one of the first three. The files themselves, in the AAC format, can’t be played on non-Apple MP3 players. Need to keep your kids’ music spending under control? Want to give friends gifts they can choose themselves? Create an allowance account (click the Allowance link) and deposit $10 to $200. Your recipient logs in to the Music Store and has access to the money you’ve deposited. Do you have trouble limiting your music purchases? Give yourself an allowance.

Enter a word or phrase in Power Search’s song field to see a list that might jog your memory.

Chapter 1 iTunes

Figure 1.4: Tell iTunes what to do when you insert an audio CD.

13

You can import the contents of your CDs one at a time using the Import button in the upper-right corner of the iTunes window. If you would rather have all audio CDs added to your library as you insert them, change iTunes’ settings. Choose iTunes → Preferences. From the On CD Insert menu (see Figure 1.4), choose Import Songs (or Import and Eject). The next CD you insert will be imported accordingly. The Import and Eject option is a great way to import a large number of CDs quickly. Drag or Double-Click Files. Lots of folks have MP3 files lying around. Whether they have been passed around on CD or downloaded (legally, we assume), iTunes can help you keep them organized by adding them to your music library. Dragging a file into the iTunes window, or double-clicking it in the Finder copies the file to the library. Dragging it onto the name of a playlist copies the file and adds it to that playlist. Find and Import Files. You can bring new files into the library by letting iTunes find them for you. This is useful if you have a folder full of files to import. In iTunes, choose File → Add to Library, and navigate to the folder or file you want to add. Click Choose to begin copying files. To bring music files that are stored in various locations around your hard drive, choose Advanced → Consolidate Library. iTunes finds and imports all supported files to the library.

Internet Radio

TIP Use the Add to Library command to move a music library from your desktop Mac to your PowerBook or iBook. Connect the two Macs via file sharing (or with a FireWire cable) and open iTunes on the portable. Choose Add to Library and navigate to your desktop Mac’s music library folder. Select the folder and click Choose. iTunes copies your music and updates the content window.

Listening to Internet radio streams is one more cool way to use iTunes. Internet-only broadcasters spin platters and host talk shows that you won’t hear on your quasi-local corporate-owned radio station, although some traditional stations do offer Internet streams. You can use iTunes to find and organize your favorite Internet radio stations, creating your own virtual tuner. Click Radio in the iTunes Playlists pane. Apple has compiled a list of stations by genre. Click a triangle to see the offerings, and try one by double-clicking it. Figure 1.5 shows what’s currently available in the Eclectic category. Apple updates the list periodically, so it’s worth checking back regularly. If you operate an Internet radio station, or want to suggest one be added to the Radio playlist, send an email to [email protected]. You might notice that some stations appear more than once, with different Kbps rates listed. The higher the Kbps rate, the better the station will sound. If you have a slow Internet connection, though, that high quality might bog your system down, so try the high-speed option first and choose the slower one if the stream won’t play, or stops and starts a lot. If you dig a particular station enough to come back to it again and again, save the listing by dragging it to the Library, or to any other playlist you have created. Playing the station from the radio playlist does not import it into your Library. Broadcast and Internet-only stations usually link directly to their stream from a website. If you know about a station that isn’t listed in iTunes, go to its site and click to open the stream.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife

Figure 1.5: Most radio listings include a one-sentence description of the station, along with its bit rate.

However, an annoyingly large number of “real” radio stations don’t support iTunes with their Internet streams, opting instead for Windows Media Player or RealOne Media Player. The only solution is to download a supported player and to complain… er um, suggest to broadcasters that they support iTunes. You can remind them that iTunes is available for Mac OS and for Windows, so no one need be left out. Finally, services such as Live365 host collections of Internet radio stations. You might be able to play these streams in iTunes, or you might be stuck with a proprietary player. Live365 wants to sell you its player and to use the subscription version of its service. In fact, you’ll hear lots of ads for the service and for other products on the free service. If you would rather use iTunes, find the station you want at http://www.live365.com, click on the broadcaster’s website (not the Play link), and check whether the broadcaster offers an iTunes-friendly stream. If you know the URL for an audio stream, choose Advanced → Open Stream and type or paste the link.

Organizing Your Music An iTunes Library can quickly become large, making it hard to find and play just the music you want. Playlists let you organize music by genre, artist, or any other random means that appeals to you. You can also use playlists to quickly burn CDs from within iTunes. Create your own playlists, or use the Smart Playlist feature to build a list based on criteria you choose.

Chapter 1 iTunes

TIP Start a playlist by selecting tracks in the Content pane and then choose File → New Playlist from Selection.

Figure 1.6: When a playlist is selected, iTunes displays the Burn Disc button.

Figure 1.7: All of iTunes’ tags are available in the Smart Playlist editor. You can include one or many criteria and then tell iTunes to limit the results and to play them randomly.

15

Building Playlists Let’s say you want to listen to music at work. Since you’re slogging through the budget today, you’ve decided that a jazz soundtrack would be better than the punk anthem you have ringing in your ears after last night’s Clash hoot. The easiest way to keep the Coltrane and Clash from, well, clashing, or to ensure that guests at your next party don’t find out about your closet Barry Manilow fandom, is to keep those diverse passions separated by building some iTunes playlists. Besides segregating music by type, or by any personal criteria you might have in mind, playlists allow you to burn CDs, change the play order, and create sound settings that apply only to the songs in a specific playlist. To begin a playlist, follow these steps: 1. Choose File → New Playlist and type a name that describes the tunes you’re about to put together. 2. Click on the Library and then drag a track from the Content pane onto the new playlist. Now drag more tracks over. 3. Click on the new playlist to see the results. 4. Change the order by dragging a track up or down within the list. Notice that the display at the bottom of the Content window tells you how long your playlist will take to play, and how much disk space its contents consume—you will use this information when you burn CDs. Notice too that the iTunes Browse button now says Burn Disc (see Figure 1.6). Some people use lots of playlists to create very specific subcategories in their music collection. If folk is too broad a designation for you, create a Celtic playlist, and one for singer-songwriters. A less granular approach might lead you toward playlists called work, romance, party, and spring cleaning, for instance. Edit your playlists at will. Adding, deleting, and rearranging the tracks has no effect on your music library. A playlist is not a folder full of files. It’s simply a list of pointers to music stored in your iTunes Music folder. When you add to a playlist, the track is not copied, and when you delete an item from the playlist, or even the playlist itself, the music files remain intact.

Smart Playlists A smart playlist is one that iTunes builds based on criteria you set. Unlike a standard playlist that you can create by searching for tracks from a certain artist, a smart playlist can be built around multiple criteria, limited to a certain number of tracks, and set to play songs at random. For example, try searching for all tracks with the word “dog” in their titles (Song Name). Limit your search to 15 songs, lest you be overwhelmed. Leave the selected by menu set to Random, just to make things interesting. Voila! You have the tracks you need to build a mix for your brother-in-law—an ode to his beloved border collies. Figure 1.7 shows how to construct this smart playlist. When you click OK, iTunes shows 15 matching tracks.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife

TIP To accurately determine how much time to cut from your track, disable crossfade playback in iTunes Preferences, so that you can hear the edit clearly.

Add more criteria by clicking the plus button, to the right of each row of fields. Choose a field and type your search text. You can also choose whether the new criterion does or does not contain the text you’ve typed, or one of the other options. By default, iTunes uses all the criteria you select to build the playlist, but choose Any from the Match menu and the universe gets bigger. Turn your brother-in-law’s dog mix into a broader animal tale by choosing songs with “dog” or “cat” in the title. A few smart playlist features bear highlighting. Click the Live Updating check box to add tracks to the smart playlist as they are added to your iTunes Library. If you don’t also have the Limits check box enabled, you can create a playlist that grows as new music arrives. Now you don’t need to add tracks to your blues cruise playlist manually when the new Sue Foley album comes out. Just import the album and let iTunes do the rest. It’s easy to change an existing smart playlist. Control-click its name and choose Edit Smart Playlist to view the editor.

Party Shuffle Just as iTunes keeps track of the past with the Recently Played playlist, Party Shuffle tells you what’s coming up. When you click the Party Shuffle Playlist, a list of upcoming songs from your library appears. Add, rearrange, or delete songs from the list, or apply Party shuffle to a different playlist using the Source pop-up menu. The Display pop-ups give you control over the number of recently played and upcoming songs on the Party Shuffle list. Recently played songs are dimmed in the Party Shuffle playlist. You can play one by double-clicking it, or rearrange them so that they will play again.

Exporting Playlists

Figure 1.8: Click the My Rating field to add stars to the track’s rating.

The playlist you worked so hard to build on your desktop Mac can be imported to another Mac or to your iPod. Select the playlist you want to copy and either Control-click to choose Export Song List from the contextual menu, or choose File → Export Song List. Choose XML from the Format pop-up menu and click Save. Before importing a playlist to the other Mac, be sure to copy the song files to the iTunes Music folder. If iTunes can’t locate the song it needs, it is left off the imported playlist. Copy the playlist.xml file to the second Mac. With iTunes open, choose File → Import and navigate to the playlist file. The imported playlist will appear in the Source pane. Importing playlists to an iPod is even simpler. If you manage your iPod manually, drag a playlist onto the iPod icon. The playlist and any songs not already on the iPod are copied over. You can also configure iTunes to automatically update your iPod playlists. For more on using iTunes with an iPod, read Brad Miser’s Absolute Beginner’s Guide to iPod and iTunes (Que, ISBN: 0-7897-3177-0).

Music Ratings The best way to use iTunes’ music ratings is to build playlists (or exclude songs from playlists) based on them. You can rate any track from one–five stars, or leave the rating blank. To rate a track, Controlclick it and choose a rating from the My Rating list on the contextual menu. (You can also press „-I and apply ratings from the Options tab, as shown in Figure 1.8.) You can apply the same rating to several tracks by selecting them and then applying a rating.

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Rating is among the criteria you can use to build smart playlists. You can, for example, create a playlist containing only five-star tracks, or one that omits any track rated two stars or less, even if it meets your other smart playlist criteria.

Time-Shifting Here’s a quirky feature that helps you deal with live performance recordings, or other tracks that contain segments you don’t want to play in iTunes. The Options tab of the Track Info dialog shows editable start and stop times for the track. By default, iTunes plays the entire track, but you can “hide” the beginning or end of a song by changing the time values. Let’s say that a live recording begins with a 10-second spoken introduction: “This is a song about my first car and how I wrecked it…” To play the song without the intro, play the track and watch the display to see how much time you need to cut (be sure the Track Info Display is showing Elapsed Time). To remove the first 10 seconds of the track, enter 0:10 in the Start Time field. Play the track again to be sure that you’ve cut the right amount of time. Editing the start or stop time of a track does not modify the song file. Simply click the check box next to either time field to revert to the uncut song.

Searching and Browsing

Figure 1.9: Type text into the Search box and choose search tags from the menu.

Figure 1.10: See how many Pop artists and tracks your library contains.

You don’t need a smart playlist to locate tracks based on their tags. iTunes has both a search function and a tool called the browser. The simplest way to find something in iTunes is to type text into the Search box. Results appear and are narrowed down as you type. By default, all tracks with tags that include your text string appear in the Track window. Click the triangle in the Search box to search by specific ID tags (see Figure 1.9). To browse for what you want, choose Edit → Show Browser. The browser pane gives you a look at the genres, artists, and albums in your library. Click on a genre to see matching artists. Click on an artist to see matching albums. In the Content pane below, individual tracks pop up. Figure 1.10 shows a selection of Pop artists, albums, and tracks.

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TIP If genres aren’t your cup of tea, choose iTunes → Preferences and uncheck the Show Genres When Browsing check box. No more meaningless categories—just artists, albums, and tracks.

Figure 1.11: Here’s how iTunes stores your music files.

Changing Track Information Information about tracks imported into your iTunes Library comes from CDDB or from ID3 tags— the identifying info embedded in the music files you add to the library. This data is often incomplete, sometimes wrong, and occasionally missing entirely. Fortunately, you can edit the tags, either individually or in groups. Click on a track and press „-I. The track’s tags, along with a whole lot more interesting info, are accessible from the dialog that appears. Click the Info tab to get at the stuff you can change. You might find many fields empty because the record company hasn’t furnished CDDB with the relevant info. Chances are especially good that the Groupings and Composer fields are blank. The Comments field is all yours. Genres tend to be haphazard, and might not match your visions of the difference between rock, alternative, and punk. You might also notice that the CDDB genres are too similar (punk versus punk rock) to be useful. If you prefer to think of Ani DiFranco as alternative rather than folk, change her genre. There’s more to this dialog, but click OK for now so that we can show you its real power. Following along with our Ani DiFranco example (feel free to substitute any artist about whom folks can’t seem to agree), search in the main window for tracks by an artist you think might be mislabeled. We found a couple of Ani’s albums, one of which is labeled Alternative and one Folk. To sync all of her work to one genre, select all the tracks and press „-I. After agreeing that you are sure you know what you’re doing, a slightly different version of the dialog appears, with all fields empty. Choose (or type) a genre from the menu and click OK. By the way, track info editing is also useful if the spelling of an artist’s name differs slightly in the CDDB records. Ms. DiFranco (Di Franco) provides a useful illustration here, too. With all tracks shown in iTunes (search for Ani Di), open the Info dialog and type her name correctly in the Artist

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field. Notice as you type that the name is filled in for you, based on the contents of the database. You can accept or overtype the library’s suggestion. We’ve noticed that CDDB frequently lists the artists on compilation albums incorrectly, sometimes listing the artist as “various artists,” or even transposing song title and artist. How annoying. Search your library for “various” and make corrections as needed. iTunes will now sort correctly by artist.

TIP Don’t pay attention to the size in MB of a playlist you want to fit onto a CD. This refers to the files in your library, not the AIFF files created when you burn an audio CD. Use the playlist time instead.

A Peek into the Music Folder As we pointed out earlier, iTunes’ default behavior is to store music files in a central location (Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music). Also by default, the iTunes Music folder contains subfolders for each artist, and for each album by that artist (see Figure 1.11). When you make changes to a track’s artist or album ID tags, iTunes moves the file to the correct new folder. You can store your library and music folder where you like—a large external hard drive, for example. First, copy your existing iTunes music folder to the location where you want to store your files. Choose iTunes → Preferences and then select the Advanced tab. Click Change and navigate to the new location. You can also choose not to copy newly imported files to the Library folder. You might do this if you have downloaded music that you’re not sure you want to keep. Use iTunes to play the tracks, but don’t make copies until you’re sure you like the songs. Finally, although we’re not sure why you might do this, you can tell iTunes not to use artist and album folders to organize your music. All these options are available under the Advanced tab. Delete your original iTunes Music folder to save hard drive space.

Burning CDs After you’ve mixed your music into playlists, you might want to turn it into a custom CD, suitable for road trips, the living room stereo, or as a unique gift for friends. If you haven’t yet created a playlist, start there. You’ll need one before you can burn a CD.

Figure 1.12: Drag tracks to change the play order of your playlist.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife Burning that CD is usually as simple as selecting a playlist and then clicking the Burn Disc button. You do have options, though, and depending on your CD burner and your Mac’s configuration, you might need to prepare iTunes before you can make with the laser beams.

Choose Content

TIP If you have Roxio Toast or another CD burning application installed, you might have trouble burning CDs with iTunes. If you have problems, trash the other application and try again.

Start by deciding what you want on your CD. Create a new playlist to hold the tracks and drag a few from your library onto its icon. Click the playlist and notice the display at the bottom of the window. It shows the number of songs in the playlist, the length of time it will take to play them, and the combined size of all the files in the playlist. An audio CD can hold around 80 minutes and 650MB of music. The number of tracks will vary, but typically you’ll be able to get 15–20 songs on a disc. You can use iTunes to burn an MP3 CD or a data CD, but the default is audio, the same format you buy at the music store and use in your home or car player. We’ll start there. Add tracks to your playlist until you have all you want or reach 80 minutes, whichever comes first. If you’re burning from a smart playlist and find that you have more tracks than will fit on a disc, edit the list and limit the maximum number of tracks to get your playlist under 80 minutes. To set the play order of your CD, click and drag tracks up or down the playlist. As you drag, a horizontal line shows you where the track will appear when you release the mouse (see Figure 1.12).

Get Ready to Burn

Figure 1.13: Choose a CD burner from the list of recorders.

To ensure that your Mac and iTunes are ready to burn a CD, choose iTunes → Preferences and click the Burn tab. You can burn CDs at the maximum speed of your CD burner, or you can choose a slower speed. Slower burning takes longer, of course, but reduces the chance of errors that can corrupt the CD. Some no-name CD brands (or even a particular batch of high-quality media) might generate more than their share of errors. If you experience errors, try a slower burn speed. With Audio CD as your disc format, tell iTunes how much blank space to leave between tracks on your CD, and you can use Sound Check to even out the tracks’ volume. Finally, be sure that a CD recorder is listed in the Burning tab. If you have more than one recorder, select the one you want to use (see Figure 1.13). If no recorder is listed, your Mac either doesn’t have a burner installed, or uses a drive that isn’t automatically recognized by iTunes. In the latter case, try running Software Update to be sure that you have the latest versions of Mac OS X and iTunes. Apple adds support for new drives regularly. With burn prefs set, click OK and locate a blank disc. When you click the Burn Disc button, iTunes asks for the blank disc. When it accepts it, you are prompted to click Burn Disc again. The track info display at the top of the window is replaced by the status of your burn. iTunes lets you know when it’s finished with a little sound effect.

Chapter 1 iTunes

TIP Back up the music you buy from the iTunes Music store. Just click on the Purchased Music playlist and burn it.

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MP3 and Data Discs. An MP3 CD is one that will only play in an MP3-compatible CD player. Because MP3s are so much smaller than AIFF files, you can stuff lots more music on an MP3 disc. Data discs appear on your desktop as just another volume, and store computer-readable files. If you have a DVD-R drive, you can burn either CDs or DVDs. If you want to back up your MP3 collection or share files with a friend who wants to copy the files to a computer, burn a data disc. Multi-CD Projects. You can burn your very own CD box set if your playlist won’t fit onto a single CD. When you click Burn Disc on a too-long playlist, iTunes warns you that the playlist will not fit on a single CD and offers you the chance to cancel or keep going. After calculating how many tracks will fit on the first disc and dimming the rest of the playlist, iTunes asks for a blank. When the first disc is ready, your recorder ejects it and iTunes asks you to load another into the craw, repeating the process until your project is complete.

Printing CD Case Labels Want to send a CD you’ve burned to a friend? Wouldn’t it be nice to include a list of the songs and artists on your disc? iTunes, whose earlier versions weren’t much help when it came to printing, can now print jewel case inserts, song lists, and album lists for your playlists. You can’t do much in the way of customizing these printouts, but making a simple jewel case is now as simple as printing and folding. When you have burned a CD from a playlist, or simply finished the playlist, select it in the Sources pane. Choose File → Print. Your first option is to print a jewel case insert. You can choose from a number of themes from the Theme menu, some of which print in color, and others in black and white. The mosaic and single cover themes display artwork from an album that’s represented in your playlist. A preview appears in the Print dialog box when you choose a theme. To print a song list that isn’t formatted as a CD insert, choose Song Listing and then a theme. If you choose Custom, your song list will include the field currently visible in the iTunes window. To print a different set of fields, choose Edit → View Options and check the fields you want to see. The Album Listing option offers no themes. Your playlist is grouped by its source albums, with album artwork displayed where available.

iTunes to the Max You can just play the songs in your library, or you can use sound effects, custom encoding settings, and other advanced features to get the most from iTunes.

Pump Up Playback with Sound Effects

Figure 1.14: Notice the elevated bass and highs, and the lowered mid-range in the equalizer’s Rock preset.

The iTunes sound enhancer, equalizer, and Sound Check make it possible to improve the way music sounds when played on your Mac. Let’s see how it works. Start playing a song in iTunes, preferably through headphones or external speakers. Choose iTunes → Preferences, and

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife

Figure 1.15: Information about a song’s format and encoding appears in the Summary tab of the track’s Info dialog.

Figure 1.16: Custom encoding settings give you more control over an imported song’s quality and file size.

click the Effects tab. Enable Sound Enhancer by clicking the check box. Do you hear a difference in the way your music sounds? Use the slider to increase or decrease the Sound Enhancer effect. Your results may vary, but as there is no performance penalty for using Sound Enhancer, we suggest you keep it enabled. Below Sound Enhancer in the Effects tab, you’ll find the Sound Check option. Sound Check adjusts the volume of all iTunes’ tracks to the same level. The coolest sound-boosting feature you’ll find in iTunes is the graphic equalizer. Like the one that might be part of your home stereo system, this equalizer lets you fine-tune the lows, highs, and mids, using 10 bands. You can adjust each band’s volume manually or use a preset configuration—one of the 22 provided, or one of your own. If you’re not still playing a song, get one started so that you can hear how the equalizer changes its sound. To use the equalizer, click the Equalizer button (in the bottom-right corner of the iTunes window). If the On check box isn’t checked (the default), click it. Now choose a preset from the menu and notice both the change in sound and the new levels for each band. Figure 1.14 shows the Rock preset. Choose a different preset and notice the change in sound and display. Now find a preset you like, but change it up a bit. Drag the 32 frequency band (far left) all the way to the top of the slider. The bass thumps and the preset display changes to Manual, because you’ve overridden the preset. Make more changes until you have a sound you like. Choose Make Preset from the menu and type a name for it. Your new setting is added to the list of presets. You can also edit the list of presets to rename or delete one. In addition to the 10 frequency bands, the equalizer includes a secondary Preamp volume control, which adjusts all of the values at once, equally. Use the Preamp to compensate for very loud or very quiet tracks. Equalizer settings (presets or manual) apply to all tracks in all playlists, unless you specifically associate a setting with a particular song. To do that, play the song and choose equalizer settings for it. If you’re creating custom settings, be sure to save them as a preset. Select the song and press „-I to view the song’s info window. Click the Options tab and choose from the Equalizer preset pop-up. By the way, you can also use the Volume Adjustment slider if you think the song needs it.

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Optimizing Encoded Sound Quality

TIP To apply a preset to multiple songs, locate and select them and then press „-I. Choose an equalizer preset in the modified Info dialog.

Figure 1.17: An image appears in the artwork pane when you select a song with artwork.

iTunes is not a sound-editing tool. You can’t do much to improve the sound of files you already have. You can, however, prevent unnecessary degradation of files you encode with it. As we described earlier in this chapter, MP3 and AAC are compressed file formats and can’t match the fidelity of AIFF, although Apple says AAC’s quality rivals that of uncompressed CD audio, and that Apple Lossless Encoder is even better than AAC. An audio file is compressed by lowering the file’s bit rate (measured in Kbps). The lower the bit rate, the smaller the file. A lower bit rate also equals reduced sound quality, although the relationship is not one-to-one. AAC bit rates, for example, are lower than MP3 bit rates, and thus the files are typically smaller. Even so, Apple says AAC files sound better, and we agree, at least some of the time. To see the format of a particular song in your library, press „-I. The format and encoding settings appear in the Summary tab, as shown in Figure 1.15. iTunes includes quality settings for encoding MP3 and AAC files. Each format has presets (good, high, and higher) for MP3 encoding, and custom options for both AAC and MP3, where you can set bit rates and other options. Choose iTunes → Preferences and then click Importing. Select Import Using MP3 Encoder. iTunes defaults to High Quality (160Kbps) and lists the components of that setting. Choose Higher quality to see how the settings differ. AAC’s High Quality preset (choose AAC Encoder from the Import Using menu) is 128Kbps. You can bump AAC files up as high as 320Kbps. Custom Encoding for MP3 and AAC. Both the AAC and MP3 encoders give you a Custom option. It’s unlikely that most folks will choose to use these options because iTunes offers preset values, and because the difference in file sizes and quality for a given group of settings is pretty small. Learning about these options will give you some idea of how audio compression works.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife With the AAC encoder selected, choose Custom from the Settings menu. Figure 1.16 shows the three options you can customize: • Stereo Bit Rate: This setting has the most impact on sound quality and file size. The default is 128Kbps. An audio file recorded in mono would be encoded at half the stereo rate. • Sample Rate: Expressed in KHz, the sample rate is used to identify and compensate for noise (hiss) in a recording. Sampling more often—at a higher rate—produces better sound and larger files. Leave the rate set to Auto to let iTunes choose the best option. • Channels: Choose mono or stereo, or let iTunes decide (Auto). You might use mono to encode a file from a home tape recorder or other mono audio source.

Figure 1.18: Drag an image file into the artwork pane to associate it with the selected track.

The MP3 encoder has all of the previous options, and a few more. Its best quality preset (higher quality) defaults to 160Kbps. The other custom options are: • Use Variable Bit Rate Encoding (VBR): VBR uses the minimum Stereo Bit Rate you have already set, and applies a secondary quality filter that ranges from Lowest to Highest. • Stereo Mode: Joint Stereo, which is used in the Good and High quality MP3 presets, combines information that is the same for both audio channels into one track and places unique data in another. Normal, which is used for Higher quality, is preferable for higher bit rates. • Smart Encoding Adjustments: Leaving this box checked allows iTunes to optimize for file size versus sound quality when encoding. • Filter Frequencies Below 10 Hz: Because frequencies below 10 Hz can’t be heard, this setting allows you to filter them out, saving space. The AIFF and WAV encoders, which you probably won’t use often, if ever, provide custom settings for sample rate, sample size, and channels. Sample size refers to the number of bits in a sample taken to determine how much hiss is present. There are no custom Apple Lossless Encoder settings.

The Visual Side of iTunes Although iTunes is all about the music, it offers two features that might appeal to your eyes: song artwork and visualization. They’re not very interesting, if you ask us, but some folks like ‘em. Song Artwork. Songs you purchase from the iTunes Music Store include an image you can view in the Artwork pane when the song is selected (see Figure 1.17). You can also add your own artwork to any song in your library. To view artwork for a song, click the Show/Hide song artwork button, near the lower-left corner of the iTunes window, and then click on a song that has artwork.

Chapter 1 iTunes INFOBOX Visualizing iTunes Where Apple is weak, freeware authors are strong. Try these visualization plug-ins. An LED spectrum analyzer: B http://www.maczoop.com/ Spectrum.html

Collage finds artwork for your songs on the Internet: B http://www.trinfinitysoftware.com/itunesplugins. shtml

TimeStretch Visualizer creates Julia sets (it’s complex math, don’t ask): B http://www.timestretch. com/site/timestretch_ visualizer

DxpPlay creates a lava lamp in your iTunes window: B http://dixieunlimited.com/

Fractogroovalicious ($10) generates fractals to match the beat of your music: B http://www.2tothex.com/ fractogroovalicious.html

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To add your own artwork to a track, locate an image file. (iTunes accepts any image that QuickTime can read, including JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, and Photoshop.) In iTunes, click the Artwork button and select a song. Drag the image from the Finder into the Artwork pane (see Figure 1.18). If your image’s dimensions don’t match the artwork pane, you’ll see empty space on either the sides or top of the image. To add the same piece of artwork to all tracks in an album, select them and drag the image into the Artwork pane. You can also use the Info dialog’s Artwork tab to add or remove an artwork image, and to enlarge or shrink the image. Select the track or tracks and then press „-I. Click the Artwork tab. Drag an image into the empty pane, or click Add to navigate to the image you want to use. When the image is in place, you can use the slider to shrink or enlarge it. You can add multiple images if you like, or use the Delete button to remove a selected image. The Visualizer. We have to be honest with you. There isn’t much to the iTunes Visualizer, but it does have its own menu, and you can make it more interesting with a little help from third-party plug-ins. First, the basics: the Visualizer displays a screensaver-like screen, featuring both spinning imagery and the name of the current song. To see it in action, choose Visualizer → Turn Visualizer On. The Small, Medium, and Large options control the size of the Visualizer display, and the Full Screen item is self-explanatory. Figure 1.19 shows the large Visualizer display in all its glory. If you like the Visualizer, or at least the idea of it, may we suggest one of the many freeware iTunes’ plug-ins that provide a plethora of new Visualizer displays, and even some useful information (see “Visualizing iTunes”). To install a plug-in, download it, quit iTunes, and then copy the plug-in to your Plug-Ins folder (Users/username/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-Ins). Launch iTunes, choose the new plug-in from the Visualizer menu, and turn on the Visualizer. Both Apple’s built-in Visualizer and the better plug-ins you can download provide options for configuring the plug-in. When the Visualizer is on, the Browse/Burn Disc button becomes the Options button. Click to customize plug-in settings.

AppleScript and iTunes Figure 1.19: The Visualizer works like a screensaver. Don’t watch too long or you risk being hypnotized.

Think of the cool ways you can use AppleScript with your music as not-so-stupid iTunes’ tricks. Apple’s scripting language makes it possible to automate certain iTunes’ features and enhance others. You might not be a scripter yourself, but you can use scripts written by folks who are. Apple offers a free script collection, as do several developers. (See the “Script Sources” Infobox.) To enable AppleScript support, quit iTunes and create a folder called Scripts in the Users/username/Library/iTunes folder. Copy scripts into the folder and launch iTunes. The Scripts menu has taken its place on the menu bar.

Sharing Music If speakers are connected to your Mac, you have probably shared iTunes music with those who share your living space. There’s a more computer-y way, to share, though—one that allows your family or roomies to play your music library on their own systems. You can share playlists or your entire music library. Although others can’t copy or make discs, they can play your music as if it were their own. To share your music, your Mac must be on a network. It can be an Ethernet or a wireless one. In iTunes, choose Preferences and then

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife

INFOBOX Script Sources Apple’s iTunes script collection and resources: B http://www.apple.com/ applescript/itunes/

Doug’s AppleScripts is a terrific collection of scripts submitted by the site’s visitors: B http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/index. php

AppleScripts for iTunes and other iLife applications: B http://www.johnpauldavis. org/applescript/

Macscripter collects lots of scripts. This URL locates iTunes-related offerings: B http://scriptbuilders.net/ category.php?search=itunes

select the Sharing tab. Click the Share My Music check box. Share your entire library, or click the Share Selected Playlists button to get access to each playlist individually. iTunes creates a Shared name for you based on your Mac username. Change it if you want, and check Require Password if you want to do that. Now when someone else opens iTunes, the music you’ve shared appears as a playlist in the Source pane. If you share several playlists, the triangle next to the shared item opens to reveal them (see Figure 1.20). You can unshare an item quickly at any time. Control-click the playlist and uncheck the Shared menu item. To play shared music on another Mac, the Look For Shared Music check box (Preferences → Sharing) must be enabled on that computer. Shared libraries and playlists sometimes take a few seconds to load, so be patient. If the owner of a shared playlist has set a password, iTunes asks for it when you first click the playlist. When the list opens, all the normal CD controls become available. You can play, navigate, shuffle, and repeat, just as if the music were stored locally. However, you cannot rearrange, edit info about, import, or remove tracks. Up to three iTunes’ users can connect to a shared iTunes library at a time. Users can connect to as many shared iTunes’ libraries as they like.

Share Your Playlists with the World You can’t broadcast the contents of your music library over the Internet, but you can share the names of songs on a playlist with iTunes Music Store users. Your published list allows others to see and hear samples of the songs you like and rate your playlist. First, create a playlist of songs available at the Music Store. The playlist can contain up to 250 songs. If you include songs that aren’t available, they will be removed from the iMix. When you click on the playlist, a Music Store icon appears. Click it and enter your Music Store ID and

iPod Accessories

A Few Gadgets to Enhance Your iPod Experience

The amazing success of the iPod has spawned a cottage industry of add-ons, holders, and fashion accessories. As a public service, here are a few of the absolute coolest. NoviPod: If you listen to your iPod through loudspeakers, you might be pining for a wireless remote control. NoviPod is just that, a sleek-looking infrared receiver and remote whose buttons mirror the iPod’s. (Dr. Bott, www.drbott.com, $49.95)

iTrip: Using this FM transmitter, you can broadcast your iPod’s tunes through a car stereo system or any other FM radio. (Griffin, www.griffintechnology.com, $35) InMotion Portable Speakers ($149): Designed specifically for dockable iPods, this diminutive pair of powered speakers is mounted in a dock that also has a slot for your iPod. Plug the dock into a Mac or into an AC power source and charge the iPod while music plays. (Altec Lansing, www.alteclansing.com/, $149)

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Figure 1.20: Shared items can either be complete iTunes’ libraries, shared playlists, or both.

password when asked. iTunes displays the playlist name and a field where you can describe the playlist, along with your list of songs. Click Publish to upload the list. Published playlists appear on artist or album pages in the Music Store. Visitors can rate a playlist.

Cases and Skins: Personal preference is everything when it comes to a holder for your iPod, so here is a selection. iPod Armor hard shell case (Matias, www.ipodarmor.com, $49.95); iSee and Showcase clear plastic cases (Contour Design,

www.contourdesign.com, $30-$40); iSkin eXo 2 form-fitting skin with access to controls (Acknowledge, www.iskin.com, $29.99), Podzilla large iPod bag (RoadWired, www.roadwired.com, $69.95)

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PROJECT: Use iTunes to Build a Hot Music Mix for Your Next Party ive yourself one less hassle the next time you’re planning a party. We’ll show you how to build a soundtrack for your guests, using your own tunes and the iTunes Music Store, and how to make it sound fabulous through your stereo speakers. We’re planning a gen-u-ine Cajun crawfish boil, so we need zydeco and Creole jams.

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ASSEMBLE YOUR MUSIC: Create a new playlist. Call it Party Mix. Locate songs by browsing or searching by artist or title. Using the Browser or the Search Box, look for music genres that match your event (Dance, Rock, Latin, whatever). Although Genre is not a choice on the Search menu, you can type in a genre to locate matching tracks. Listen to the tracks you find and drag those you like to the Party Mix playlist. When you’ve plumbed the depths of your library, click Party Mix to have a look at your list. If the time display at the bottom of the iTunes window says 30 minutes, you’ve got trouble. Try the iTunes Music Store: search by genre, artist, or song. Try to get your playlist up to three–five hours. You can use iTunes’ repeat option, but that’s no fun. We’ve been to plenty of parties where, at some point, the crowd thins out, the mood mellows, and the host puts on smooth jazz or The iTunes Music Store Power Search found awemaybe a little R&B to match the vibe. While you’re finding dance grooves, some zydeco sounds. make a second playlist for the late night hour. You’ll be glad you did.

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Click the Track Number heading so that you can change the play order.

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CHOOSE PLAY ORDER: There are two kinds of people: those who obsess about the order in which songs play, and those who do not. If you are a “not,” you can skip this step, but know that you, dear reader, are wrong. To change song order in a playlist, sort the list by track number. If it’s sorted by artist, name, or some other field, you won’t be able to change its order. Click on the Track Number heading in Party Mix. Now click and drag a track between two others to place it. When you’ve finished re-jiggering your playlist, you could play the whole list to hear how it will sound, but that could take hours! Try this to save time. With a track playing, click on the progress bar for the track, about three-quarters of the way through. This moves the playhead to that point. Don’t move the mouse. Let the track end and start the next track. Click the playhead again. Repeat the process to hear all your transitions, and change the track order if you don’t like one.

CHOOSE SOUND SETTINGS: (This step works best with good speakers connected to your Mac.) If you’re spinning house, techno, or The Latin equalizer preset some other club-like mix, you will probably like works nicely for Cajun music. Crossfade playback. Choose Preferences → Effects, Its highest and lowest levels enable Crossfade playback, and change the delay in sec- are lower than the Dance onds. Make sure that both Sound Enhancer and Sound preset. Check are also enabled. Give a listen to a few transitions and make adjustments. If you’re really into fine-tuning the sound, use the equalizer to pump up the bass, the mid-range, and/or the treble. Start playing a track. In the main window, click the Equalizer button. Choose a preset from the menu or create your own. Notice that the Dance preset provides lots of bass and mids. Find a setting you like and select all the songs in the playlist. Press „-I, click the Options tab, and apply the equalizer setting you chose to all.

Chapter 1 iTunes

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PICK YOUR SOUND SYSTEM: You can burn audio Leave the party mix on your deskCDs from your party playlist, or use a desktop top Mac and connect to it from a Mac, PowerBook, or iPod as a jukebox. The PowerBook. choice depends on how easily you can get Mac and stereo speakers together. If you don’t have a PowerBook or iPod and don’t want to lug your desktop Mac into the living room, burn the party mix to CDs. This method also allows you to leave your computer safely away from party guests and drink glasses. To use a Mac instead, you’ll need to run a Y-cable from the computer to your stereo receiver. Using a PowerBook and an Ethernet or AirPort network, you can share the party playlist from your desktop Mac and play it on the portable, which is connected to the stereo. You can simplify matters even further if you have an iPod. Moving the playlist and files to the iPod and then connecting it to your stereo is the easiest way of all. You’re almost ready: relax and polish your dancing shoes.

5

Plug the Y-cable into a pair of inputs on your receiver.

6

MAKE THE HOOKUP: If you’ve burned your playlist into a warm batch of CDs, getting the music going is as simple as plopping all (or most) of the CDs into the CD changer tray. To use a Mac or iPod as the music machine, connect the single-connector end of a 1/8" Y-cable to the audio-out port. Plug the two-pronged end of the cable into a free pair of input ports on the receiver or tuner. These ports have names such as Tape-1 or Video-1. Select the input on the front of the receiver that matches the port you’re using. Fire up iTunes and play the playlist. Use the receiver to adjust the volume. If you’re using an iPod, place the iPod in the dock and plug the cable into the dock. Why? The iPod’s audio port is designed specifically for headphones. Its impedance is lower than either the dock’s port or your receiver. Turn the iPod’s volume all the way down and control the level from the receiver.

MAKE FINAL TWEAKS: We hope that you 1) have assembled enough music to last throughout your entire party, and that 2) you did not skip step 2, and have spent ridiculous amounts of time putting the songs in order. We are realists, however. To play the party mix in random order, click the Shuffle button until Shuffle by Song is active. Use the Repeat button to select Repeat All to begin the playlist again when it has played through once. These options are also available on the Controls menu, and on your iPod. Finally, give your guests something to look at when their eyes fall on your Mac during the party. Click the Visualizer button to enable it, and Here’s a nice visualizer from choose other options from the visualiz- Graham Cox that graphs the er menu and Options dialog. audio spectrum.

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Chapter 2

GarageBand For everyone who’s ever thought they could make music, there’s GarageBand, “the recording studio for the rest of us.” The phrase might sound a bit hackneyed by now, but once you get your hands on GarageBand, you’ll believe it. Musicians love being able to plug a guitar or keyboard directly into their Mac and record the sounds they make. But even non-musicians whose last instrument was a recorder in elementary school can use the power of prerecorded loops to get their groove on. GarageBand is more than just a tape recorder. With software instruments that turn your MIDI keyboard sounds into horns, guitars, basses, or drums, you’ve got a band in your computer. Even the real instruments you plug into your Mac can take on a stunning variety of sounds with effects and amplifier simulators. Heck, we think the fun of giving your old Fender a British Invasion or arena rock amp sound is well worth GarageBand’s price. If this chapter doesn’t rock you enough, go get the MacAddict Guide to Making Music with GarageBand by Jay Shaffer and Gary Rosenzweig for a deep-down dose of rhythm. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to use loops and software instruments to build a rockin’ groove. You’ll learn how to add a guitar or keyboard—even your own voice—to make your composition truly your own. Next, you’ll uncover the secrets of mixing. Save it to iTunes and share it with your friends, and maybe even a talent scout or two. Finally, look out for a ton of GarageBand resources where Out of the garage and into your Mac. you’ll find communities of fellow users, tips, and downloads.

Pull that guitar out of the closet, or just pound on a keyboard

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife MUTE TRACK HEADER

GarageBand quick start

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VOLUME CURVE SOLO

BEAT RULER PAN WHEEL

TIMELINE TRACK LEVEL METERS TRACK VOLUME SLIDER

TRACK MIXER TRACK LABEL

SOFTWARE INSTRUMENT TRACK

REAL INSTRUMENT TRACK

ZOOM SLIDER BACK ONE MEASURE ADD TRACK

OPEN LOOP BROWSER

TRACK INFO

CYCLE REGION

START/STOP RECORDING

OPEN TRACK EDITOR

BEGINNING OF SONG

PLAY

FORWARD ONE MEASURE

TRACK EDITOR

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PLAYHEAD

SOFTWARE INSTRUMENT REGION

REAL INSTRUMENT REGION

TIME DISPLAY BAR TIME DISPLAY

MEASURE FORMAT

TEMPO INDICATOR

MASTER LEVEL METERS

MASTER OUTPUT VOLUME

Make Your Own Music Using software instruments, prerecorded loops, and even real guitars and keyboards, you can build your own songs with GarageBand.

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Get to Know GarageBand We know how it is. You want to start jamming with GarageBand right away, and you’re hoping we’ll get to it pretty quick. We’ll do our best, but we really need to take a few paragraphs to show you around and alert you to a few GarageBand realities. We’ll get to the fun stuff, we promise.

System Requirements You can read the iLife ‘04 box and learn that GarageBand requires a Mac with at least a 600MHz G3 processor (and you need a G4 to use software instruments). And they mean it—GarageBand is hungry for CPU power, especially when you’re working with a complicated song. Even if your Mac has the basic horsepower required, don’t expect GarageBand to be especially speedy on an older Mac. Lots of tracks, and heavy use of software instruments and effects also make for lower-thanperfect performance on sub-1GHz G4s. Some common symptoms include a playhead that doesn’t keep up with the sound coming out of your Mac, and a very sluggish onscreen keyboard (the musical kind). You might also be forced to stick to a relatively small number of tracks in each GarageBand tune. If you have an older Mac, you’ll do better with real instruments and fewer tracks per song. Go easy on the amp simulators, too. Apple often issues software updates that speed up performance, so be sure that you have the latest version of GarageBand. (Run Software Update, found in System Preferences.)

The Quick Tour: We’re With the Band

Figure 2.1: Each track header has two parts: the label on the left and the mixer on the right.

To understand the interface and how it works, you need some songs to work with. Fortunately, the GarageBand DVD includes folders full of them. Open the GarageBand Demo Songs folder and copy either the G3 Projects folder or the G4-G5 Projects folder to your hard drive, depending on which processor your computer has. The G3 projects, as you might have figured out, are less complex and require less horsepower than the G4-G5 batch. When you’re ready to take our little tour of GarageBand, open one of the projects you copied to your drive. To build a song in GarageBand, you create instrumental and vocal tracks using real instruments, software-based instruments, or by adding one of the prerecorded loops that comes with GarageBand. A track represents an individual instrument. Mixing tracks together creates the song. You adjust the duration of your song’s tracks in the Timeline, and use the Track Editor to customize each track’s contents and tempo. The gray section of each track is called the Track Header. Each header has two parts: the label and the mixer. The label section shows the kind of track you’re working with, its name, and buttons you use to control playback. The mixer is where you adjust the volume of the track (see Figure 2.1) relative to others. The Beat Ruler sits atop the Timeline, and displays the measures of your song, based on the song’s time signature. You’ll find the triangular playhead on the Beat Ruler. The playhead marks your current location in the song, and you can change its position by dragging, or by using the transport buttons below the Timeline. Notice that a grid extends down from the Beat Ruler and through the Timeline, making it easy to line up tracks with beats or measures in your song. In the Timeline, a track can be divided into sections—regions—representing the points in the song where the track plays, or it can consist of a single region that plays throughout the song. A

Chapter 2 GarageBand

Figure 2.2: Use the zoom slider to see more or less of the Timeline.

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horn part, for example, might not play during a song’s introduction and verses, but might come in during the chorus. Each section where the horn plays is a separate region in the Timeline for this track. In the same song, a bass track might play throughout the song, giving it a single region. Next up (or down, if you want to get technical about it) is the zoom slider (see Figure 2.2). It’s located in the bottom-left corner of the track pane. Use it to see more or less of the Timeline. Below the list of tracks and the Timeline is a bar with a series of buttons for controlling GarageBand’s interface, as well as song recording and playback. There’s also a display that shows the time and measure number. Using the buttons, you can add and remove tracks from the Timeline, show and hide the Loop Browser or Track Editor, play or move through your song with the transport controls, and adjust playback volume. When you double-click a track header, the Track Info window opens, showing the type of instrument you’re using and the other available choices. It’s the same window you’ll use to set up new tracks. Double-clicking a region of the track in the Timeline (see Figure 2.3) opens the Editor pane for that track below the Timeline. The Editor sticks around until you close it, even if you select another track. Choose Control → Hide Editor to do so.

Figure 2.3: Double-clicking the drum kit track reveals its editor below the Timeline. The pane below the Timeline does double-duty as the Track Editor and Loop Browser. Choose Control → Show Loop Browser to see a plethora of prerecorded loops.

Keyboard Shortcuts Every app has helpful keyboard shortcuts and we don’t usually devote a section to them, but the shortcuts GarageBand gives you for moving around within a song are especially valuable, particularly if you’re trying to work with instruments while using it. In that case, reaching for and dragging the mouse around the screen ain’t nearly as fast as pressing the spacebar to play or stop a song. Table 2.1 shows a selection of the most useful shortcuts. To see the full set, choose Help → Keyboard Shortcuts.

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Table 2.1: Use these keyboard shortcuts to play and record more easily when there’s a guitar or keyboard on your lap. Function

Keyboard Shortcut

Play/stop

Spacebar

Record/stop

R

Beginning of song

Z

End of song

Option-Z

Back one measure

Left arrow

Forward one measure

Right arrow

Beginning of visible timeline

Pg Up

End of visible timeline

Pg Down

Metronome on/off

„-U

Introduction to Tracks Almost every musical recording you’ve ever heard contains multiple tracks: one for voice, one for lead guitar, one for percussion, and so on. Many recordings contain lots more tracks than instruments. Producers use overdubs, harmony parts, and other layers to get the sound they want. GarageBand songs work the same way. You can build tracks using MIDI-based software instruments, real instruments, or prerecorded loops. You can use the different track types in any combination, and you can add new software instruments and loops to the collections that come with GarageBand. This too, shall be revealed in these pages. OK, let’s make music!

Start a Project

Launch GarageBand and open a new project (File → New). Name the song. For now, leave the Tempo, Time, and Key settings alone unless you have specific ones in mind. It will help you to know that your song is in the key of C and uses 4/4 time, but it isn’t actually necessary that you know that. Once you choose a key, GarageBand ensures that all the prerecorded loops match the key and tempo of your song. New GarageBand songs come with one track (Grand Piano). You’ll also see an electronic keyboard for adding notes to the track. We won’t be using the keyboard for now, so move it out of the way of the Timeline. We’re going to start with loops and then add software and real instruments.

Loops INFOBOX Track Types Here’s a quick guide to the three kinds of GarageBand tracks: Real Instrument Track Recording of a live performance on an instrument, such as a guitar, drums, strings, or voice. Software Instrument Track Notes created by a keyboard or other MIDI device, whose pitch, tempo, and velocity can be modified in GarageBand. Loop Prerecorded snippet of music created by either real or software instruments. You can download or buy new loops to add to the large collection of Apple Loops supplied with GarageBand.

Loops are the easiest place for a brand-new GarageBand user to start. A loop is a snippet of music that has been recorded with real instruments or software instruments. You can use the loop as is, extend its length, change the tempo, and more. Apple includes 1,000 real/software-based loops with GarageBand, and many more are available. Click the Loop Browser button (third from the left on the button bar), or choose Control → Show Loop Browser. Loops are grouped both by instrument and type of sound, and they’re cross-referenced. If you click the World button, all available world music loops appear on the right, and some of the loop buttons are dimmed because those categories contain no world loops. If you click another available loop button, a smaller group of loops is available (see Figure 2.4), and so on. Click the Reset button in the upper-left corner of the Loop Browser to see all of your choices again. You can also use the Search button to find loops by name, or limit the selection by Scale using the pop-up menu to the left of the Search field. To change the Loop Browser from Button view to Column view, click the Column button in the lower-left corner. Column view works like Column view in the Finder. Click a column to see groupings of loops by genre, instruments, and moods, and then keep clicking folders of loops to see their contents and narrow down your list. Use Column view in combination with the search feature to browse intelligently through the 1,000-plus available loops. Double-click any loop in the browser to hear it, and then click another to hear the difference. To hear how a loop will sound with a song before you add it, start playing the song and double-click the loop during playback. To try another loop, press Z to go to the beginning of the song (or move the playhead to a point within it) and double-click a different loop.

Chapter 2 GarageBand

Figure 2.4: Browse or search the Loop Browser to locate the right loops for your song. Click a button to narrow your selection of loops, and then click another to see fewer loops.

Figure 2.5: Drag a loop into the Timeline to create a new track and a region for the loop. We dragged the loop against the vertical playhead line to position it.

Figure 2.6: Repeat a loop by resizing the region with the loop cursor.

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Take a look at the list of loops on the right side of the browser. The icons to the left of their names tell you whether this is a Software Instrument loop (musical note) or a Real Instrument loop (waveform). You’ll also see columns for Tempo, Key, and Beats. Because your song is in the key of C, choose a loop that’s also in C, or a drum loop that doesn’t have a key. To use a loop in your project, first drag the playhead to the position in the song where you want the loop to begin. This step isn’t required, but it’s very helpful in a multi-track song as a placeholder and a reminder of where the loop should start. Locate a loop you like and drag it from the Loop Browser into the Timeline. The cursor acquires a plus sign, indicating that you’ve got the loop in your “hand.” Let go of the mouse button when your cursor meets the vertical playhead line, below the bottom track in the Timeline (see Figure 2.5). A new track named for the instrument used by your loop is created, and a region named for the loop you’ve added appears where you dropped the loop. To hear how the loop sounds, you can press the spacebar to begin playing your song. To hear a few measures before the loop starts, drag the playhead to the left, and then press the spacebar and play through the loop. Press the spacebar again to stop playback. If you want to relocate the loop within the song, click and drag the box left or right along the track. To change the length of time the loop plays, move your cursor to the upper-right corner of the loop until your mouse becomes a loop cursor—a vertical line with a circle (see Figure 2.6). Drag the region left or right to change the loop’s length. The loop repeats as many times as necessary to fill the time you’ve allocated it. A notch in the region shows the boundaries of each repeat of the loop. Software instrument regions are green in the Timeline, whereas Real Instrument regions are blue. This applies to real and software loops, too. Once loops are placed in a song, they’re just like any other track, and the rules for real and software instruments apply.

Software Instruments Software instruments allow you to bring MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) recordings into GarageBand. You can make MIDI recordings with a USB keyboard—the musical kind, not the typing kind—or other USB MIDI device connected to your Mac. When you choose a software instrument—bass, guitar, strings, synthesizer, among many, many others—GarageBand can convert what you play into the sound of the chosen instrument. To create your first Software Instrument track, quit GarageBand and connect your MIDI device to your Mac. Launch GarageBand again and the device is associated with it. Create a new track by clicking the plus button, or choose Track → New Track. Click the Software Instruments tab. The list of Software Instrument categories, each with a list of available instruments, opens (see Figure 2.7). Choose an instrument category and then an instrument. Play a few notes on your keyboard to hear how the instrument sounds. Now choose another instrument in the same category to hear the difference. Having fun? Knock yourself out. We’ll wait while you try every instrument, or until the folks you live with get cranky, whichever comes first. When you’ve chosen an instrument you like, close the Track Info window. You’re almost ready to record your track. Move the playhead to the place in the song where you want to begin playing. Choose Control → Metronome if this is your first track and you want to hear a beat while you play. Choose Control → Count In to have GarageBand give you a few beats before you begin playing. Click the Record button to begin recording. Then let ‘er rip. When you’ve played the music you want in this track, click Record again. A new green region containing the recording you just made

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Figure 2.7: To set up your Software Instrument track, choose an instrument category and an instrument to try out.

Figure 2.8: Aside from its green color, you can tell a Software Instrument track by the notes within each region.

Figure 2.9: The onscreen keyboard displays the name of an instrument you select within a song file, or from the Track Info window.

appears in your Software Instrument track. Notice the bars in the region display (see Figure 2.8). They represent the notes you played on the MIDI device. You can’t really play much music with the onscreen keyboard, but it’s fun to fiddle around with it, and you can get a sense of how different instruments sound when your MIDI keyboard has been confiscated by family members who are tired of your practicing. Open one of the songs from the GarageBand demo folder on your hard drive. If it isn’t already onscreen, press „-K to show the keyboard. Click a Software Instrument track and notice that the keyboard’s title bar now bears the name of the track you selected (see Figure 2.9). Clicking a Real Instrument track dims the keyboard. Click a key on the onscreen keyboard with your mouse. A note plays. Click more keys to hear more notes. Click on another Software Instrument track (the keyboard’s title bar changes) and then on the keyboard again to hear the difference. Click and drag down the keyboard. It’s not a scale, exactly, but you can hear several notes together. You can also click and hold the mouse button to hear a single, sustained note. See more keys by dragging the keyboard’s size box. The arrows on either end of the keyboard take you to lower (left) and higher (right) octaves. Play those keys to see how they sound with the instrument you’ve chosen. Again, playing music with the keyboard doesn’t work very well, because you can’t move between keys with the mouse very efficiently. It is possible to record with the keyboard, though. Just start a new track, choose your instrument, press Record, and peck out your slow-motion masterpiece. Ever wondered how to use a MIDI keyboard to make drum sounds? Drums don’t use notes in the same way other instruments do, but drum kits include lots of different drum types and other percussion sounds. On a MIDI keyboard, drum sounds are assigned to specific keys. With a MIDI or onscreen keyboard available, create a new Software Instrument track, and choose Dance Kit from the Drum Kits category. When you click the C4 key, you’ll hear a whistle, the kind used in lots of Latin and Brazilian tunes. Now click the A key (the white key that’s two keys to the left of C4). A4 gives you a shaker, and the key to the left (G3) is a cow bell. Click more keys to find percussion sounds you like. Now choose the Techno kit from the list of drum kits and click the same keys you did before. The results are the same, as they are for the rest of the kits on the list, making it pretty easy for wouldbe drummers to get familiar with the drum sounds available.

Real Instruments Loops and MIDI devices are fine for some, but there’s no substitute for a recording of a real musical instrument, especially for experienced musicians. You can add real guitars, keyboards, and other instruments (even your voice) by recording performances directly into your Mac with GarageBand. To do that, you need to plug an instrument or a microphone into your Mac or use your Mac’s built-in mic, if it has one, to record. Once you’re plugged in, you’ll create a Real Instrument track and record your singin’ and playin’. For details on connecting instruments and microphones to your Mac, see the “Is This Thing On?” sidebar.

Chapter 2 GarageBand

Is This Thing On? Record guitars, keyboards, and voice into GarageBand

We picked up this 1/4inch-to-1/8-inch adapter at Radio Shack and used it to plug an electric guitar into a Mac.

The quickest, cheapest way to get started with MIDI and GarageBand is the M-Audio Keystation 49e keyboard. (Used with permission: m-Audio [www.m-audio.com])

One of GarageBand’s most outrageously cool features is the capability to accept live audio input from a MIDI interface, an instrument, or a microphone. It really is as simple as plugging your electric guitar into your Mac and riffing your heart out. To connect a guitar (or any other electric instrument), you need a 1/4-inch (female) to 1/8-inch (male) adapter, and the same 1/4-inch cable you would normally use to connect the instrument to an amp. Apple sells these adapters, but you’ll also find them at electronics and music stores. Plug one end of the adapter into the amp cable and the other end into your Mac’s audio in port. That’s it. You’re in business. Many Macs have built-in microphones, and you can record your voice or an acoustic instrument directly from the mic into GarageBand. If you don’t have a built-in mic, or want to use a high-quality one instead, connect the external mic to your Mac’s audio in or USB port. If you have a high-end mic, don’t connect it directly to your Mac. Instead, use an

interface designed specifically for microphone recording. Griffin Technology’s iMic (www.griffintechnology.com, $39.99) is probably the simplest solution. You can use a mixing console to record several instruments at once. Connect the instruments into the console, and then connect the console to the Mac. To use a MIDI keyboard or drum set with your Mac, you need a MIDI interface. Lots of MIDI keyboards, including the $99 M-Audio Keystation 49e currently being resold by Apple, include an audio interface, and you can plug these directly into your Mac via the USB port. If your keyboard doesn’t have a MIDI interface, you’ll need to add one. A number of vendors sell PCI interfaces that you can use with a PowerMac. If you’ve got an iMac or portable, you’ll need a standalone MIDI interface in which to plug both the Mac and your MIDI instrument, such as M-Audio’s $149 MobilePro USB Audio Interface. You’ll find several more, all available through the Apple Store, at www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/ accessories.html. A complete list of GarageBand-compatible interfaces can be found at www.apple.com/ilife/ garageband/compatibility.html. As we noted earlier, you can plug a mixing console into your Mac directly if you have an adapter. Many superior MIDI interfaces also support multiple instruments.

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TIP If you’re adding a “live” track to an existing recording, you will probably want to use headphones to listen to the existing tracks while you play or sing, so that the playback from your Mac doesn’t affect the track you’re recording.

Figure 2.10: Choose a Real Instrument category and then the specific instrument you plan to play.

Open the Sound pane of System Preferences and click the Input tab. A list of available devices and audio ports appears. Select the one you want to use and play the instrument or speak into the microphone. The input level should fluctuate as you make noise. If it doesn’t, raise the input Volume (below the Input Level indicator). If that doesn’t help, check your connections, the cable, and the device itself for any problems. Try selecting another audio device, such as the built-in mic, to see whether the results improve. When everything’s working well, open a new GarageBand file, or an existing one to which you want to add real instruments, and follow these steps to record. 1. Create a new track and click the Real Instruments tab. 2. From the category list, select yours and then pick a specific instrument (see Figure 2.10). If you’re gonna sing, click Vocals and then pick a vocal “instrument” that most closely matches the kind of recording you’re making. 3. Choose Mono or Stereo to use one or two recording channels. Record a single voice, or an instrument that uses a single input, such as a guitar, in mono. Many keyboards use a pair of inputs, so you can record them in stereo. If you record in mono, you must choose a channel. 4. Monitoring a recording plays it through your speakers or headphones as you record. This could cause annoying feedback if your instruments and speakers are too close together, or if one is too loud. It might also be distracting to your performance. If you’re practicing a song, or very concerned about how what you’re playing will interact with other tracks you’ve already recorded, click the Monitor On button and use headphones. If you do use monitoring, turn it off when you’ve finished playing or singing to prevent feedback. Click OK. 5. Position the playhead where you want the recorded track to begin. Set a Count In and/or Metronomes if you like (both available from the Control menu). 6. Click Record when you’re ready to play or sing. 7. When you’ve finished taking that stairway to heaven or belting that heartfelt rendition of “Feelings,” click Record again to stop recording. A new blue region appears on your new track, with waveforms in the box. Now listen to your recording. If you want to do another take, create a second new track. Before you record it, mute the first recording you made by clicking the Mute button on the Track header (it looks like a loudspeaker). Any other tracks in your song will now play normally as you record the new track, but the first take won’t be a part of the mix. To compare two similar tracks, mute one and play the song with the other take you recorded. Then switch versions and play the song again.

Fun with Tracks and the Timeline Once you have a set of tracks set up on your Timeline, you can edit their content, change the size and number of regions, and even choose different instrument types. GarageBand also includes lots of nifty effects that you can use to alter the sound of an existing region.

Chapter 2 GarageBand

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Pick a Better Software Instrument

Figure 2.11: To create a cycle region, select a segment of the song you want to play by dragging along the Cycle Region Ruler (below the Beat Ruler).

Because the music you made with your MIDI device is actually a set of digital signals, not a real piano, drum, or guitar part, you can easily turn a Software Instrument track into a variation of the instrument you picked in the first place, or a completely different one. In a project containing a Software Instrument track, begin playing the song and identify a short snippet that contains the instrument you’re working with. To make it easier to quickly switch between instrument types, we’ll select the song snippet and repeat it by creating a cycle region. A cycle region is a selected portion of the timeline. When a cycle region is active, GarageBand plays a section of the song repeatedly. Click the Cycle Region button (next to Fast Forward). The Cycle Region Ruler appears below the Beat Ruler. To select your song snippet, click and drag along the Cycle Region Ruler, as shown in Figure 2.11. Double-click your software instrument’s Track Header to open the Track Info window. The current instrument is selected. Press the spacebar to begin playback. (Yes, the command works, even though there’s an active window in front of the main GarageBand window.) Listen to the song snippet at least once (it will loop, remember) and then click another instrument in the current category. If you’re editing an electric bass, try a stand-up jazz bass, for example. Listen and then choose another instrument. Click a category name to see its instruments and choose a totally different one— replace that bass with the hip hop drum kit. If you find a replacement you like, close the Track Info window. Choose the original instrument to restore the status quo. Because some loops have been created with Software Instruments, it’s possible to change the instruments used. When you attempt this with a loop track, GarageBand asks you to save your original instrument by name before switching to another one. If you decide to go back to the original, you can click on the item you saved in the Track Info window to restore it.

Effecting Real Instruments You can’t turn a recording of a real piano into a guitar riff, but you can add effects to real instruments that change their sound considerably. You can do a lot of tinkering with Real Instrument tracks, including sending the recording through one of GarageBand’s amplifier simulators. As any guitarist who has ever plugged in knows, the same instrument sounds vastly different when played through a Marshall stack versus a tube amp, even when the notes being played are the same. To change amps on a Real Instrument track, double-click its Track Header to see your options. Your instrument is selected in the left pane. The right pane shows effect options. Start playing the track (press Z if necessary, to return to the beginning of the song) by pressing the spacebar. Click an effect in the right column of Track Info to hear the difference. Click another effect and listen. Closing Track Info selects a new effect. You can also add many more effects to both real and software instruments. We cover those in the “Effects” section, p. 46 of this chapter.

Groovin’ in the Timeline You probably know by now that the real fun of working with GarageBand is fooling around with the tracks you’ve laid down. Now that you know how to work with instruments, we need to further whet your appetite for music-making by digging deeper into the Timeline and its tools.

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TIP To use only a portion of a loop, click and drag the lower-right corner of the loop region to the left. If you want all instances of the loop to be the same, do this and make any other changes before you copy and paste the loop region.

Figure 2.12: When you paste into the Timeline, the new region appears next to the playhead.

Start or open a song that you think needs some additional tracks. Play the song and decide what kind of instrument track you need. We’ll add a percussion loop. Follow these steps to add and integrate a loop into your song: 1. A shaker is always a nice touch. Open the Loop Browser („-L) and type shaker in the Search field. You’ll see 22 different shaker loops. 22! 2. Choose a shaker you like (audition them by playing the song and then double-clicking a loop) and drag your favorite into the Timeline. Adjust the location of the shaker region so that it plays at the right beat. 3. If your song already has drums or other rhythm tracks, be sure that the shaker adds to the effect, rather than cluttering it. Start by muting a drum track—in the Track Header for a drum track, click the Mute button. Listen to the song without drums. If you think something’s missing, click Mute again to get the drums back. 4. To accentuate the impact of the shaker, we’re going to add it to several parts of your song. But first, we want to identify the best spots for it by simplifying the song’s sound. To hear only the lead guitar and bass, you could mute all of the other tracks. Instead, click the Solo button on the guitar track header and then on the bass track header. Play the song and look for shaker opportunities throughout. 5. There are two ways to add instances of a loop: Repeat the loop to play it continuously, or copy and paste the loop region to different locations on the Timeline. We described extending loops earlier, and our shaker will sound best intermittently, so select the Shaker region and press „-C, or choose Edit → Copy. 6. Move the playhead to a location in the Timeline where you want to add a shaker region. Press „-V. A new shaker region appears where the playhead was. The playhead moves to the end of the new region (see Figure 2.12). 7. Move the playhead back a few measures and then play the song to see how the new shaker sounds. Add more shaker regions as needed. There’s another way to duplicate a region: Option-drag the original region to the spot on the Timeline where the copy should land. To add the region at the playhead, position the playhead first, then Option-drag to the playhead. Next we’ll do a little work on the song as a whole. Look at the Time Display, located below the Timeline. On the right side of the display is the Tempo display and slider. Our test song’s tempo is 120bps (beats per second). Click and hold on the tempo display to see the slider. To increase your tune’s tempo, drag the slider upward. (To reduce it, drag down). Now play the song to hear its faster tempo. Notice that when you change tempo, the song’s pitch remains the same. Normally, speeding up a recording raises its pitch, causing what we like to call the chipmunk effect. You might have all sorts of reasons for changing a song’s tempo. It might simply sound better when sped up or slowed down. You can also “cheat” a bit when you’re trying to build a song of a precise length. How do you think advertisers fit all that verbal fine print into a short radio spot?

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Inside the Track Editor

Figure 2.13: Click the Open Track Editor button to view the editor for the selected track.

DISPLAY POP-UP MENU

We mentioned but did not dig into the Track Editor in earlier sections of this chapter. You can lay down tracks without spending time in the Track Editor, but what fun would that be? In the Software Instruments Track Editor, you can adjust the tempo, pitch, and duration of tracks and regions, and even fool around with individual notes. Because real instruments consist of live sound recordings rather than collections of digital sounds, you don’t have the same precise control over the notes in the track, but you can add effects and fiddle around with pitch when working with real instruments. To edit a Software Instrument track, double-click within one of the track’s regions, or single-click anywhere in the track or its Track header, and press the Open Track Editor button (see Figure 2.13). The Software Instruments Track Editor opens below the Timeline. Notice that a magnified version of the notes that make up the first region in the track appears on the right side (see Figure 2.14). To select a region rather than the whole track, double-click the region in the Timeline, or select it and click the Open Track Editor button. The panes are the same, except that the region version shows only the notes in the selected region. BEAT RULER

PLAYHEAD

NAME FIELD

NOTE EVENT

TRANSPORT SLIDER/FIELD FIX TIMING BUTTON ZOOM SLIDER

Figure 2.14: You can tinker with tracks and regions in the Software Instruments Track Editor.

Figure 2.15: Click a track’s Solo button to hear the track alone when you press the Play button.

VELOCITY SLIDER/FIELD

The Track Editor contains controls and fields on the left, and a timeline complete with the Beat Ruler and playhead for the track on the right. When you play a song, the Track Editor displays the progress of the selected track. To hear only the selected track, click the Solo button on the track header (see Figure 2.15) before you begin playback. When you create a track in GarageBand, it’s named for the type of instrument you’ve assigned to it. You can change the name (call it Lead Vocals, Rhythm Guitar, and so on) of the track or region in the Name field. Regions have names, too. You might create a Lead Guitar track with regions for Intro and Joe’s Solo. The notes (Apple calls them “note events”) appear on the grid below the track’s Beat Ruler as gray bars. The difference in the bars’ shades reflects each note’s velocity—its relative loudness. The vertical bar on the left of the timeline section shows the notes’ position on the musical scale. The length of a note indicates how long it plays. Multiple notes in the same column will play simultaneously. For non-percussion instruments, this usually indicates a musical chord. Click a bar to hear its note. The velocity field and slider show the note’s velocity, which you can change either by typing a number from 1 to 127, or by moving the Velocity slider. In MIDI-speak, velocity is the power with which a key is pressed on a keyboard, with 1 being the softest key press and 127 the hardest. When you use the onscreen keyboard, notes you press all have a velocity of 127.

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TIP To change a track’s icon, doubleclick the Track Header. Click and hold on the icon in the lower-left corner of the Track Info window. Choose a new icon from the menu of images.

Figure 2.16: Drag a note vertically to raise or lower its pitch.

To do some real damage with the Track Editor, try changing and transposing some notes. We love to use loops as examples, so here’s another. Let’s say you’ve used a loop throughout a song to establish a groove, or to add a flourish. On its last play during the song, though, you want the loop notes to be lower, giving the song a nice outro. Double-click the last instance of a loop region in the Timeline to open its Track Editor. To listen to this loop in context, create a cycle region that begins a little before the region and ends just after it. If you would rather hear the region by itself, click the track’s Solo button. (You can still use a cycle region if you like.) In the Track Editor, locate the last note in the region. Click to play the note. Drag the note straight downward a few squares on the grid to lower it. You’ll hear the change as you drag. Remember, if you know something about musical notes, you can use the vertical ruler on the left to see the notes on the grid (see Figure 2.16). Press the spacebar to hear your change. If you used the Solo button, click it again to hear how the note sounds after you changed it. You can move notes left and right in the Track Editor to change their timing. To shorten or lengthen a note, drag its lower-right corner. You can even add one: „-click on the grid to create a quarter note and then you can drag to move or resize the note. Your note plays as you drag. To delete a note from a region, click it and then press Delete. Next we’ll change all the notes in a region, but not in the enclosing track. Be sure that you’re looking at the region’s Track Editor by double-clicking the region in the Timeline. The Transpose option in the Track Editor gives you control over all notes in the selected region or track. The scale for transposition is the 12-note musical scale. So transposing from 0 (the default) to 12 means raising each note in the region by a full octave. Going negative (-12) lowers the region an octave. You can use the Transpose slider or field to choose any positive or negative number between –36 and 36 (a range of six octaves).

Mixing Perhaps you’ve combined a lot of musical tracks on the Timeline, made a song, and thought you were ready to share or record it. There’s more to do though, or at least more that you can do in GarageBand. When professional musicians record, an important step—the one where a good producer or engineer earns the big bucks—is mixing, the art and science of balancing the volume and sound of all the tracks that make up the song. GarageBand’s mixing tools include a volume slider for each track and the Pan Wheel, which is used to place a track on the stereophonic spectrum. You can set the timing, velocity, and effects for each track. Finally, you’ll work with volume and other options that apply to the song as a whole.

TIP To keep the region within the same key as the rest of the songs, always transpose by an octave, rather than by individual notes.

Mixing Controls Mixing a song is a lot like blending the ingredients for a sauce in the kitchen. The same ingredients can give you vastly different results, depending on how much of each you add and how thoroughly you stir the pot. The same is true for music, where drums, bass, piano, and guitar can be a jazz quartet or a rock band. To mix your song effectively, you first need to listen closely to the way it sounds in its unmixed form. The best way to start is to clap on a pair of good headphones. Listen to see whether some tracks are hard to hear, or if some are drowned out by others. Be prepared to experiment, too. Would pumping up the bass give your song more of a hip-hop groove? How about just a tiny bit less organ, so the lead guitar part has room to come through?

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Much of the mixing you’ll do in GarageBand happens in the Track Mixer, the rectangle to the right of the Track Header (see Figure 2.17). Use the Track Mixer to control the track’s volume, view its sound level, and set its relationship to other tracks in the song. You have two tools for finding the right volume for a VOLUME SLIDER track: your ears and the Level meter in the Track Mixer. While your ears will tell you how tracks sound relative to one another, the Level meters tell you whether the track is too loud, or even distorted. With your headphones on, play a song from the beginning. Listen for tracks that seem to be out of balance. To lower a track’s volume, drag its volume slider to the left. Move the slider right to increase the track’s volume. Repeat the process with other tracks and listen to their interaction as they play. The Level meters for each track show its loudness. Levels that stray out of the green safe zone and into the yellow or red indicate that volume at those peak levels is too high. When adjusting volume with the meters, be sure you listen to the sections where the track is at its peak level. Very slight adjustments might bring the volume’s peak level back into the green, so don’t overcompensate when you see a fleeting glimpse of yellow or red. In a live stereo recording of multiple instruments, each one occupies its own place in the stereo spectrum. In most cases, the sounds overlap and give the illusion that what you hear through your speakers is emanating from all points between them. You can achieve the same effect as the pros do by arranging the tracks in your song through the spectrum. In GarageBand, you do this with the Pan Wheel. The white dots on the Pan Wheel represent different positions along the stereo spectrum. All tracks are set to the center position, meaning that when played through stereo speakers (or headphones), all of the sound is “centered.” To change a track’s pan position, click the dots around the Pan Wheel to the left or right of the existing white dot (see Figure 2.18). Listen to your song with headphones on to hear how your song changes. Try scattering all the tracks in your song around the spectrum, using each track’s Pan Wheel. Try to disperse dominant tracks such as drums or lead instruments so that they’re at different locations on the spectrum. Vocals and lead guitar or keyboards, particularly, will probably work best in the center of the spectrum. Dispersing tracks widely with attention to the position of loud or dominant tracks is especially helpful if you have more tracks than Pan Wheel positions. Don’t load up the left channel with drums and leads, leaving the right channel for intermittent instruments like strings that only come in during certain parts of the song.

LEVELS PAN WHEEL

Figure 2.17: Adjust a track’s volume and pan position in the Track Mixer.

TIP To return a track to its default volume or pan position, Option-click the volume slider or Pan Wheel.

Volume Curves

Figure 2.18: Click a dot near the Pan Wheel to change the track’s position on the stereo spectrum.

Volume curves give you even more control over a track’s volume than the volume slider. Use them to adjust the volume of individual segments of the track. You might use a volume curve to fade a track in or out, or to lower a rhythm track a bit during a guitar solo. To use a volume curve, click the triangular button next to the Solo button in the track header. The volume curve appears below the track. To work with it, click the Track Volume check box. Click and drag the left edge of the volume curve (it’s in the Timeline) downward to the bottom of the track. Now click on the volume curve and move a measure or two to the right. You’ve just created a control point, the location where you’ll start changing the volume. Drag the new control point upward within the track, and notice that doing so creates a curve between the beginning of the track and the control point (see Figure 2.19). Create and use more control points to make additional curves throughout the song.

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Timing and Velocity Tweaks

Figure 2.19: Begin the volume curve by dragging downward to lower the track’s volume, create a control point, and then drag it upward to create a volume curve.

Figure 2.20: If your notes aren’t perfectly on the beat, click Fix Timing to snap them to the grid.

We’ve spent some time in the Software Instrument Track Editor before. Now that you’re putting the finishing touches on your song, it’s time for a return visit. We’ll finalize the timing and velocity settings for tracks played on a MIDI keyboard. We’re adding this step to account for human imperfection. Timing, which reflects how well musical notes align to the grid in the Track Editor, and velocity, which indicates how hard a key was pressed or note was played, can both be corrected before you finish your song. Unfortunately, you can’t correct these elements in a Real Instrument track. Open the Track Editor for a Software Instrument track you played yourself—not a loop. Perhaps every note you play is perfectly on the beat, but we can’t say the same for ours. The Track Editor in Figure 2.20 shows that some notes aren’t aligned to the Beat Ruler. To see this level of detail, you’ll probably need to zoom in on the region in which notes you played appear. The zoom level affects the grid, too. The more you zoom, the more gridlines (notes) are available. See how long the notes on the grid are by viewing them in the display above the Track Editor’s zoom slider. To snap existing notes to the nearest gridlines, first be sure that you’re zoomed in close. Because the gridlines represent longer notes and are further apart at lower zoom levels, your note might not align correctly. Click Fix Timing to snap all notes in the selected region to the nearest gridline. Now you’re perfect! We set velocity for individual notes in the “Inside the Track Editor” section of this chapter. You can use velocity settings to give a region more emphasis within a mix. Higher velocity corresponds to loudness. Lower velocity is softer. Open a Software Instrument region in the Track Editor and select all notes in the region (press „-A or choose Edit → Select All). Use the Velocity slider to adjust the region’s velocity up or down. Be sure to play the track after the change to verify the change’s effect.

Effects

TIP To be sure that notes you drag within a Track Editor region remain connected to the grid, verify that Snap to Grid (Control → Snap to Grid) is enabled.

You’ve had a taste of GarageBand effects in both the real and Software Instruments Track Info windows. You can seriously mess with the sound of a guitar by first choosing Arena Rock and then Glam in the Real Instruments guitar category. But now we’ll delve deep into effects: the kind that players of real instruments get by adding accessories such as pedals and tremolos to their guitars, or by twisting the distortion knobs on their amplifiers. Although many effects are available to all real and software instruments, not all of them are well-suited to every instrument. You’ll have to rely on a combination of experimentation and your own experience to figure out which ones to use in a given situation. Choose a track whose effect you want to change. You might want to create a cycle region that will loop while you work on the track. Open the Track Info window (double-click a track). Click the Details triangle to view the Effects settings (see Figure 2.21). We’ll show you how to apply a few effects, but there are lots more to explore.

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Start with the equalizer. Click the Equalizer check box to activate the menu on the right. Then choose an equalizer setting that best describes the effect you want. To see the available settings in detail or to create one of your own, click the pencil icon next to the menu. The available presets appear on the pop-up menu. Four sliders show you the selected preset. Drag a slider to make adjustments to the preset. Notice that the menu changes to read Manual. You can save your changed setting as a preset by choosing Make Preset. Then name your new setting. To add reverb to your track, the process is much simpler. Click the Reverb check box to activate the slider on the right and then drag it to the right to add more reverb. The two Effects menus labeled None are your window on a long list of effects that will be familiar to musicians, especially guitar players. You can add tremolos, flangers, wah pedals, choruses, and more. When you enable the check box and select an effect, the menu on the right gives you more options for the chosen effect. Just like the equalizer, these effects have settings you can customize by clicking the pencil icon. Figure 2.21: Effects for the selected track are available under the Details triangle in the Track Info window.

Figure 2.22: When enabled, the Master Track appears below other tracks in the song.

Song Volume and the Master Track With all of your individual tracks combed, coiffed, and sounding their best, the next step is to make some tweaks to the song as a whole. We’ll use the Master Track to adjust the song’s volume and add global effects. But first, a word about the two volume options in a GarageBand song: The Master Output Volume slider, which appears below the Timeline at all times, controls your song’s volume during playback or export, not the volume at which your music is recorded. Don’t change the volume setting while you’re mixing in GarageBand. Instead, use the Master Track, where you can set the overall volume of the song as it is to be recorded. You can use Master Output Volume and the meters above it to verify that the volume level of the final product is OK. Again, yellow or red indicates that volume’s too high, and activity in the Clipping area at the end of the meters indicates that your track’s output might be distorted. Lower the output volume to avoid clipping. To get started, enable the Master Track. Choose Track → Show Master Track, or press „-B. The Master Track appears below the other tracks (see Figure 2.22). Click the Master Volume check box to enable the volume curve. Play your song and decide where you want to change its volume. Click on the volume curve to create a control point at the beginning of the section where you want to change volume and then create another control point at the end of the section. Drag the second control point to raise or lower the section’s volume.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife You can add effects to the song as a whole in the same way that you do for an individual track. There’s one difference—instead of choosing an instrument and a category, you have access to musical styles and substyles (see Figure 2.23). You can click the Details triangle to see the same list of effects that are available in the Track Info window. You have access to Echo, Reverb, Equalizer, and Compressor, as well as one, rather than two, audio effects of your choice.

A Lean, Mean Mix

Figure 2.23: Choose a musical style for your song from the Master Track Info dialog box.

Waaaaay back at the beginning of this chapter, we pointed out that GarageBand’s performance is significantly affected by the kind and number of elements in your project. Now that you’ve finished building and mixing your song, worked with multiple versions of the same track, muted tracks you don’t want, and so on, your project might very well contain lots of material that is not heard in the final mix. You can shrink your project’s size significantly by deleting tracks or regions you’re not using. If you’re unsure about losing the material you’ve worked so hard to create, save a separate version of your song that contains the currently unused tracks and use the slimmer one for sharing with others, as described in the “Sharing Songs and Parts of Songs” section, coming right up. To remove an unwanted track, press „-Delete. To delete a single region, click on it and press Delete.

Sharing Songs and Parts of Songs Exporting GarageBand songs is pretty darn simple. It’s so simple, in fact, that you might miss some of the interesting ways you can use the export feature to work with other musicians. GarageBand is integrated with iTunes. When you export a song, GarageBand creates an AIFF file (the format used by audio CDs) and adds the song to your iTunes library. The settings you choose in GarageBand Preferences determine the ID tags of the exported file. The cool part? In addition to exporting a complete song, you can also export individual tracks, and even sections, of a song. This is a great way to work with other musicians, sending them tracks you’ve recorded, to which they add their own. First, we’ll do a simple song export. Begin by setting up your iTunes landing pad: a playlist and some useful ID tags for your exported song. Choose GarageBand → Preferences and click the Export tab. Name an iTunes playlist to receive your exported song, along with a Composer and Album name to be displayed along with the song title (the filename) in iTunes. Close the Preferences dialog box. To export the completed song, save it first. Be sure that no tracks are selected, and that the cycle region is turned off (click the Cycle Region button to toggle the region on and off). Choose File → Export to iTunes. GarageBand mixes down the file and exports it. iTunes opens. Look for the playlist you named in GarageBand and click it to see your song. Now we’ll export several other versions of the same song, each with its own purpose. With a finished song open, choose File → Save As. Name this version Vocal Practice and save the song. In Vocal Practice, click the Mute button on the lead vocal track. Our goal is to create a version of the

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song that a singer can use when practicing for a performance. Play the song if you need to hear how it sounds without the vocal track. Export the song as before. Now your iTunes playlist contains a perfect karaoke version of your song. Next we need a version of the song that a new guitarist in the band can use to learn the song. Return to the original version of the song you recorded (with all the parts) and save it as Practice for Lead Guitar. Click the Solo button for the existing lead guitar track and export. Finally, let’s export a small section of the song that the band wants to work on. Maybe the bridge just isn’t working and someone in the group wants to add an instrument or fool around with a new riff. Save the original song as Bridge Work and then click the Cycle Region button to activate the Cycle Region ruler. Click and drag to select the part of the song you want to export. Play the region to make sure you have what you want and then export this version of the song by choosing File → Export to iTunes.

101 Uses for an Exported Song Okay, we’re willing to concede that we’re going to have trouble living up to the above heading, but we hope you’ll cut us a little literary slack. The point is that once you have exported a GarageBand song or parts thereof to iTunes, you can do anything with it that you can with any other iTune file. The most obvious thing, of course, is playing the song on your Mac. You can burn your playlist to a CD and give it to musicians you work with, or download it to your iPod for listening or practicing while you’re away from your Mac. Before you download the song, you might want to make a compressed copy. That will save considerable space on your iPod, or if you need to email a copy of the song. To make an AAC copy that can be played via iTunes or with an iPod, find your song in the iTunes Library. (We know it’s available from a playlist, but you won’t be able to see the copy you’re about to make from the playlist.) You can quickly convert the file to the format selected in iTunes’ Importing preferences. To set the format, choose iTunes → Preferences and click the Importing tab. Choose a format from the Import Using pop-up menu, and close Preferences. (Chapter 1, “iTunes,” p. 7, includes a thorough explanation of the various formats iTunes supports.) The bottom line is that Apple Lossless Encoder is compatible with iTunes and the iPod, but not with other MP3 players. Some third-party players might be compatible with AAC, but check the player’s documentation before you assume files in that format will play on your device. When you’ve chosen a format, Control-click the song you want to convert and choose Convert Selection to . iTunes complies and adds the converted version to the library, right below the original. Select the copy and press „-I. Click the Info tab and add the format (MP3, AAC) to the song’s name to differentiate it from the original. Now you can copy the file to your iPod, or use it anywhere else space is at a premium. The marketing folks at Apple who toss around words like “integration” would probably like us to mention at this point that an exported GarageBand song, like any track in iTunes, works great as the soundtrack for an iPhoto slideshow, an iMovie, or an iDVD project. It’s absolutely true, and Chapters 3, 4, and 5 contain the dope on using music in your visual presentations.

Importing Music: It’s a Drag Unlike iPhoto, iMovie, and other creative tools, GarageBand doesn’t come with import options. You can, however, bring music files and even Real Instrument tracks from other GarageBand files into your songs. In both cases, you accomplish this by dragging a file into the GarageBand window.

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Figure 2.24: View package contents for a GarageBand file, open the Media folder, and then drag a Real Instrument track into a destination file.

Open the GarageBand file to which you want to add a music file. If necessary, scroll down so that an empty area is visible below the existing tracks. In the Finder, locate the file you want to import. If it’s part of your iTunes music library, you’ll find it in /Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. Drag the file from the Finder to the empty portion of the GarageBand Timeline. Your file is added as a Real Instrument track. You can now add effects to it or change its volume if you want. To snag a track from another GarageBand file, you need to uncover the innards of the file you want to swipe from. First, open the destination file, making sure there’s an empty area visible in the Timeline. Unless you’ve saved your GarageBand file someplace else, your source file is located in /Users/username/Music/GarageBand. Control-click the file and choose Show Package Contents. A new folder named for the file opens. It contains a folder called Media. Open it. Inside are the Real Instrument tracks for this GarageBand file. Drag the one you want into an empty area in the destination GarageBand song (see Figure 2.24).

Turbocharge GarageBand Here’s the part of the chapter where we show you the many ways you can make the most of GarageBand by learning more about it and adding stuff to it. Hardware and software vendors have flocked to it since its release in January 2004. Apple itself led the pack with the GarageBand Jam Pack, a $99 collection of software instruments, loops, and real instrument effects. As we mentioned in the “Is This Thing On?” sidebar, Apple also began reselling GarageBand-friendly musical gear, including keyboards and MIDI interfaces. Independent software writers and musicians have been busy, too, creating loops and effects—some free, some not. Finally, the GarageBand community got a quick start. Today, a fistful of websites offer tips, access to downloads, and a place for GarageBand users to upload their songs.

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Loops

INFOBOX Loop de Loop Buy ‘em or download ‘em free. But get some loops. BandMate Loops B www.bandmateloops.com

Bitshift Audio gives away a collection of GarageBand loops. B www.bitshiftaudio.com/ products/bbb/free_bee.html

The Blair Loop Project—Free GarageBand loops played by noted drummer Michael Blair. B www.apple.com/ downloads/macosx/audio/ blairloopprojectloopsforgarageband.html

BetaMonkey B www.betamonkeymusic.com

Looperman B www.looperman.com

Loops.net B www.loops.net

The loops included with GarageBand and available from lots of sites around the Internet (see the “Loop de Loop” Infobox) are saved in Apple Loop format. You can drag any file in that format into the Loop Browser to add it to your collection. The file extension for Apple Loops is .aif. Many other music applications use loops, and free and commercial collections abound. These loops are usually AIFF or WAV files, and not compatible with the Apple Loops format. You can use these loops as GarageBand tracks by dragging them into a song, but you won’t have access to them from the Loop Browser. To turn these files into bona fide Apple Loops, follow these steps: 1. Get Apple’s free Apple Loop SDK (Software Development Kit). Download it at ftp.apple.com/developer/Development_Kits/Apple_Loops_SDK_1.1.dmg.bin. 2. Install the SDK and open the Soundtrack Loop Utility (Applications/Utilities). 3. Navigate to the WAV or AIFF file you want to convert to an Apple Loop and click Open. The file is listed on the right side of the window. 4. Click the plus sign above it to add more files. 5. You can use the many conversion options, but it’s not necessary. All you need to do now is click the Save button (there is no Save command on the File menu). If Save is dimmed, make a simple change, such as clicking a category and instrument under the Instruments label, and then click Save. 6. When conversion is complete, a folder containing your new loop or loops appears in the same folder as the original files. 7. Drag your new loops into the GarageBand Loop Browser.

Community If you’ve been around the Macintosh for any length of time, you’re probably not surprised that a lot of Internet communities have been created around GarageBand specifically, and Mac music in general. Many of these email sites emphasize song sharing, downloading free or demo versions of loops and instruments, and tips for getting more out of GarageBand and MIDI equipment. For your reading pleasure, we present a list of the biggest and best of them. • GarageDoor (www.thegaragedoor.com)—Here’s a GarageBand-specific site with articles, tips, and links to loops, instruments, and hardware. • iCompositions (www.icompositions.com)—This site is primarily a song-sharing community for GarageBand users. Check out its list of free loop collections, most of which are offered by companies with other products to sell. • MacBand (www.macband.com)—It’s a GarageBand song-sharing site. No, wait. It’s a loop download site. • MacIdol (www.macidol.com)—This site focuses on musicians who want to get their songs heard, discussions, and Mac music news. • MacJams (www.macjams.com)—You’ll find product news, reviews, and song uploading. • MacJukebox (www.macjukebox.net)—Lots of GarageBand discussion forums. • MacMusic (www.macmusic.org)—This is a very dense site covering all topics related to Macs and music.

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PROJECT: GarageBand and a Mac become an advanced karaoke machine nybody can rent or buy a karaoke machine, but you, who are always on the cutting edge, don’t need one. You have GarageBand and a Mac. We’re going to record some songs for your guests to sing along with at your dance party, and then you’ll give them recordings of their performances (or blackmail them later on).

A

1

RECORD FAMILIAR SONGS: As much as you would like your party guests to sing their hearts out to a song by your favorite alt country punk bluegrass band, or even one of your own compositions, it ain’t gonna happen. People like to karaoke to “Wild Thing,” or maybe “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Set up your MIDI keyboard or guitar and record some songs everyone knows using GarageBand. Get some other musicians to lay down bass and drum parts (or do them yourself). Your guests will provide the vocals, and maybe the lead guitar or keyboard part. You just need to locate the lyrics on the Internet and print them.

Record your version of a favorite song.

2

CREATE MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF EACH SONG: Your basic karaoke song will have all the musical parts, but you can add a fun dimension for musicians by saving versions of each song that don’t include the lead part and then letting folks take a stab at playing the lead themselves. In a song with a good lead guitar part, mute the lead track. Choose File → Save As and add “noguitar” to the filename. Do the same for the rest of your karaoke masterpieces. If you have a MIDI drum set, leave in the lead guitar and leave out the drums on a few tracks. Let your guests make with the virtual sticks. You could do this step live at the party, but it will be much Mute tracks you don’t want to save in a new file. quicker to have the GarageBand files ready when the fun gets started.

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SET UP YOUR KARAOKE SYSTEM: It’s party day and time to get the Mac ready. The ideal setup is a Mac, a MIDI interface, a guitar, and a microphone. Many MIDI devices have inputs for multiple instruments, so you can plug the guitar and the mic into it and then connect the MIDI box to your Mac. You’ll also need to connect the Mac to speakers. If you’re already playing your Mac’s iTunes library through stereo speakers (see Chapter 1’s project), you’re all set. When everything’s connected, open Audio MIDI Setup on your Mac (Applications/Utilities). Click the MIDI Devices tab and make sure the Mac can see your MIDI device. Click Rescan MIDI if it can’t, and click Test Setup when the device appears. Open one of the karaoke files you created in GarageBand. With the mic plugged in, play the Plug in the guitar and mic song and belt out a chorus. Use Audio MIDI before the party. Setup to adjust volume levels if necessary.

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4

PLAY VOCAL KARAOKE TRACKS: Recording karaoke singing is difficult in a party environment because you want everyone to hear the song. Unfortunately, the sound coming through the speakers will also be picked up by the vocal microphone. Because the only solution is to give the singer headphones, preventing everyone else from hearing the instrumental tracks, you’ll have to settle for playing those tracks through speakers while your singing guests belt out their tunes through the microphone. Create a new Real Instrument track in GarageBand. Even though you won’t end up with a usable recording, you will need to make one. Choose a track type from the Vocal category. If your first guest is ready to sing, turn monitoring on and then close the Track Info window. Start the song and press R to begin recording. The music and the lyrics will be heard through the speakers. When the song is finished, open the Track Info window and turn off the monitor.

Create a vocal track, enable monitoring, and record.

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RECORD GUITAR, DRUM, AND KEYBOARD PERFORMANCES: When the first musician steps up to display her chops, open a GarageBand file that’s missing the instrument to be recorded. Create a new track and choose the instrument to be played from the Real Instruments tab, and then select the kind of sound from the right-hand column. Be sure that the Monitor check box is disabled to avoid feedback. Press Z to move the playhead to the beginning of the song. Ask the would-be Hendrix holding the guitar if she’d like a count-in and then choose Control → Count In if she does. Press the spacebar to start the song, and press R to begin recording the new track. When the song is finished, save it with the musician’s name appended to the filename.

Set up the new track to record music live.

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EXPORT RECORDED PERFORMANCES TO iTUNES: When the party dust has settled, go back to the instrumental performances you recorded. In GarageBand Preferences, choose a name for the playlist and album you’re about to create—leave the Composer field alone. Export each performance file to iTunes. All will appear in the party playlist.

Burn the playlist of recorded performances to CD.

Chapter 3

iPhoto Simply put, iPhoto keeps track of your digital images. With a capacity of 25,000 photos, there’s plenty of room for the snapshots you scanned in from the old family albums, the digital pictures you take now, and the images your cousins send in email. The cool part—or one of them—is that unlike the stack of beat-up albums, or the shoebox in your mom’s dresser drawer, iPhoto can preserve and enhance your photos, and help you keep them in easy reach. Oh yeah, and you can create photo books, slideshows, web pages, CDs or DVDs, and even print groups of photos the old-fashioned way—on paper! Organizing photos is just great, but discovering that one you have imported from a camera looks like junk can be more frustrating than trying to figure out who the blurry baby on Aunt Millie’s lap might be. Although iPhoto can’t fix the blurriness, it can retouch your images, eliminate red eye, and perform other groovy editing tricks. More hands-on operations, such as cropping and resizing, also get the iPhoto treatment. iPhoto is the Swiss Army knife of image management. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to import photos, how to label and organize them, and how to obliterate photographic errors with iPhoto’s editing tools. With your images catalogued in iPhoto, the next step is to share ‘em. This chapter gives you tips on printing, making slideshows, and uploading your masterpieces to .Mac so that web visitors can enjoy them.

Import, manage, edit and share your library of digital photos

iPhoto manages your memories.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife CONTENT PANE

SOURCE PANE

SHARED PHOTOS

TITLE

iPhoto quick start

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SMART ALBUM

ALBUMS

INFO PANE

ADD ALBUM

INFO

PLAY SLIDESHOW

VIEW BUTTONS

ROTATE

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RATING

ZOOM SLIDER

The Many Moods of iPhoto Everything you can do with an image in iPhoto occurs in one of its four views: Import, Manage, Edit, or Book.

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Meet iPhoto

Figure 3.1: iPhoto’s Source pane gives you several ways to view a subset of your photos.

TIP Mac OS X supports most cameras, but if yours isn’t one of them, try IOXpert’s USB still camera driver for Mac OS X ($9.95, http://www.ioxperts.com).

Everything you need to work with photos is easily accessible from the iPhoto window, and the steps to completing a photo project are mirrored by the program’s four views, conveniently represented by buttons that are located near the bottom of the window. We’ll work through the four views of iPhoto in this chapter, with stops along the way to describe features that don’t quite fit into any of them. The four iPhoto views are: • Import. Bring images into iPhoto from a digital camera, or from files on your Mac. • Organize. Move your photos into albums, view them as slideshows, export, print, or place them on the Web. • Edit. Crop and enhance photos to make them look their best. • Book. Design a printable hardcover photo book. Like iTunes, iPhoto uses a library to organize the items you import into the program. Once a photo is part of the library, it can be added to an album, and from there it can be printed, viewed as part of a slideshow, or exported and used in a photo book. iPhoto uses the album concept to organize photos by date—both the date you took the picture, if that is known, and the date it was imported. When you click on the triangle to expand the library, folders correspond to each year (see Figure 3.1). The Last 12 Months album displays the oldest images first. Last Roll contains the most recently imported photos, whether from a digital camera or from files. By the way, if you’re worried that the date associated with a photo is wrong, fear not. You can change it, as we will learn shortly.

Importing Photos iPhoto accepts images in several ways: you can import them from your camera or card reader, use the Import command to bring in a folder or file, or drag images into the iPhoto window.

About Image Formats iPhoto supports any image file that is supported by the QuickTime multimedia format. That includes popular formats such as JPEG, GIF, TIFF, Photoshop, PICT, MacPaint, PNG, BMP, Targa, and a few others. Some iPhoto operations change the formats of exported files. For example, saving an album into a web-based gallery converts all images in the album to JPEG, the Web’s standard photo format.

Importing from a Digital Camera

Figure 3.2: The make and model of your camera appears in the lower-left corner of the iPhoto window.

Mac OS X has built-in support for digital cameras. With a camera connected to your Mac’s USB port, you can use iPhoto to import photos stored on its memory card. Connect the camera to a USB port on your Mac and set the camera to play back photos. By default, plugging the camera into the Mac opens iPhoto, and you’ll see the name and icon for the camera in the lower-left corner of the iPhoto window (see Figure 3.2). You can use the Image Capture application to tell the OS to do something other than open iPhoto, including using Image Capture to do it. Because this chapter is about iPhoto, we’re sticking to the default, but we do recommend that you take a peek at Chapter 16, “The Little Guys,” for a primer on how Image Capture can help you download images to your Mac. Click Import to copy your photos. You have the option to erase your camera’s memory card after importing photos, but we suggest you complete the import and then erase the card using your

Chapter 3 iPhoto

Figure 3.3: View the status of your iPhoto import.

TIP Mac OS X does not support all card readers. LaCie, Belkin, Lexar, SmartDisk, and Sony are among the companies that make Mac OS X-compatible card readers. If you’re thinking of getting a new card reader, confirm its Mac OS support with the vendor.

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camera, just in case something goes wrong. Leave the Erase Camera After Transfer check box alone for now. To import photos from your camera, click Import. A status bar and thumbnails of your photos appear while the import progresses (see Figure 3.3). When the import is finished, your new photos appear in the iPhoto Content pane. Click the Last Roll album to see only the photos you have just imported. Import Selected Photos. There are times when you might want to import only a few of the images from your digital camera, rather than the whole enchilada. There are a few ways to do this: • Use Image Capture to download images to your hard drive. From there, you can import them to iPhoto, as described in “Import from Your Hard Drive or a CD.” • Connect a compatible card reader to your Mac, insert your camera’s memory card, and import selected photos by dragging them into iPhoto. • If you have already imported images from your camera, but have not erased the memory card, connect the camera and choose Import in iPhoto. When iPhoto asks whether you want to overwrite the first duplicate image (see Figure 3.4), click the Applies To All Duplicates check box and then click No. Only the new images will be imported.

Import from a Card Reader Plugging a supported memory card reader into your Mac’s USB port opens iPhoto and switches it to Import view, just as connecting a camera does. An icon for the card reader shows up in the iPhoto window. Click Import to bring the card’s contents into iPhoto. When you’re done, erase the card and select the reader’s icon on the desktop or in the sidebar of a Finder window and then eject the disc.

Import from Your Hard Drive or a CD

Figure 3.4: iPhoto warns that you are about to overwrite a photo.

You have two choices when it comes to importing photo files: the Import command, or the ol’ varsity drag. With the Import command, you navigate to a file or directory and quickly add it to your library. Dragging files or folders into iPhoto gives you the flexibility to bring them directly into an existing album, or to create a new album for the imported images, all in one step. To use the Import command, choose File → Import and find the folder or file you want to import. iPhoto does the rest. Your imported files appear in the Photo Library and in the Last Roll album. You can drag files into iPhoto’s Content pane. When you drag into the Content pane, you won’t have the instant feedback of seeing your images go where you drag them, but they’re ready for you in the Last Roll album. Drag a file or folder onto an existing album. If you drag an item into the empty area of the Source pane, iPhoto creates a new album. That works whether you drag a folder or a single photo. The new album takes the name of the item you import. If the imported folder contains other folders, all of the images in the folders are imported into a single album. Kodak’s Picture CDs are a popular alternative to traditional photo printing. Image files can also be added to your iPhoto library, just like any other digital image, although iPhoto is smart enough to recognize the format when you insert a Picture CD into your Mac’s drive. iPhoto launches (unless you have changed that setting in the CDs & DVDs System Preferences pane), and takes you to Import view (see Figure 3.5). Click Import to add the CD’s contents to the library.

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Photo Triage

Figure 3.5: Inserting a Picture CD takes you to iPhoto’s Import mode, and displays info about the CD.

TIP Click the Play button to start a slideshow of any iPhoto album.

Figure 3.6: Navigate, rotate, rate, or delete photos with the slideshow.

You take a lot of photos—probably more than you did when your camera used film. After all, those digital bits are free, unlike the celluloid stuff. After a long day of picturetaking, you import your masterpieces into iPhoto. But now you want to quickly review the images, rotate the ones that were taken vertically, and delete the duds. An iPhoto slideshow is just the ticket. Besides giving you a better look at your pictures than what you have in the viewfinder, you can make a quick run at organizing the day’s work. When you have imported the photos you want to review, click the Last Roll album in the Source pane and then click the Play button below it. iPhoto begins a slideshow, and displays a set of controls you can use to navigate through the photos, rotate them in either direction, rate them, or delete them (see Figure 3.6). The slideshow begins, using whatever time, music, and transition settings from the last time you ran a slideshow. If you’ve never run one, iPhoto changes photos every five seconds. Clicking the left or right arrow interrupts the automatic turning of the slides. Use the two rotate buttons to turn the image clockwise or counterclockwise. Click on a star to give the photo a rating from 1–5. If you want to remove a photo from the library, click the trash can. You won’t be asked whether you’re sure: the photo goes to iPhoto’s Trash, from which you can retrieve it later or delete it permanently. When you’ve finished photo triage, click anywhere to end the slideshow. It will end by itself when it has displayed all the photos in the album once. You don’t need to run a slideshow to perform photo triage. All the options described previously are available in the Content pane from the menu bar or a contextual menu. And by the same token, you don’t have to limit your photo triage to the last roll you imported—it works with any iPhoto album.

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Control-click a photo in iPhoto’s Content pane and choose Rotate Clockwise to rotate the image. Choose an item from the My Rating menu to give your photo 1–5 stars. To delete it, choose Move To Trash from the menu, or just press the Backspace key. These options are also available on the Photos menu.

Managing Photo Information iPhoto offers several ways to tag photos so that you can find them. We suggest you read about all the options before you begin tagging. It will be easier to find what you’re looking for later if you develop a consistent way of applying iPhoto tags. For example, you could use photo titles to describe the pictures from your Colorado vacation, but it’s probably easier to use Keywords to describe the group of images, and then very specific titles for individual images. Every photo in your library has a number of attributes. You can change most of them and use the information to find and organize large numbers of images. In the next section, we’ll show you how to build and maintain iPhoto albums, but first, we need to show you how to use the library’s powerful database to identify each photo uniquely. Figure 3.7: Replace a cryptic filename with a descriptive title.

Names, Dates, and Comments Photos you import from a digital camera often have filenames such as PA20008. If you’re lucky, the filename might include a clue to the date the picture was taken. You can replace the meaningless alphanumeric drivel with a descriptive title. In the Import, Organize, or Edit views, select a photo and type a new title in the Title field, located below the Source pane (see Figure 3.7). Choose View → Titles to see titles for all photos. Similarly, iPhoto imports a photo’s creation date and time, and adds it to the Date field. You can change it if you want—or at least check to see that it’s correct. If your camera’s battery died while you were taking pictures, it might have taken the correct time and date information down with it. While we’re on the subject of dates, click on the Last Roll album that shows the most recent photos you imported. Notice that the Date field lists the range for all images in the album. With a photo selected, click the Show information About This Photo button. It’s the one just to the right of the Play button. The Comments field opens (see Figure 3.8). You can add notes about the photo here. Click the Info button again and all photo information disappears. Click once more and you’re back to the first of the three views.

Changing Multiple Photos at Once Figure 3.8: Make notes about the selected photo in the Comments field.

Photos from the same film roll (to echo iPhoto’s metaphor) often have a lot in common. iPhoto lets you make changes to the titles, dates, and/or comments of an entire album, or a group of photos you select from the library or an album. You might decide to give your European vacation photos a prefix that identifies them (Eur) and then add a more precise description to the title of each photo (Eur-EiffelTower). Or you might want to select a group of photos taken on the same date and use the date in their titles. iPhoto calls changing multiple photos’ tags a batch change. Start by selecting photos for the batch. Either click an album to select its contents, or click and drag to select photos in the Content pane. Choose Photos → Batch Change. Leaving the Set menu option set to Title, you can erase all titles (Empty), begin all titles with the same characters (Text), or use Roll Into, Filename, or Date and Time to create the titles.

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Figure 3.9: Edit the starting date and time for the batch of photos, click the Add check box, and enter an offset for each image.

To give all photos in the batch a common date, choose Date from the Set menu. iPhoto displays the current date for the first image in the batch. Date and time stamps for all can be identical, or you can check the Add check box (see Figure 3.9). Type the number of seconds, minutes, hours, or days you want iPhoto to add to subsequent photos’ dates and times. Batch changes to the Comments field will overwrite existing comments for individual photos or add the batch notes, if you click the Append To Existing Comments check box.

Keywords Perhaps the best way to keep track of the many kinds of photos in your library is by assigning keywords to them. You can assign one or more keywords to any photo and then search by the keyword. You might use event keywords, like “vacation”, “work friends”, or “dad’s family”. It all depends on the way you organize your photos and how you want to be able to search for them later. To assign a keyword to a photo, select it in the Content pane and then choose Photos → Show Keywords. (You can add a keyword to multiple photos by selecting several, or selecting an album.) The Keywords dialog box opens and shows you the keywords that are already available in iPhoto. You can use any of these, delete them, and/or create your own. To assign an existing keyword to the photo, click it and then click the Assign button. To add your own keyword to the list, choose New from the Keywords pop-up menu and type the keyword. Now you can assign the new keyword to the currently selected photo. You can use keywords to search your library or just the currently selected album. To locate photos by keyword, select an album or the library. Then open the Keywords dialog box, if it isn’t already. Click the keyword and then Search. All photos tagged with the chosen keyword appear in the Content window.

Photo Info

Figure 3.10: The Photo Info window shows details about an image that was imported from a digital camera.

There’s one more collection of information available in iPhoto. This one is not editable, however. The Photo Info window displays an image’s name, creation date, size, and resolution in pixels. If the photo was imported from a digital camera, the Photo Info window also lists the manufacturer and model of your camera. Photos you scan, download or receive in email won’t include this info. To view photo info, select the photo and choose Photos → Show Info, or press „-I. To see details about the settings used to take a digital photo, click the Exposure tab. Figure 3.10 shows Exposure info.

View Your Handiwork iPhoto users often search for photos using keywords, ratings, and titles, but you can also use them to jog your memory while scrolling through your library or individual albums. To display photo titles below the image in the Content pane, choose View → Show Titles. The same procedure gets you a look at keywords and ratings. Just choose the matching items from the View menu. Figure 3.11 shows photos with their titles, keywords, and ratings exposed.

Organizing Photos iPhoto’s Organize view provides tools for arranging photos and customizing your view of them. We have already worked in Organize view, naming individual photos and viewing their labels in the Content pane. In this section, we focus on features used to wrangle groups of images. In Organize

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view, you create and use iPhoto’s two grouping mechanisms, albums and film rolls. You can also use various iPhoto viewing options to get a bigpicture look (groan!) at your library, or a very granular one, depending on how you want to work with your photos.

Albums

Figure 3.11: These photos have titles, keywords, and ratings.

We’ve mentioned iPhoto albums a few times in this chapter. Now let’s dive in and learn how they work. Although photo attributes such as titles and keywords are optional ways to identify individual photos, albums are pretty much a necessity for anyone who wants to print, export, or view groups of photos. You will be glad you read about albums when we show you how to order books, make slideshows, and export to the Web. An iPhoto album is very much like an iTunes playlist (Chapter 1). It’s a grouping of items from your iPhoto library that you either create manually, or by setting up criteria to generate a smart album. iPhoto itself uses smart albums to group photos from recently imported film rolls, and those taken during a period of time. The way you use iPhoto albums depends on how your mind wants to organize photos. You can take a cue from iPhoto’s date-centric scheme, and/or create albums for specific events and types of photos. Like a song in your iTunes library, a photo can appear in any number of albums, and deleting the image from an album doesn’t remove it from your library. Create an album by pressing „-N (or choose File → New Album). Name your album and drag photos from the Content pane onto the album icon. To create an album for photos from your most recent film roll, follow these steps: 1. Import the images from your camera and do any photo triage that’s necessary. 2. If you haven’t created a new album yet, do so now and give it a descriptive name. 3. Click the Last Roll album. 4. To add all photos from this roll, press „-A to select all of them. 5. Now drag the photos onto the new album icon (see Figure 3.12). To create a new album from a portion of your library or a film roll, select the photos you want to add to the new album. You can Shift-click to add contiguous photos, or „-click to select individuals. Choose File → New Album From Selection. Name the new album to complete it. Remember that you can also create albums instantly by dragging a folder or file from the Finder into the empty area of the Source pane. The files are imported and the album is named for the item you imported.

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Smart Albums

Figure 3.12: Drag photos from the Last Roll to a new album.

TIP To add a multi-roll event to a new album, import the first roll, copy it from Last Roll to the new album, and then import another group of photos, repeating the steps until you’re done.

Like an iTunes smart playlist, a smart album in iPhoto gathers photos based on criteria you set, including title, date, rating, or keyword. You can’t add or delete a photo into a smart album, but you can modify the album’s criteria at any time. To create a new smart album, press „-Option-N, or choose File → New Smart Album. Name the album in the dialog that opens and choose conditions from the pop-up menus. For example, choose Keyword from the first menu and Contains from the second, then type Prague. When you click OK, all photos with the keyword Prague will appear in your smart album. If you add the keyword Prague to additional photos, they will appear in the smart album. To add criteria, click the Plus button and make selections from the Conditions menus. You can choose to require that any or all criteria must be met (see Figure 3.13). To remove a condition, click the Minus button next to it.

Date-Based Albums Whatever means you choose to organize your photos, iPhoto always keeps track of the dates on which they were imported and when they were taken (in the case of images imported from a camera). You have several choices when it comes to viewing photos by date. Last 12 Months is just what it says, an album of all photos imported during the previous year. Click on the triangle next to the Library album to see subfolders for each year. The presence of an Early Photos folder probably indicates that the date assigned to photos by your digital camera is wrong. This might have happened if your camera’s date was incorrectly set, of if its battery ran down while you were using it. You can use the Early Photos folder to individually select and correct photo dates.

Film Rolls

Figure 3.13: Create criteria for a smart album.

iPhoto creates a new film roll when you import images. The roll simply groups all images that were imported together. If you import a second memory card or folder, iPhoto creates a new film roll and replaces the contents of the Last Roll album with the new photos. The displaced last roll photos are still in your library. You can also recapture film roll information. The photo library can display photos by roll, and the Last Roll album can be set to display multiple rolls. Film Rolls are a handy way to identify a group of pictures that were taken at the same time. From there, you can quickly add consistent titles, dates, or keywords.

Chapter 3 iPhoto Figure 3.14: When you view film rolls, iPhoto shows the date of the roll, and its number or folder name, if the roll was imported from files.

Figure 3.15: Rename or change the date of a film roll.

Figure 3.16: Resize thumbnails with the slider below the Content pane.

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Customized Views Organize view gives you several options for changing the way the Source and Content panes look in iPhoto. Most of these options affect the way photos show up in the Content pane, but a couple of them apply to the Source pane. Album and Film Roll Options. To customize the Last 12 Months album, choose Preferences, and then the General tab, if it isn’t already selected. Change the number of months to display in the album, or click the check box to disable it. You can also customize the Last Roll album by typing the number of rolls you want to see, or disabling the Show last roll album check box. You can create a new film roll by selecting photos in the Content pane and then choosing File → New Film Roll From Selection. You might want to do this to separate several projects that were shot on the same memory card. View and Edit Film Rolls. To view individual film rolls in the Photo Library or Last Rolls album, select the album and then View → Film Rolls. iPhoto separates film rolls with a horizontal line, a date, and roll number (see Figure 3.14). Collapse the roll display by clicking the triangle next to the listing. You can change the names of film rolls. With Film Rolls showing, click the header for a film roll in the Content pane. Notice that the name of the film roll appears in the Title field in the Info area, below the Source pane. You can edit the roll’s name and date (see Figure 3.15). Rearrange Albums. Albums in the Source pane typically appear in the order you added them. You can change that by dragging an album up or down the Source pane. You can’t move the Photo Library, Trash, or other albums created by iPhoto. Changing the Display View. The number and size of thumbnails you see in the iPhoto display view can be changed with the slider and buttons in the lower-right corner of the iPhoto window (see Figure 3.16). Although this option is also available in the Import and Edit views, you will probably use it most while organizing your photos. With the Photo library or an album selected, move the slider to the left to see more photos in the Content pane. Move it to the right to see fewer larger photos. To view the maximum number of photos, click the button to the left of the slider (see Figure 3.17). To have a single photo fill the Content pane, click the button on the right. To navigate through your photos, scroll the page or the Up and Down arrow key.

Arranging Photos

Figure 3.17: Show tiny thumbnails by clicking the button to the left of the slider.

Photos in iPhoto albums are typically sorted by filename (or by title, if you have chosen that option), but you can change that with any option from the Arrange Photos menu (View → Arrange Photos). You can arrange photos by film roll, title, date, or rating, and you can apply your choices to any album, plus the photo library. You can only rearrange albums you have created manually. To flip the sort order, choose iPhoto → Preferences and then click the Appearance tab. Click Place Most Recent Photos At The Top. To rearrange an album’s photos manually, drag a photo to the place in the display where you want it to appear. The other images move to accommodate the photo’s new position.

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Deciphering Digital Cameras What the $@#%#@ is a megapixel, and how many do I need?

Nikon Coolpix 5400

When digital cameras first became available, they were all expensive, and mostly crummy. Today, the range of cameras available is broad and deep. You can spend from $200 to multiple thousands of dollars. To make sense of the camera landscape, here is a quick guide to important camera features. Digital cameras come in three major categories: point-and-shoot (under $500), prosumer (under $1,000), and professional ($1,000 and up and up). Although camera features within these groups vary, a primary spec that differentiates them is the number of megapixels a camera has. The resolution of cameras, scanners, and monitors is expressed in pixels. Modern point-and-shoot cameras have a resolution of at least two million pixels (megapixels). Prosumer cameras give you 4 or 5 megapixels, and professional cameras can reach 12 megapixels. For snapshot photographers, especially those who want to display their pictures on a computer screen, 3 or 4 megapixels is plenty. To achieve good color prints, or to publish your photos in a book or magazine, you’ll want to pop for 5 megapixels or more. Like most low-end film cameras, point-and-shoot digital cameras are usually fully automatic, providing little control over focus, exposure, or aperture. For snapshot-takers, the combination of low price and ease of use make a point-and-shoot camera the perfect choice.

Prosumer cameras typically strike a balance between convenient automatic settings and options you can control. Through-the-lens focusing, apertures and exposure settings that can be adjusted for different levels of light, and high levels of optical and digital zoom are all prosumer features. A few high-end prosumer units are SLRs (single-lens reflex), meaning you can replace the supplied lens with one that matches the kind of photography you’re doing. If you can afford them, prosumer cameras offer some of the best bang-for-buck out there. Professional digital cameras look a lot like traditional 35mm SLRs without the film. In fact, many film camera accessories will work with professional digital cameras. You have complete control over exposure, light compensation, and focus, of course. Pro cameras appeal to both professionals and serious hobby photographers. But don’t let the sheer megapixel count dazzle you. Unless you’re making art prints or similar high-quality output, concentrate on the features you need and the accessories you want to use with your camera. Just about all cameras use USB (check) and most work with Mac OS X by default (check check). Apple’s list of compatible cameras is at www.apple.com/macosx/ upgrade/cameras.html. If one you’re interested in isn’t on the list, check the vendor’s website. Miscellaneous features such as the type and cost of media used, the size of the LCD screen, and the way the camera feels in your hands are all worth considering when you shop for a digital camera.

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Editing Photos Try as you might, it’s hard to take perfect pictures. Red eye, poor color fidelity, or plain old bad cropping can render an otherwise decent photo into junk. Although iPhoto can’t work miracles or even approach the sophistication of an image-editing program like Adobe Photoshop, its editing tools can save a less-than-perfect image, and make a mediocre one look a lot better. To edit a photo, you must start in Edit view. You can get there either by clicking the Edit button below the Content pane, or by double-clicking a photo in the Content pane. If you click the Edit view button, iPhoto replaces the page of photos with an enlarged version of the first photo in the current album, and displays editing tools below the photo (see Figure 3.18). Double-clicking a photo displays that image, along with the editing tools. You can also work with a photo by opening it in a separate editing window. Control-click the photo and choose Edit in Separate Window from the contextual menu. The editing window displays the photo and a toolbar with options similar to those in the main Edit view (see Figure 3.19).

Figure 3.18: Edit view shows the enlarged image and a set of editing tools.

Customize the Editing Environment iPhoto gives you three choices when it comes to photo editing: work in Edit view, use a separate editing window, or edit in another application. The default, as mentioned earlier, is Edit view. To change the default so that a photo will open in a new window when you double-click it, choose iPhoto → Preferences and click the Opens Photo In Edit Window radio button, found on the General tab. To use an external application such as Photoshop or GraphicConverter, click Opens Photo In, and then click the Select Application button. iPhoto takes you to the Applications folder, where you can choose an image-editing tool you like. When you save a photo you’ve edited in an external application, your altered image is available in iPhoto, just as if you had worked on it in Edit view or in the editing window.

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The Editing Toolbar. The editing tools available to you in Edit view differ slightly from the set provided in the Edit window. We aren’t sure why. You can change that though, adding or removing any tool from the Edit window toolbar. Follow these steps: 1. Open a photo for editing in a separate window. 2. Click the Customize button, or if you see an arrow at the right edge of the toolbar, click it and choose Customize Toolbar from the pop-up menu. You can also Control-click on the toolbar and choose Customize. iPhoto displays all available editing tools. 3. Drag one up to the toolbar to add it, or drag a tool from the toolbar to remove it. 4. Use the Show pop-up menu and the Use Small Size check box to change the look of the toolbar. Click Done to see your changes. Figure 3.20 shows a toolbar we like better than the original.

Figure 3.19: The iPhoto editing window contains the photo and a toolbar at the top.

Figure 3.20: We dragged all of the image-tweaking tools onto the toolbar and removed the custom aspect ratio tool, because we won’t use it as often.

Figure 3.21: On the Edit toolbar, click the up arrow to zoom in and the down arrow to zoom out.

If you Control-clicked the toolbar to use the Customize command, you probably noticed the other options on the menu, all of which let you resize the toolbar by shrinking the size of the tool buttons (Use Small Size), or by viewing text, icons, or both. Because the toolbar is narrower when you’re working on a vertical photo, shrinking the buttons helps you cram more of them onto the toolbar.

Using Editing Tools We’re going to walk you through all of iPhoto’s editing tools, and while we’re at it, we will point out which ones are available in each editing view by default. First though, a few words about what happens to images you edit, and how to avoid making booboos with your precious photos. If you are just getting started with image editing, or if you are editing images for specific exporting or printing purposes, you might not want to lose the original. To protect your original, duplicate the image before you edit, working on a copy and renaming it so that you can distinguish the two easily. You can duplicate an image in Organize view or Edit view (Control-click and choose Duplicate). iPhoto lets you recover from mistakes, too. While you are working on a photo, you always have access to the Revert to Original command from the Photos menu or the contextual menu. Like most other OS X applications in which you edit files, iPhoto also provides Undo and Redo commands on the Edit menu. Use these if you catch an edit you don’t like before moving on to another action. Zoom. In Edit view, use the Size slider (right below the Content pane) to zoom in on your photo. When you enter Edit view, your image is zoomed out as far as it can go. Click the buttons on either side of the slider for minimum zoom (left) and maximum zoom (right). In the Edit window, use the zoom buttons (see Figure 3.21) to zoom in (up arrow) or out (down arrow). You can zoom out much further in the Edit window than you can in Edit view. Although the Edit window lacks the minimum and maximum buttons found in Edit view, you will find the helpful Fit command there—it fits a complete image into the window. Resize the window, click Fit, and you’ll get a resized image. Rotate. The Rotate command is available in both Organize and Edit view. Click the Rotate button in the Info pane, or Control-click to use the contextual menu. In the Edit window, there’s also a Rotate toolbar button.

Chapter 3 iPhoto

TIP It’s usually quicker to rotate a photo thumbnail in Organize view than it is to do so in either Editing view.

Figure 3.22: Select the area of a photo you want to use, and click the Crop button to remove the rest.

TIP Values on the Constrain menu, and in the Custom boxes are not measurements in inches or pixels, but relative sizes for the photo’s two dimensions.

Figure 3.23: This image benefited greatly from the Enhance command.

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Crop. When a photo is open in either editing view, your cursor becomes a cross, allowing you to select a portion of the image and work on it. To crop extraneous stuff from a photo, click and drag across the image. iPhoto dims the portion of the photo that’s outside the cropping square. Keep dragging until you have selected everything you want to save and then release the mouse. Here are a few cropping tips: • To move the cropping area without changing its size, click inside it and drag. • To change the area’s size and shape, drag one of its edges. • To make the selected area a specific proportional size, choose an option from the Constrain pop-up menu. iPhoto adjusts the area accordingly (see Figure 3.22). See the Aspect Ratios section for more on constraining images. When you’re satisfied, click the Crop button. The portion of the photo outside the selection rectangle is removed. Aspect Ratios. iPhoto provides a menu of aspect ratio options that give you a quick way to crop a photo so that it will fit on a printed page or match some other relative size constraint you might have. Applying an option from the Constrain menu creates a crop area with the relative dimensions of that option. You can drag the selected area around to center it and then click Crop to create a photo with the desired aspect ratio. If you need to crop the photo to remove extraneous material, do so before you choose an aspect ratio and then crop again. To use an aspect ratio that’s not on the Constrain menu, open the Edit window and enter width and height constraints in the Custom boxes on the toolbar. To remove an aspect ratio constraint before you crop, choose None from the Constrain menu. Enhance. Enhance is as close as iPhoto comes to doing magic with your images. When you use this option (available in Edit view and from the contextual menu in the Edit window), iPhoto tries to correct for poor color, brightness, and/or contrast. Some photos benefit greatly, some do not. To try it out, simply click the Enhance button. Keep your eye on the photo to see how iPhoto changes it. To compare the enhanced version to the original, press Control. iPhoto switches to the original image and back again. Figure 3.23 shows before and after versions of an enhanced image. If the Enhance button is grayed out, you have selected a portion of your photo. Choose None from the Constrain menu to remove the selection and then click Enhance.

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Figure 3.24: We used the Enhance tool first, but got better results with the Brightness and Contrast sliders. Although the photo on the right is better, it remains too dark.

Figure 3.25: Click the Red Eye button to correct the selected eye. We’ve already fixed the other eye.

Brightness/Contrast. Although the Enhance option tries to fix photos with brightness and contrast problems, you can often achieve better-looking results with the more precise brightness and contrast sliders in the Edit view, as seen in Figure 3.24. (You’ll need to add the sliders to the Edit window toolbar to use them there.) Start by diagnosing your photo’s problem. If the image is too dark, drag the Brightness slider slightly to the right. Watch the photo to see how much difference the change makes. If the photo is still too dark, move the slider again. Similarly, use the Contrast slider to make the photo more or less sharp until you are happy with the image. B&W. Why take a perfectly good color photo and render it in black and white? You might have artistic reasons for doing so; something to do with illustrating the starkness of the Arizona landscape, maybe? Whatever the reason, you can make the change with the B&W button in Edit view or the contextual menu in the Edit window. Once again, be sure no part of the photo is selected and then click B&W to convert the image. Sepia. Whereas unaltered black-and-white images can be stark, sepia-toned images are said to take the edge off. The technique is often used to make newer photos look old-timey. With nothing selected, click the Sepia button in Edit view or choose Sepia from the contextual menu in the Edit window. Retouch. Whether they’re birthmarks, the oily aftermath of a chocolate binge, or a bit of unidentifiable gunk, blemishes sometimes appear on faces and surfaces. The Retouch tool allows you to cover them up. To retouch a portion of an image, click the Retouch button in Edit view or select Retouch from the contextual menu. Click and drag the mouse back and forth over the blemish area. Press Control to view a before-and-after version figure. Red Eye. Perhaps the most common problem in flash photography, red eye can be removed or reduced with this nifty little tool. To use it, select the (red) eyes of your subject and click the Red Eye button in Edit view, or Control-click to use the Red Eye option on the contextual menu. Figure 3.25 shows ye olde before and after.

Chapter 3 iPhoto

Photo Toolbox Third-party applications that make iPhoto better

To share an iPhoto library with other users on your Mac, change permissions in iPhoto Library Manager.

BetterHTMLExport adds a tab to the Export dialog, where you can configure both web pages and images.

iPhoto does a good job of managing photos, but there’s always room for improvement. Image editing, better exporting, and advanced library management are a few of the features you can add to your iPhoto toolbox with these free or inexpensive add-ons. Image editing tools in iPhoto are somewhat limited. Assuming your budget doesn’t include a copy of Adobe Photoshop, try Lemkesoft’s GraphicConverter ($30 shareware, www.lemkesoft.com), an image editor whose batch processing and file export features make it a powerful sidekick for iPhoto. If you have a scanner, you might also have a copy of Photoshop Elements, a powerful image editing tool. It’s also available for $99 from Adobe (www.adobe.com). Some iPhoto users prefer to manage their photos with multiple libraries, using each to view and work with different groups of images, or to give several users access to a single library. Because iPhoto doesn’t support multiple libraries, iPhoto Library Manager (free, homepage.mac. com/bwebster/iphotolibrarymanager.html)

does it, and gives you tools to manage user permissions. ShareAlike from If Then Software (donation, www.ifthensoft.com) takes another approach to libraries, letting you share yours with other users of your Mac by changing directory permissions. You can also share an iTunes library. Need to print custom photo layouts? Try Portraits & Prints ($20, www.econtechnologies.com). It’s mainly a printing program, but you’ll find photo-editing tools, too. Keyword Assistant (http://homepage.mac.com/kenferry/software.html) is a welcome helper for iPhoto’s somewhat clunky keyword interface. Although it won’t solve all the problems, installing Keyword Assistant gives you a quick way to enter keywords from a tiny window, and to use a custom menu to control other features. It even auto-completes keywords for you. iPhoto’s web page export is OK, but Drooling Cat Software’s BetterHTMLExport (www.droolingcat. com/software/betterhtmlexport)is way more flexible. Using templates, this $20 gem adds a tab to the Export dialog, with support for lots of layout options and more HTML tags. When you edit an image in iPhoto, the image is retained so that you can revert to it. The free iPhoto Diet (pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~fuhrer/personal/freestuff) deletes outdated originals from your library, saving space on your hard drive.

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Sharing and Displaying Photos Assuming that your photos are now imported, organized, and flawless-looking, you would probably like to share them. How? Let us count the ways. Print them on your inkjet printer. Order professional prints. Make a slideshow or a web page. Burn them to CD or DVD. Or share your albums over your home network with other iPhoto users. We cover one final way, printing a photo book, in the project section at the end of this chapter.

Printing Your Photos

Figure 3.26: A contact sheet prints small versions of your entire album.

Figure 3.27: The two Sampler templates print one image at a fairly large size, and the rest much smaller.

You can print photos from any iPhoto view; the options are the same in Organize and Edit view. Book view has its own printing features. If you need to print your photos’ titles and/or comments, pick a book template that supports text and use Book printing. You can initiate printing by clicking the Print button in Organize view, or choosing File → Print. To print photos from an album, select the album before choo sing Print. To print specific photos, select them first. The many wondrous ways you can print photos to your own printer can be found on the Styles pop-up menu in the Print dialog. When you choose one, more options appear, along with a Preview window. Figure 3.26 shows your options for printing a contact sheet. Here’s the full list of printing options and how you can use them: • Contact Sheet. Print thumbnail-sized versions of selected photos. Use the slider to change the number of items per page. If one photo is selected for printing, the contact sheet repeats that photo. • Full Page. Print a selected photo to fill an entire page. Moving the margin slider widens or narrows the page’s margins. • Greeting Cards. This option prints a photo on the top half of a card (single-fold) or the top quarter (double-fold). • N-Up. Like contact sheets, N-Up prints display several photos per page, but N-Up uses a vertical orientation. If you click the One photo per page check box, N-Up duplicates one image the number of times selected in the Photos Per Page pop-up menu. • Sampler. This layout enlarges one image, and prints smaller versions of subsequent ones. Sampler includes two templates, available from the pop-up menu of the same name. Figure 3.27 shows Template 1. • Standard Prints. This is the template that best captures the way most of us are used to dealing with photos. Choose a print size from the size pop-up. Click One photo per page to limit the number of prints. Each iPhoto print option gives you a thumbnail preview of how the pages you are about to print will look. To see a larger version, click the Preview button. After some churning (lots of churning if you’re using a slow Mac), the Preview application opens, displaying a temporary PDF version of what you’re about to print. Click the thumbnails on the right to page through your album. Use the Save As PDF command instead of Preview if you want an electronic copy you can keep or send to others.

Chapter 3 iPhoto

TIP Never printed photos on your inkjet printer? Be sure to choose Adjust the Output and Image Quality Settings in the Print dialog box to get the best possible images from your color printer.

Figure 3.28: Type the number of copies of each print you want to order. Your total is updated automatically.

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Besides the iPhoto–specific layout options, you always have access to the usual settings that apply to your printer. You should also use Page Setup (File → Page Setup) to choose correct paper size and page orientation.

Ordering Prints Like iTunes with its very popular music store, iPhoto comes with opportunities for you to spend some money with your friends at Apple. The quickest way to do that is to order prints from your digital photos. You can also order photo books and use .Mac to put photos and slides on the Web, but we’ll get to those later in this chapter. Apple sells prints ranging in size from the typical 4×6 up to 20×30. As of this writing, 4×6 prints are $.39 each, a pretty competitive price. It’s always a good idea to check for the best deals locally, or on the Internet. Our local grocery, drug, and discount stores all offer prints from digital photos. iPhoto does offer the convenience of direct print ordering, without the extra step of exporting files or burning a CD to take to your local photo shop, although even retail stores sometimes offer online printing. Choose an album of photos you want to print, or create a new one to contain them. You will be able to select photos to print individually, so it’s not strictly necessary to create a new album, but it is easier not to have to scroll through batches of photos you don’t intend to print. Check to see that each photo you want to print has been cropped and edited to your satisfaction, and that it has been sized to an aspect ratio that works with the print size you want to use. Select the album you want to print from, or select individual photos in Organize view. Click Order Prints. iPhoto whirs for awhile, then displays thumbnail versions of your photos, along with a price list and quantity fields for each type of print. Initially, all the fields are dimmed because you are not logged into your Apple account. Whether you have an Apple ID or not, click Set Up Account. If you don’t have an account, click Create Account. If you do have one, enter your Apple ID and password. By the way, you might never have set up an Apple account in iPhoto, but you do have one if you have bought music from the iTunes Music Store or registered a product with Apple. The ID you created at that time will work with iPhoto, and your account information will pop up when you enter the ID and click Sign In. If you need to create a new account, you’ll be asked to fill out three dialog boxes with your name and email address, a password, and billing and shipping addresses. With account information entered or confirmed, you’re back to the Order Prints dialog (see Figure 3.28), but the order form is now ready to use. Begin by typing the number of prints you want to order from the first photo, and in what size or sizes. Scroll through your list to order more photos. Notice that your subtotal changes as you add more prints to the order. The largest photo sizes might be preceded by a warning icon. As explained at the bottom of the order dialog, the photo’s resolution might be too low to look good when printed at such a large size. You have been warned. If you shot or scanned the photo at a very high resolution, you might not receive a warning, and your prints will probably look just ducky.

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TIP To print photos elsewhere, verify that your photo printer will accept electronic files and then burn a CD as described in “Burning CDs and DVDs,” later in this chapter and take it to the local business.

Most of the time, you’ll probably want to order 4×6 prints of all selected photos. Do that quickly by clicking the 4×6 Quick Order button in the upper-right corner of the dialog. Clicking the up arrow adds one copy of each print to your order. And finally, note that you can choose from Standard and Express shipping, and that the estimated cost, as well as applicable sales tax, is updated as you change your order. When you’re satisfied with your order, click Buy Now. If the 1-click ordering feature has been enabled, clicking the Buy Now button places your order.

Slideshows

Figure 3.29: Use Slideshow Settings to configure the look of your show.

Figure 3.30: Choose a song to go with your slideshow in the Music tab.

To turn an album or a group of photos into a slideshow on your screen, complete with music and a choice of snazzy transitions, first choose an album or add some photos to a new one. (You knew we were going to say that, didn’t you? There is a pattern to this stuff.) In Organize view, select the album or the group of photos you want to use, and click the Slideshow button. The Slideshow Settings dialog opens (see Figure 3.29). First choose the type of transition you would like to use between slides. When you choose a different transition and/or a direction, the preview thumbnail shows how it will look. Use the Speed slider to make transitions slower or faster. Next, type the number of seconds you would like each slide to stay onscreen. Use the set of check boxes to tell iPhoto whether to play slides at random, whether to repeat the show when all slides have been shown, and whether photos should be scaled to fill the screen. You can also decide what should appear with the slides, including titles, ratings, and controls. The controls are those we introduced you to in the “Photo Triage” section of this chapter. They’re used for controlling playback, as well as rotating, rating, or deleting images. Slideshows need not be silent. By default, iPhoto plays Minuet in G when you fire up a show, but you can choose a different tune with a little help from iTunes and your music library. Click the Music tab in the Slideshow settings. If you don’t want to include music in your slideshow, click to uncheck Play Music During Slideshow and skip the rest of this paragraph. To use music, either choose one of the items in Sample Music, or select an iTunes item (library or playlist) from the Source menu. Click a song to select it (see Figure 3.30), or don’t click a song to use the entire playlist as a soundtrack. To locate a particular song, type text in the Search field. To deselect a previously selected song, pick another one or „-click the original. When you have finished setting up the slideshow’s look and music, click Play to start it. If you want to preserve these settings for the current album, click Save Settings. Each album can have its own settings. To play the slideshow without a stop at the settings dialog, click the Play button in the Info section of the Source pane. You can control some aspects of the slideshow with the keyboard and mouse. To temporarily pause the slideshow on a particular slide, press the spacebar. Indicator arrows appear near the bottom of the screen (see Figure 3.31). Use the left and right arrows to

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move forward and back within the show. The up and down arrows change the show’s speed. Move the mouse to make the slideshow controls appear at the bottom of the screen. Clicking the mouse or pressing a key other than the spacebar or arrow keys ends the show.

Emailing Photos

Figure 3.31: The slideshow indicators appear when you use the keyboard to control the show.

Figure 3.32: This user’s default email program is Eudora, so iPhoto displays a Eudora icon in Organize view.

Email gives you another way to share photos. You may have sent pictures to friends or family by attaching them to mail messages, and you can certainly take that route with your iPhoto images. Or you could save a few steps by creating the email and attaching photos from within iPhoto. iPhoto uses the application you have selected as your default email program for this Mac. The Email icon in Organize view reflects this (see Figure 3.32). To use a different one, choose iPhoto → Preferences, and pick a program from the Mail Using Pop-up menu. You can choose from Apple Mail, Eudora, Microsoft Entourage, or America Online. Only the ones you actually have installed are available from the menu—others are dimmed. To send iPhoto images, be sure that you’re in Organize view and select one or more photos you want to send via email. Click the Email button. iPhoto tells you how many photos will be attached to the message, and the file size of the combined attachments, assuming that you send the photo at the default 640×480 pixel size. You can change the photos’ sizes to decrease the attachment’s size (makes the photos smaller) or increase its size (send higher-quality photos). When you pick a new item from the pop-up menu, iPhoto updates the photos’ estimated size (see Figure 3.33). Keep your recipients’ Internet connection in mind when sending photos. A 1MB attachment is a large mouthful for a dial-up user’s connection to swallow. Many ISPs restrict the size of email attachments to 3 or 4MB, even for those with fast connections. Click Compose. iPhoto makes copies of your photos at the resolution you have chosen, opens your email program, and attaches the photos to a new message. Address the message, replace the “great photos” subject line if you want, and type a message. Now you’re ready to send ‘er.

Web Pages and Slides with .Mac

Figure 3.33: You can choose the size of photos to be sent with an email message.

TIP Drag a photo from iPhoto to the Dock icon of your email program to open a new message and attach a 640×480 version of the photo to it.

Apple intends its .Mac Internet service to be an extension of Mac OS X. Many of its features are accessible directly from Apple applications, including iPhoto. You can use a .Mac account to place photos on the Internet for your friends and family to enjoy. Upload the images to a home page, or create a set of .Mac slides. Naturally, to use iPhoto’s .Mac features, you must have a .Mac account. Apple charges $99 per year for an account that includes an email account, 100MB of disk storage, access to a library of Apple and third-party software, and website hosting. Although .Mac is not for everyone, it is well integrated into OS X, offers nifty tools, and is worth exploring, especially if you’re interested in publishing a website or backing up your Mac files to a secure server. If you aren’t logged into .Mac or don’t have an account, clicking the HomePage or .Mac Slides button in iPhoto brings up a dialog box telling you that your .Mac information is unrecognized. You can either click .Mac Preferences to go to the .Mac system preferences pane, or click the Join Now button. Either way, you’ll be taken to the .Mac website. If you are opening an account, the web page contains a form to fill out, registering you for a free trial. If you’re already a .Mac subscriber, your .Mac web page opens. Sign up for or log in to .Mac, and we’ll meet you back here when you’re done. Once you’ve logged in to .Mac, you can go back to iPhoto and begin building your web page or slide gallery.

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Figure 3.34: The Publish HomePage window is a preview of your .Mac web page. You can edit the page title, a caption, and title/captions for each photo on the page.

Figure 3.35: Move photos around or hide them by disabling the Show check box.

HomePage. A .Mac home page can include any sort of web content you like, but the HomePage command creates pages that contain rows and columns of images from your photo albums. You’re limited to 48 images on a single iPhoto home page, and iPhoto will squawk if you try to add more. In Organize view, first locate the album containing the photos you want to upload to .Mac. Click the HomePage button. The Publish Home Page window opens, displaying the selected photos. The page’s title text is selected, allowing you to type a title for your page. Press Tab and type a description for the page. Pressing Tab again takes you to the title of the first photo, which you can change. In fact, you can type a multi-word caption if you like (see Figure 3.34). You can drag photos within the window to rearrange them. On the right side of the Publish Home Page window are several themes, each of which has its own background, fonts, borders, and other attributes. Click one to try it on for size, and then another. Below your page are a few display options. Your .Mac account is already selected, but you can switch to a different one from the Publish To Pop-up menu. You can change from three to two columns (makes your photos larger), and/or add an email link and counter to your page. The counter tells visitors how many visitors have viewed the page. Click Publish when you’re happy with the look of your page. iPhoto connects to .Mac and uploads your photos. When uploading is finished, iPhoto confirms that the page is ready, and provides a URL you can give to friends and

Chapter 3 iPhoto

Figure 3.36: Select an iPhoto album as your screensaver.

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family. You can see your page live by clicking Visit Page Now. In addition to your photos, the web page includes a Start Slideshow button. Click it to page through enlarged versions of the photos on the page. The .Mac website gives you tools for managing and editing your HomePage albums. Using iPhoto, you can add more groups of photos, just as you did the first one. Go to the .Mac website (www.mac.com) and log in. Next, click the HomePage link to see your photo albums. You can edit the same information about the album that you did when you created it in iPhoto. Click an album and then the Edit button. An editable version of the page appears. Update the page title or caption, move images around, or hide a photo by unchecking the Show check box (see Figure 3.35). When you have made all your changes to the page itself, click the Themes button and choose a new look for it. If you want to preview the page after choosing a new theme, click Edit and then click Preview. Finally, click Publish to update the album. You can use the .Mac website to rearrange and combine your albums in any way you like. You can even delete albums and build new ones with the photos you have already uploaded. Photos stored with your account count toward your included 100MB of .Mac storage space. Apple will be happy to sell you additional storage, however. .Mac Slides. A .Mac slideshow is a special gift from a Mac user (you) to other Mac users (those who have had the good sense to use Mac OS X, specifically). The basic idea is this: You upload photos that your Mac-using family or friends will like, and they subscribe to your slides, which then appear as a screensaver on their Macs. In Organize view, select the photos you want to turn into slides. Click the .Mac Slides button. iPhoto lets you in, assuming that you have a .Mac account and are logged in as described in the previous section, and then asks if you’re sure you know what you’re doing. (It doesn’t actually say that, but you get the idea.) Click Publish and iPhoto uploads your images. The dialog informing you that the slides have been uploaded comes complete with a button from which you can send an email announcing the slideshow. It’s a nice option, especially because the automated message includes step-by-step instructions for connecting to the slideshow. Make Your Own Screensaver or Desktop Photo. To make your own slideshow screensaver, first create an iPhoto album containing the photos you want to use. Open the Desktop & Screen Saver pane and then click the Screen Saver tab. Scroll down the list on the left and choose an album from the iPhoto section (see Figure 3.36). The first photo in the album appears in the sample pane. Set the other screensaver options and click OK. To use an iPhoto image as a desktop pattern, select it in Organize view and then click the Desktop button. For more fun with iPhoto on your desktop, open the Desktop & Screen Saver pane in System Preferences and choose Desktop this time. Click an iPhoto album to view its photos. Either choose one (the equivalent of clicking the Desktop button in iPhoto), or click the Change Picture check box and choose an interval. Your desktop picture updates accordingly.

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Burning CDs and DVDs

Figure 3.37: The library won’t fit on a single CD. Either manually select a group of photos that will fit on a disc, or create an album containing photos less than 650MB in total size.

Figure 3.38: Choose an iDVD theme and edit text, audio, and photos to build your DVD slideshow. Double-click on the name of the album you imported to work with your slides.

Once again, in the mold created by iTunes, Apple has endowed iPhoto with the capability to quickly turn files on your hard drive into CDs or DVDs. There are a few limitations to the feature, and you might need to work around them to burn discs for your PC-using friends. First we’ll show you how to quickly burn an iPhoto disc. Select the photos you want to burn to disc, or burn an album by selecting it. Notice the combined size of the photos in the Info area, below the Source pane (see Figure 3.37). A CD holds around 650MB, whereas a DVD holds about 4.7GB. If you have selected more photos than your disc can hold, you will need to complete the burn in multiple steps. Unlike iTunes, iPhoto won’t automatically burn multi-disc projects. Click the Burn button. iPhoto asks for a blank disc. Click OK when you have inserted it and then click the Burn button again. You now have one more opportunity to change your mind, confirm the burn, or set further options. Click Eject or Cancel, or click the triangle near the top of the dialog box to see more options. You can change the burn speed, or tell iPhoto whether to verify the disc after burning. In most cases, you won’t need to change these options. Once you’ve clicked Burn for the final time, iPhoto completes the task and ejects your finished disc. When an iPhoto disc is inserted into a Mac, iPhoto opens and the disc appears as an item in the Source pane. The photos are displayed under the film roll titles from your original iPhoto library. Choose View → Film Rolls to hide the display. Your recipient can now run a slideshow, print the images, and import them into her own library. PC-Friendly Discs. iPhoto’s Burn command creates an iPhoto disc that will open iPhoto when inserted in a Mac drive. Although iPhoto images open just fine on Windows machines when double-clicked, inserting an iPhoto disc will not invoke Windows automatic disc-handling features. Too, iPhoto’s file storage structure makes your pictures hard for PC users to view and locate. The best way to burn a disc everyone on your photo list can use is to export the photos first and then

Chapter 3 iPhoto

TIP Importing an album for which you have already saved slideshow settings in iPhoto will bring those settings (audio, timing, and transitions) into iDVD.

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burn the folder containing them to a disc using OS X’s built-in disc-burning feature, or a tool such as Roxio’s Toast. We describe exporting files in the “Exporting Photos” section of this chapter, which, as it happens, is coming up next. iDVD Slideshows. Here’s one more example of iPhoto’s integration with other iLife applications. Apple’s iDVD, included with all SuperDrive-equipped Macs and available as part of iLife ‘04, makes it possible for you to create DVDs that will play on a computer or on any DVD player connected to a television. With the iPhoto iDVD command, you can send photos to iDVD, from which you can burn a slideshow to DVD. To burn a disc in iDVD, you must have either an Apple SuperDrive, or a compatible third-party DVD recorder. You can create iDVD projects on any Mac with iDVD installed, however. In iPhoto, choose the photos or album for your DVD slideshow and then click the iDVD button. After a while (maybe a couple of minutes if you’re using lots of photos), iDVD opens. Click the Customize button to see a view of iDVD themes, and drag one into the main pane to select it. Because you imported images from iPhoto, your DVD already contains a slideshow (see Figure 3.38). Chapter 5, “iDVD,” describes using iDVD in detail. You’ll learn how to add audio, movies, and text to complete the project. You can also import more photos from your iPhoto library using the Media tab.

Exporting Photos

Figure 3.39: Choose a file format, size, and name information for photos you export from iPhoto.

Think of iPhoto’s exporting features as more generic (and often more useful) alternatives to some of the photosharing features we’ve described in previous sections. You can export files for sharing with PC users or burning to disc, export web pages to use on a non-Apple website, or make your own QuickTime slideshow, suitable for playback on Macs or PCs— any computer with the QuickTime player installed. Exporting Files. Because of iPhoto’s cryptic directory structure, you can’t simply find and copy photos from the iPhoto library to another location. You could try, but we suggest you take the much easier way, which offers the added benefit of being able to choose consistent file quality and sizes for the items you export. Select an album or group of photos and choose File → Export. Click the File Export tab (see Figure 3.39). Here you can choose the size, quality, and a few other attributes for the photos you’re about to export from iPhoto. To simply copy the files at the same quality at which they were imported, leave all settings unchanged. To change file formats, choose one from the Format popup menu. For web or email photos, use JPEG, and choose other options to shrink the photos. If you

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Figure 3.40: Type a name for your web page and choose size and color options.

TIP You can also export files by dragging them to the Finder. iPhoto copies the file with its original format and size. You can’t export albums this way.

Figure 3.41: When you double-click a QuickTime slideshow, it opens in QuickTime Player.

intend to print them, try TIFF, and don’t make any other changes that will decrease their quality. PNG is a PC format that is compatible with the Web and can be read on either Macs or Windows machines. Scaling images makes them easier to manage on the Web or in email, and also decreases the file size—a good thing if you have lots of photos to send or to burn to a CD. If you’re exporting to JPEG, you can click the Scale image no larger than button to work with width and height dimensions. Typing a number in either box changes the other dimension in proportion. Type 640 in the width box. iPhoto adds 480 in the height box. Scaling isn’t available for TIFF or PNG formats. Next, choose whether to use the photos’ filename, title, or album name to identify the exported versions. To use a filename extension (not necessary on the Mac, but required by other systems), leave the Use Extension check box enabled. Click Export and then navigate to a convenient location on your hard drive. Click Create New Folder to keep the exported images organized. Export Web Pages. The web page export feature combines file exporting with an HTML generator. The result is one or more HTML pages and a set of JPEG files that you can upload to any web server—no .Mac required. iPhoto creates both thumbnail and large versions of each image. When a visitor clicks on the thumbnail, the larger version opens. Choose File → Export and then click the Web Page tab (see Figure 3.40). Type a title for the page and choose the number of rows and columns per page of photos. iPhoto calculates how many pages will be needed. Next, you can choose a background color or an image to serve as background for the web page, and a contrasting text color. Choose dimensions for the thumbnail and large versions of each image, and use the check boxes to display each photo’s title and/or comments. Click Export and navigate to a convenient location. Be sure to create a new folder first, and don’t change its name, or the names of any of the new files, lest you break the links iPhoto has built for you. When the export is complete, switch to the Finder and open the folder where you exported the pages and photos. Double-click the HTML file to preview it in your web browser. Because the page is a standard HTML file, you can edit it in any text editor. If you know HTML, you can customize the appearance of this and all the other pages iPhoto created. When you are satisfied with your page, use an FTP client to upload the folder to your website. If your site is stored on your own Mac, copy the folder there. iPhoto gives the top-level page of your new folder the same name as the folder. When you upload the folder to the root level of a website whose domain you own, the URL for your photos looks like this: http://www.mydomain.com/Photos/photos.html. QuickTime Export. Apple’s QuickTime Player can show full-motion movies, but it’s also a great way to share an iPhoto slideshow. You can mail a QuickTime slideshow to anyone who has the QuickTime Player installed, including Windows users, display the movie on the Web, or burn it to a CD. Exporting photos into QuickTime is about as easy as it gets. If you want to use music with the movie, select or create an album, click Slideshow, and find the song you want to use. Open the Export dialog and click the QuickTime Export tab. Change the dimensions of the movie if you want. Changing one dimension does not adjust the other proportionally, so be sure to calculate a new value for the second dimension if you want the movie to remain proportional. Tell iPhoto how long to display each image, choose a background color or image, and leave the check box selected to add music to the movie. When you click Export, iPhoto asks you to name the movie. By default, it will be saved to the Movies folder in your home folder. Figure 3.41 shows a QuickTime movie containing a slideshow.

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Network Photo Sharing

Figure 3.42: Share your iPhoto albums.

TIP Using fewer photos per page will make each page load more quickly.

Figure 3.43: Shared albums appear in iPhoto just as other albums do. You can change your view, export, or burn a shared album to disc.

We return yet again to an iTunes comparison. Like its musical sibling, iPhoto makes it possible to share the contents of its library with other Mac users on a local network. The photos you share are “read only.” Those who view them can’t make any changes to the photos themselves, or change how they’re organized. Shared photos can be copied, emailed, or printed, however. You can share your entire library, but it’s a better idea to share albums, because less data has to travel the network when users connect to your Mac. If you want to share a lot of photos, share lots of albums that people can connect to individually, and encourage them to use them one or two at a time. To share your photos, choose iPhoto → Preferences and click the Sharing tab to see your options (see Figure 3.42). Click the Share My Photos check box to activate sharing. Click Share Selected Albums and choose those you want others to be able to see remotely. Give your library a new shared name and/or a password, if you like. From another Mac on your network, open iPhoto. Look for shared iPhoto albums in the Source pane (see Figure 3.43). If there aren’t any, choose iPhoto → Preferences and be sure that the Look For Shared Photos check box is enabled. Click a shared album in the Source pane to see its contents.

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PROJECT: Create a sure-to-embarrass book of photos from your fabulous dance party hat better proof that your party was a success than a printed gift book of photos? Using iPhoto’s Book view and Apple’s ordering service, we’re going to show you how to commemorate the mugging couples, the graceful dance moves, and even the slightly inebriated fellow who guarded the keg all evening.

W

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ORGANIZE PHOTOS: Create a new album of photos for your gift book. You can use an existing album, but it’s easier to isolate the images you plan to use for the book. Edit and/or crop the photos to make them look their best. In Organize view, place the photos in the order you would like them to appear in the book by dragging them. The first image in the album will be on the cover. To include it inside the book, too, press „-D to duplicate it and drag the duplicate approximately where it should show up in the book. You can make some photo order changes in Book view, but it is simpler to organize the album before you begin working on the book’s layout. If you plan to use photo titles in the book, choose View → Titles and make sure they’re all correct. To include comments in the book, select a photo and add or edit comments in the Info pane. When you’re done, click Order a Book. Start by organizing and editing an album.

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CHOOSE A THEME: To build a book, you must first choose one of the seven themes. Pick one from the Theme menu and notice how each one changes the arrangement and orientation of the photos. Some themes include photo titles, and others don’t. The Collage and Story Book themes include boxes for additional text. The rest do not. The screenshot on the left shows the Collage theme. To hide titles, comments and/or page numbers from themes that use them, disable the corresponding check boxes next to the Theme menu. These check boxes have no impact on themes that do not support text. The Collage Theme shows photos at angles, bleeding into one another.

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DESIGN PAGES: Themes specify the orientation of images, but you can choose how many photos appear on individual book pages. The available design options change based on the theme you are using, but all themes include a cover page, an introduction page, and as many inside pages as are needed to display all photos in the book. Clicking on a thumbnail selects the current design for that page. Cover pages have one photo and the title of the book (the same as the album’s title). Introduction layouts have no photos, just text. Collage has both. Besides cover and intro pages, each theme’s Page Design menu gives you options for placing one to eight photos on a page. Click the thumbnail for page 2 in your book. From the Page Design menu, choose Three to place three photos on the page.

Page 2 of a portfolio book looks like this with three photos.

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4

REARRANGE PHOTOS AND PAGES: If you like the design of a page, but not the photo placement, drag images over one another to switch them. To move a photo to a different page, go to Organize view and drag the photo between two others you want to appear on the page with it. In many page designs, some photos are larger than others. Moving them around will change which photo is displayed at a larger size, thus emphasizing it. To change page order, drag a thumbnail over the page you want to replace. The other pages shove over. Photos move with the page, so changing page position also reorders the images in the book and in Organize view, too. When you’re Drag photos around the happy with your changes, select a page and click Lock Page to page to rearrange them. prevent photos from being moved accidentally.

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ADD AND EDIT TEXT: You can create or edit text anywhere there’s a text box. In themes whose layouts allow titles and comments (Catalog, Classic, and Year Book do), you can edit these boxes, too. Introduction pages in most themes are blank, except for the name of the album and any text you add. To add text, click page 1 of your book with the Introduction design selected. Use the zoom slider to enlarge your view, and scroll to the text box containing the album title or the line below, which identifies the date and owner of the photos. Click in the text box to add text, or select it and type to replace it. To change text attributes, select text and Control-click to see the contextual menu. Show Fonts opens a character-level dialog box you can use to change text typeface, size, color, and weight. You can also check spelling from the menu. If you notice warning icons next to photo titles or comments, it means the text is too long and will be truncated when you print your book unless you edit the text. You can edit and style text from the Fonts dialog box.

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PREVIEW THE BOOK AND ITS PAGES: When you’re satisfied with the placement of photos, pages, and text, double-click a page thumbnail or click the Preview button to see the entire book. You can edit text or move photos (on the same page) in Preview mode, but you can’t zoom in or change text styles. Left and right arrows take you from page to page, or you can type a page number in the box between the arrows. (You won’t be able to move photos from a locked page.)

Double-click a thumbnail to preview the page.

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PROJECT: (continued)

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PRINT A DRAFT: The minimum price for the bound hardcover photo books Apple sells is $29.99 ($3 per page), so it’s a good idea to print a draft version on a color printer before placing an order. You can check for text errors and make sure that your photos are arranged, cropped, and edited the way you would like them to be. Choose File → Print. To adjust printer options, especially to get the best-looking pages from your color inkjet printer, click Advanced and choose output options that maximize quality. To print a really, really rough draft, just use the default or high-speed settings. When you’re happy with your print settings, click Print.

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The price of your book is based on the number of pages.

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Print a draft of your book.

ORDER BOOKS: Once your book looks exactly the way you want it to, you can order books immediately or wait a while. As long as you don’t change anything about the photos in the album your book is built on, the final product will look like the draft print you have made, only a whole lot nicer. Either click Order Book in Book view, or return to Organize view now or later and click Order Book. iPhoto prepares your book, warning you if there are any low-resolution photos or text blocks that are too large. (Did you miss a warning icon?) A book must be at least 10 pages long. If yours is shorter, iPhoto warns you about that, too. If you already have an Apple account with 1-click ordering enabled, the order screen will be ready and waiting for you, complete with the cost of each book. Just choose one of four cover colors from the pop-up and enter the number of books you want in the Quantity field. If you haven’t set up an account, iPhoto takes you through the process before you can place your order.

MAKE A PDF BOOK: Perhaps the price of your book gave you the shivers, and put you off ordering one for the 30 people who attended your party (even with the 10% discount for orders of 30 or more.) If you’ve retreated to a more modest couple of books, why not send PDF versions around to your other guests? In Book view, choose File → Print and then click Save As PDF. Name and save the file where you like. Double-click it to have a look (it will probably open in the Preview application) and then email it to those for Save your book as a PDF file. whom love does have a price.

Chapter 4

iMovie Tourists, proud parents, and sports fans have been schlepping camcorders around for years, capturing the big moments in their lives and playing them back on the VCR at home. But most people who take videos don’t have much control of the final product, and no way other than the fast-forward button to pass over the junky or boring stuff. Besides, videotape won’t last forever, and making copies of your twins’ birthday party is a whole lot of work. What we’re sayin’ here is simple. Point-and-shoot moviemaking is fine, but you can do better. You’re only limited by your own time and creativity. Most video software is expensive and hard to use, and often requires expensive hardware to capture and work with video. With a G4- or G5-based Mac and a digital video camera, you can import and edit movies—no sweat, and no expensive accessories to buy. After a little cutting and pasting in the easy-to-use iMovie timeline, you can add some razzle-dazzle with titles and effects. When you’re happy with your movie, burn it to a DVD or put it on the Web. Your adoring public will be amazed at your cinematic genius. Can your three-picture deal be far behind? In this chapter, we’ll walk you through all the phases of iMovie-making, from importing footage and editing video clips to adding transitions and effects, creating titles, and adding a soundtrack. When it’s all done, you’ll learn lots of ways to share your masterpiece. Capture and edit video with iMovie.

Turn your Mac into a video studio, and transform camcorder footage into a movie people will want to watch

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MONITOR

iMovie quick start

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SCRUBBER BAR

PLAYHEAD

TRANSPORT CONTROLS

TIMELINE VIEWER BUTTON

CAMERA/EDIT SWITCH TRANSITION

CLIP VIEWER

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CLIPS PANE

OPTIONS PANE BUTTONS

PLAYBACK VOLUME

Lights, Camera, Action!

PROJECT TRASH

FREE DISK SPACE

The prodigious knobs, levers, and unfamiliar controls associated with highend editing systems are replaced in iMovie by a compact editing environment and drag-and-drop clip sequencing.

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Getting Ready to Build a Masterpiece To use iMovie, you need to be able to bring video footage into your Mac, and you need the disk space to store that footage. iMovie works directly with lots of digital video (DV) cameras, connecting to your Mac via FireWire. You can control the camera from iMovie, and record footage from DV tape onto your hard drive. Because raw video footage consumes about 225MB per minute of footage (15GB per hour), you’ll need lots of hard drive space. If you don’t have space to spare, add an internal hard drive to your G4 or G5 PowerMac, or connect an external drive to any FireWireequipped Mac. Apple maintains a list of iMovie-compatible video cameras at www.apple.com/macosx/ upgrade/devices.html. In general, a camera must have a FireWire port. (Some vendors use the term IEEE 1394, and Sony calls it i-Link.) You may also want a camera that supports audio/visual pass-through, which lets you convert analog video to digital. Pass-through allows you to daisychain your DV camera to a VHS or 8mm analog camera or VCR and then to your Mac. With this setup, you can copy footage from the old tapes to iMovie using the DV camera as the middleman. See the “Make Old Movies New” sidebar for all the dope on how this works.

Projects

Figure 4.1: iMovie stores the components of your project in the Media folder and leaves a project file and a QuickTime version of your movie in the top-level folder.

In iMovie, you always work within a project. The video clips, audio, titles, and effects that form your movie are stored in a single folder, and managed by a project file. When you launch iMovie, it opens the project file you were working on last time. You can choose to open a different project or create a new one. If you have never launched iMovie, you will be asked to open a project or to create a new one. iMovie projects are usually stored in the Movies folder of your home directory, but you can create or move them anywhere, including that large external hard drive you bought to hold your multi-gigabyte movies. Figure 4.1 shows iMovie’s file structure. Always make sure you copy the top-level folder for your project and all of its files and subfolders. As you work with video in iMovie, you will typically delete video clips or edit footage that’s within them. This footage is moved to the project trash and isn’t deleted from your project until you empty the trash. The stuff in the trash can be restored with iMovie’s multiple Undo commands (we’ll use them later, in the “Working with Clips” section of this chapter) or the Restore command, which returns a clip you’ve been working on in the Timeline to its original condition. We mention the trash here to remind you that clips and footage in the trash add to the size of your iMovie project. When you’re sure you don’t need the contents of the project trash, click the trash icon and then click OK in the warning dialog to empty it.

Connecting Your Camera After you have shot some video with a DV camera, you’re ready to begin using iMovie. The instructions for your camera will probably offer some alleged help connecting it to a computer (as written by non-English speakers, no doubt), but here’s a quick iMovie-friendly primer:

Chapter 4 iMovie

Figure 4.2: Click the left side of the Camera/Edit switch.

TIP Avoid clicking in the Clips pane while in Camera mode, as this causes iMovie to switch to edit mode and stop importing footage.

Figure 4.3: Use iMovie’s controls to operate your camera, and press Import to bring footage into your Mac.

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1. Connect your camera to your Mac via FireWire. If the camera did not come with a FireWire cable (many include only USB), you will need to buy a 4-pin to 6-pin FireWire cable. 2. Insert the tape containing your footage into the camera, rewind it if necessary, and set the camera to Play mode (often called VTR mode). 3. Launch iMovie. If you have used iMovie before, the last project you worked on opens. You can add to it, or begin a new project by choosing File → New Project and naming it. If you haven’t used iMovie, go ahead and create a new project when you’re asked whether you want to open an existing project or create a new one. 4. If it isn’t already displayed, click the left side of the Camera/Edit button to move the switch to the Camera position (see Figure 4.2). 5. Now you can control the camera with iMovie. (Rewind, Fast Forward, and Stop buttons have now joined Play.) Click Play to see your video footage. Find the spot on the tape where you want to begin importing video. You can bring in all of the footage, or pick and choose segments. As you will learn very soon, you can edit and trim the footage later with iMovie’s editing tools. 6. Click Import (or press the spacebar). iMovie displays the footage as it is imported. Click Import again (or press the spacebar) to stop importing.

Some Notes About Importing Footage The basic unit of measure in iMovie for video footage is the clip. A clip is a contiguous segment of video, and iMovie starts creating one the first time you press Import. Each clip you import appears in the iMovie Clips pane. Stopping and restarting your import creates new clips. iMovie also starts a new clip when it detects a pause or stop on the original tape. (You can override this setting by unchecking Automatically Start New Clip at Scene Break in iMovie’s Preferences window.) Long video segments are broken into shorter clips. iMovie can create a 2GB clip file (9 minutes, 28 seconds)—any longer than that, and iMovie starts a new clip without dropping any frames. Finally, we’ve noticed that iMovie sometimes stops importing video when it detects long or ugly breaks in your taped footage. This is because iMovie is smart enough to stop importing when your recording ends, and it’s sometimes fooled by bad cuts. If your tape includes irregular breaks, watch iMovie’s progress and restart the import (at the beginning of the footage you want to keep together, not the whole tape) if necessary. Figure 4.3 shows an import in progress.

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Make Old Movies New Convert VHS or 8mm tapes for iMovie

The Canopus ADVC300PRO video converter has inputs and outputs for analog video sources and your Mac.

After a couple of hours with iMovie, you might begin to think about how cool it would be to bring those old analog VHS or 8mm movies you shot several years ago into your Mac. It’s easier than you think. And if you already have a DV camera that supports analog-to-digital conversion, it won’t cost you anything. If you don’t have a DV camera and are reading this chapter only to see what you’re missing, take heart. You can convert those old movies to digital format and use iMovie to edit them. Many DV camcorders have a feature called analog pass-through, or analog conversion. Pass-through lets you connect a VHS or 8mm VCR or camera to the DV camera,

which is in turn connected to your Mac. The DV camera doesn’t record the old footage; it merely converts analog signals to digital so that iMovie can record them. To make a conversion, connect the analog device’s video output to the DV camera’s RCA (composite) or S-Video input. (You’ll also need to make audio connections between the two devices.) Set the DV camera to A/V and be sure

there’s no tape in the DV camera. Your DV camera should be connected to your Mac via FireWire. (Check your camera’s documentation for specific instructions.) When you play the analog video, it appears on your DV camera’s LCD display. Launch iMovie and switch to Camera mode to see the video, and then click Import. If you have a DV camera that doesn’t support pass-through, you can copy the old footage to a DV tape and then import it into iMovie, unless footage is selected. No DV camera? You’re still waiting to find out how to bring analog camcorder footage into iMovie? Good news: It can be done. For $200–$500, you can buy a converter box with connectors for your camera or VCR, and a FireWire port for your Mac. Datavideo’s DAC-100 (www.synchrotech.com, $200) and the Formac Studio TVR (www.formac.com, $300) are a couple of the less expensive options. For $549, you can step up to the Canopus ADVC300PRO (www.canopus.com). We hesitate to mention this last option, which is kinda like using a 24-track studio to record your kid’s first words, but if you have a PowerMac with an open PCI slot, you can add a video capture card ($1,000 and up and up), with S-Video inputs for your old equipment. As you can tell by the price, this isn’t a cheap alternative, and getting a DV camera will probably be more cost-effective, although less elegant, if you need to convert lots of movies. Video capture cards are intended for pros working with uncompressed video and high-end editing software.

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Working with Clips

TIP Rewind or fast-forward through a clip from the keyboard. Option-[ goes back and Option-] moves forward.

Figure 4.4: Drag along the Scrubber bar to select a portion of a clip.

With a group of clips in the Clips pane, you’re ready to choose the ones you want to use and edit them. When you’re ready to assemble a movie, you will move clips from the Clips pane to the timeline. You can edit clips on the timeline, or make your changes while the clip is still comfortably situated in the Clips pane. We recommend you edit in the Clips pane. For one thing, you’ll always know which clips have been edited, and which still await your delicate touch. First take a look at the Clips pane. Notice that each clip’s length is displayed above it. Click on the clip, and the first frame of the clip appears in the Monitor. Press „-I. The Info dialog shows the clip’s size and length. You can rename the clip, making it easier to identify it as you work. To begin an editing session, select the clip you want to work with and click Play to view it. The playhead advances along the Scrubber bar below the Monitor. Click the Back/Rewind button to return to the beginning. Take a look at the bar below the Monitor. The triangular playhead shows your current location within the clip. Drag it left or right to move to a different part of the clip, or just play the clip and watch the playhead move through it. Below the playhead is the Scrubber bar—the area with tick marks. Although it doesn’t look it, the Scrubber bar area is “live.” Clicking and dragging along the line of marks selects a segment of the clip: little triangles called crop markers appear at the beginning and end of the area you select (see Figure 4.4). To edit your clip, you will select part of it and use the standard Mac editing commands (Cut, Copy, Paste, and Clear), as well as Crop, which we describe later in this section, and which you use to remove footage that’s outside your selection. By the way, the crop markers appear at the beginning of the Scrubber bar whenever your mouse hovers on the bar. They disappear when you move the mouse away from the bar. To see how clip editing works, click on a tick mark and drag to the right. The area between the two crop markers turns yellow—it is selected. Click on the left triangle and notice that the Monitor displays that frame of the clip. You can drag the triangle to include more or less in the selection. When the triangle is selected, pressing the left or right arrow key adds or removes one frame from the selection, and moves your clips display, too. Pressing Shift and an arrow key moves the display 10 frames in the direction of the arrow key. This feature is extremely useful for finding the precise spot in a clip where you want to begin a cut. Note as you move the triangle that the time/frame display shows precisely where you are in the clip. There are three kinds of clip editing you can do in the Clips pane or the Timeline: trimming, cropping, and splitting. A fourth technique, direct trimming, is done in the timeline’s Timeline viewer. Let’s have a look at each.

Trimming a Clip

TIP Despite their confusing name, the selection triangles that Apple calls crop markers are used with all of the clip editing techniques you will learn in this chapter, not just cropping.

Trimming a clip involves cutting out footage you don’t want, either from one end, or from the middle of the clip. Like text in a word processor, sections of video footage can be cut or copied precisely; frame-by-frame, if necessary. Follow these steps to cut footage from a clip: 1. Drag the playhead along the Scrubber bar, or play the clip until you reach the beginning of the footage you want to delete. 2. To position the cursor precisely in the frame where you want to begin your edit, use the left and right arrow keys to move frame-by-frame (or press Shift-arrow to move 10 frames at a time). 3. Drag to the right along the tick marks (below the playhead) to the end of the section you want to cut. Crop markers appear on each end of the selection as you drag.

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TIP Another way to select footage is to first place the playhead where you want the selection to start and then Shift-click on the Scrubber bar where the selection should end. Drag one or both crop markers to fine-tune the selection.

4. To fine-tune the endpoint of the selection you want to delete, click on the crop marker at the right end of the selection and either drag it or use the arrow/Shift-arrow to be sure that you have selected the exact section of the clip to be deleted. (To tune up the beginning of the selection, click the left crop marker and use the arrow keys in the same way.) 5. Control-click on a tick mark bar between the crop markers and choose Cut (or choose Cut from the Edit menu). The footage is removed and placed on the iMovie clipboard and in the project trash. You can also use the Clear command (Control-click or use the Edit menu) to remove footage without a stop at the clipboard or trash. You will not be able to undo the deletion if you use this technique, however.

Cropping Think of cropping as the reverse of trimming a clip. When you place crop markers around footage and use the Crop command, iMovie deletes everything outside of the selection, leaving the tasty filling. Trimming, as you’ve already seen, deletes the selected section of the clip. To crop a clip, locate the footage you want to keep, and select it using any of the methods described earlier. Remember that you can use the arrow keys to place the crop markers precisely, after you have made your initial selection. Control-click within the selection and choose Crop (or choose Edit → Crop). The frames of your clip that are outside the selection move to the project trash, leaving you with the middle of the clip.

Splitting

Figure 4.5: The two halves of a split clip appear in the Clips pane. The name of the new clip reflects the split.

Splitting a clip simply divides the current clip into two clips, each of which then appears in the Clips pane, ready to be edited further or added to the timeline. You might want to split a clip in two to create a transition between the two parts of it, or to separate a finished section from one you’re still editing. Add the finished section to your movie and continue working on the second part. You might also use clip splitting to reorganize footage. Place the second part of a split clip before the first part, or adjacent to another clip in your movie. To split a clip, select it and locate the spot where you want to break the clip in two. Control-click on the Scrubber bar, or choose Edit → Split Clip at Playhead. Your selected clip is replaced in the Clips pane by the two shorter clips (see Figure 4.5).

Direct Trimming

Figure 4.6: In the Timeline viewer, drag the beginning of a clip to shorten it. iMovie creates empty space in the trimmed area.

Direct trimming is what’s called a nondestructive editing technique. Instead of trashing footage you don’t want, direct trimming allows you to hide it, so that it doesn’t appear in your movie but is always available. If you change your mind about the edit you’ve made, you can restore your view of the footage. To use direct trimming, you need to be working in the Timeline viewer. Drag a clip from the Clips pane to the Timeline. Click the Timeline viewer button (with the clock icon) above the Timeline. To trim the clip, move to one end of it and then click and drag with the direct trimming pointer to lengthen or shorten the clip (see Figure 4.6). Lengthening a clip “overwrites” the adjacent clip, displaying the new material instead of the covered part of the second clip. Shortening a clip hides the footage you’ve trimmed and inserts empty space, referred to as a black clip. Although you can’t manipulate the black clips in the Timeline viewer, they appear and can be selected in the Clip viewer. You can change the length or color of a black clip, and even use it as a background for text.

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To get trimmed footage back, lengthen the clip in the same way you shortened it in the Timeline viewer. You can identify a trimmed clip in the timeline by its edges, which are straight. Uncut clips have rounded edges. You can also get a clip back to its original condition by Control-clicking it and choosing Restore Clip.

Moving Clips to the Timeline We gave you a hint of the next step in your iMovie adventure when we described working with direct trimming and the timeline. It’s the timeline where the clips and other elements (titles, sound, effects, transitions) all come together to become an actual movie, and where you can calculate how long your production will be. Let’s start by moving video clips to the timeline and organizing them in the order you want them to appear. With the Clip viewer visible (click the Clip viewer button above the timeline), drag two clips from the Clips pane onto the timeline. Notice that the length and date of the selected clips appear above the timeline. If both are selected (click one and then Shift-click the second), the display above the timeline shows the clips’ combined length. You can drag the clips around the timeline, changing their order. When you drag one over another, it moves over to make room for the new one. Although you can add clips to either view, it’s usually easiest to add and rearrange clips in the Clip viewer. The usual Macintosh editing commands work with clips, too. You can cut, copy, or paste clips within and between the timeline and Clips areas. Now click the Timeline viewer button (or press „-E, which toggles the Clip and Timeline viewers). A “ruler” displays the time consumed by your movie. Like the Scrubber bar, there’s a playhead you can use to move through the movie. Because your movie currently consists only of video clips, the Timeline viewer has one track—the Movie track. Later, we’ll add sound, which will add audio tracks to the Timeline viewer. To play the entire movie in either timeline view, select all the clips (Edit → Select All) and then click Play or press the spacebar. You can play a portion of the movie by selecting groups of clips. You can select adjacent clips (click the first clip and then Shift-click the adjacent clip), or see how two nonadjacent clips would look together (click the first clip and then „-click one or more additional clips). When you have selected several clips, press the spacebar to play them. If you like what you see, drag the clips together.

Adding Transitions, Effects, and Titles Now the fun begins—it’s time to add a little spice to your movie by creating transitions between scenes, adding video effects that will have your viewers proclaiming your cinematic genius, and titles that tell them who’s in the movie. iMovie provides a bunch of transitions, effects, and titles for you to choose from, and supports plug-ins that make it possible to add even more transitions, effects, and title schemes. We begin with transitions because they’re both simple to add and very cool to look at. If you plan to use both video effects and transitions in a movie, begin with the effects, because you will not be able to apply an effect to a clip that already has a transition at either end of the clip. You can, however, add a transition to an effected clip.

Transitions Transitions occur between clips, or at the beginning or end of a movie. A transition can be as simple as a fade or as eye-popping as a cube that spins the image around as the clips change. iMovie

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Figure 4.7: The Preview monitor shows a circle opening transition from a Christmas tree to a very happy little girl awaiting her presents.

Figure 4.8: The transition box appears between two clips.

supplies a selection of fades, wipes, twirls, and other fun ways to dazzle your audience. Once you choose and add a transition, you can specify its speed and direction. A few also have additional settings. Some transitions overlap their two connected clips by a few seconds, obscuring a few frames of each, so you’ll want to time transitions and trim the beginnings and ends of clips carefully to fit the transitions you choose. You can add transitions in either the Clip viewer or the Timeline viewer, but it’s usually easier to work with them in the Clip viewer because transitions can easily be located and selected. In either timeline view, choose a pair of adjacent clips for your transition, or drag two clips that you want to add a transition to into position next to each other in the timeline. Shift-click to select both clips and then click the Trans button below the Clips pane. iMovie’s transition options appear. Click a transition and watch the Preview monitor to see how it looks (see Figure 4.7). iMovie generates the preview based on the currently selected clips. Use the Speed slider to change the length of the transition if necessary and preview again. If you choose the Push transition, you can also choose the direction (up, down, left, or right) by clicking one of the arrows in the Transitions pane. When you like the looks of the transition, drag its name from the Transitions pane to the timeline, letting go of the mouse between the two clips you want to transition. iMovie applies (renders) the transition. Rendering may take a few seconds or more if it’s a long transition, or if you’re working on a slow Mac. You’ll see a red bar in the timeline while it’s being rendered, and then a small square indicating the finished transition between the clips (see Figure 4.8). To apply a new transition with the same setting you used for the first one between a different pair of clips, either drag the transition from the Trans pane while the first instance is still selected, or click on that initial transition to see its settings and then drag from the Trans pane to a place between a different pair of clips. To view the clips and their new transition, select all three items in the timeline and press the spacebar. To change the transition, click it in the timeline and then click the Trans button if necessary (if iMovie doesn’t switch to the Transition pane for you). Make adjustments in the Transitions pane and then click Update. If you apply a transition to a particularly short clip, iMovie might not be able to apply it, and will politely report the error to you. This happens because the transition needs to be able to grab enough footage to stretch the transition over the amount of time you’ve specified. If you get this error when you try to play a transition, don’t panic. Choose to have iMovie adjust the speed setting automatically, or click OK and use the Speed slider in the Transitions pane to speed up the transition. Then try again. To apply the same transition to several clips, select them and then create the transition. When you click Apply, iMovie renders it. This might take awhile. Before we leave the subject of transitions, you should know that there are plenty more available besides those you see in the Transitions pane. iMovie plug-in developers have created all kinds of really cool transitions that you can read about in the “Get More Transitions” Infobox. For details about how to install new transitions, see the “Pile on the PlugIns” section in this chapter.

Video Effects iMovie includes 19 video effects, ranging from those that change the look of the image, like Soft Focus and Sharpen, to those that change its very size and movement, like Letterbox and

Chapter 4 iMovie

Figure 4.9: Applying the earthquake effect accentuates the terror as Frank feeds a buffalo from his car in the wildlife park.

INFOBOX Get More Transitions Several companies make transitions you can install for use with iMovie. GeeThree Slick Plug-ins range in price from $30–$70. Download a free sampler, or buy one of six volumes of transitions and effects. B www.geethree.com

Transitions are among the many effects in Virtix’ six plug-in packages. Get ‘em for $39.95 each. B www.virtix.com/imovie

BKMS offers cubes, flips, wipes, and a lot of other clever transitions, available individually ($12–$20) or in bundles (from $32). B http://plugins.bkms.com

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Earthquake. Video effects can be applied to a single clip, several clips at once, or portions of clips. You can also apply multiple effects to the same clips. Here’s where you get to show your movie viewers how exciting your vacation footage can be, and what a special effects genius you are. Video effects are very powerful, and often take a long time to render. It’s a good idea to edit all your footage and empty the project trash before you begin working with video effects, so that you’ll have a baseline movie to go back to. If you empty the trash after creating an effect, you won’t be able to undo the effect, or to use the Restore Clip command. To add an effect, locate the footage you want to alter and select it. You can work in the Clip viewer or Timeline viewer. To add an effect to a clip, select a clip and then click the Effects button. Remember that the clip you select cannot have a transition attached to it. If you want to use both a transition and an effect, apply the effect first. To add an effect to a portion of a clip, select the clip and then select the section you want to add the effect to with the crop markers, just as you did when editing clips earlier in this chapter. Click an effect from the list to view a preview of it in the Effect monitor. Use the Effect In and Effect Out sliders to tell iMovie whether to add the effect all at once or gradually, and how to end it. Each effect has its own controls below the Effects list. When you use these controls, the Effects monitor gives you a preview of the changes you’ve made. When you’re happy with the effect, click Apply. iMovie renders the effect, which will take some time, and places an effect icon on the top of the clip. If you applied an effect to a portion of the clip, iMovie splits the clip at the point where the effect ends, leaving one clip that has the effect and one that doesn’t (see Figure 4.9). You can apply the same effect to multiple clips by selecting them all and then applying the effect, or you can apply the effect to a selection that includes parts of several clips. To add an effect to footage that is spread out over multiple clips, first select all of the clips to which you want to add an effect. Use the crop markers on the Scrubber bar to mark the section to which you want to apply the effect. In the Effects pane, choose and edit your effect and click Apply. To edit an effect after you’ve created it, select the clip containing it and then Control-click and choose Edit Effect Settings. Click Apply to re-render the edited effect. Remove the effect by Controlclicking and choosing Restore Clip. Note that you can’t delete effects from multiple clips at once. You must select each clip individually and then use the Restore Clip command.

Pile on the Plug-Ins If you’ve read the sidebars in this chapter, you know that there are lots and lots of iMovie plug-ins available to put more transitions and effects at your disposal. Here’s where you learn how to install or remove them. Many plug-in packages include installers that put plug-ins just where they need to be, automatically. To add a plug-in that doesn’t, first quit iMovie and then go to the Finder and locate the folder containing the plug-in. Open /Users/username/Library/iMovie/Plug-ins and copy the plug-in file there. When you open iMovie’s Effects or Trans pane (depending on the type of plug-in you’ve added) the new item appears.

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Figure 4.10: When you preview a title, it can appear on a black background as it does here, or over a selected clip.

INFOBOX Maximum Effect A dazzling array of video effects is available from plugin vendors. GeeThree Slick Plug-ins range in price from $30–$70. Download a free sampler, or buy one of six volumes of effects and transitions. B www.geethree.com

Stupendous Software’s ($25 per package) array of effects is nothing short of dizzying. They’ve got crops, zooms, enhanced titles, masks, and scratch and dirt removers. B www.stupendoussoftware.com

Think of eZedia’s plug-ins ($30–$50) as video overdubbing. Create picture-in-picture effects with QuickTime movies, images, or text. B www.ezedia.com/ products/eZedia_plug-ins

Virtix makes groovy title, effect, and transition effects in six $35 packages. B www.virtix.com/imovie

Color enhancement plug-ins and iMovie discussion forums. B http://film.arts. geckotribe.com/iMovie

ImageIP’s plug-ins help you add art and color to your movies. B www.imageip.com

cf/x offers a wide range of plug-ins, available individually for as little as, well, free, and as much as $3.50. Beat that if you can! B www.imovieplugins.com

Titles You can use text at any point in your movie, such as creating credits over video or a black screen, or providing captions or other text within the body of the movie. You can also create chapter markers as you build a movie that will eventually be burned to DVD (more on that in Chapter 5, “iDVD”). Like transitions and effects, titles come in all sizes—and shapes, for that matter. To add text, you first style and create it and then add it to the timeline. Click the Titles button to see text options. Some entries actually contain groups of titles. Clicking on the group heading opens it to reveal individual styles. Pick a title style from the list and observe the preview. Enter text in the title and byline fields (at the bottom of the Titles pane) and click Preview. Your text, in the style you specified, appears on the movie monitor (see Figure 4.10). Change the Speed and Pause sliders if you like, or choose a different direction with the arrows below the Preview button. Some title styles have other options—Bounce Across has a wave slider, for example. Choose a font, color, and size from settings below the title style list. Finally, leave Over Black selected, or choose QT margins if you plan to place type over video. When your titles look the way you want them to, drag the title style to the timeline, placing it to the left of the clip your title should precede.

Sound and Music Like any good video editing system, iMovie gives you lots of ways to add audio to your movie. You can lay down an audio track using music from iTunes, or import it from a variety of music formats. If you want to create your own soundtrack, learn all about GarageBand in Chapter 2, p. 31, so you can export your composition to iTunes and bring it into iMovie. You can also record narration or other audio, or even reuse audio snippets that were recorded with your video footage. In this section, we’ll be using the Timeline viewer extensively. Although the Timeline viewer is optional when you’re working with video, it’s where the action is for audio work because it’s the only view where you can see and use audio tracks. You’ll be adding sound to iMovie’s audio tracks, matching it to footage on the timeline where your clips appear. If the Timeline viewer isn’t visible, press „-E, or click the Timeline viewer button. On the right edge of the timeline are three check boxes that activate the audio track for your video footage, as well as two additional audio tracks we’ll be using now (see Figure 4.11) to add music and narration. Unchecking the box next to any of the three tracks will mute that audio track. If, for example, you uncheck the box next to the movie track, your video will play without the audio it was recorded with—allowing you to hear how your new audio track will sound with the movie when you have imported it. To add new audio, find the spot in the movie where you want the track to begin. Move the playhead there. You can start anywhere—at the beginning of a clip, or within one. Click the Audio button below the Clips pane to see your audio options. We’ll go through each one and then give you some tips for working with audio tracks in the timeline.

Import from iTunes If you already have an iTunes library created, it appears when you open the Audio pane. Otherwise, the Audio pane is empty. Click any track and then click the Play button to hear it (stop

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playback by clicking Play again). To find a track, type text into the Search field, or choose a specific playlist from the menu at the top of the Audio pane. Add the track to your movie by dragging it onto the Timeline viewer, or click Place at Playhead. iMovie takes a few seconds to import the song, which appears on one of the audio tracks in the timeline.

Import from a CD Figure 4.11: When the top box is checked, the audio associated with your video clips plays with the movie. The lower boxes control playback of the separate audio tracks.

You might not have an iTunes library on your Mac, or you might simply want to add some audio that you haven’t yet imported into iTunes. iMovie lets you import tracks directly from an audio CD. First find an audio CD containing a track you want to use with your movie and insert it. If iMovie’s Audio pane is already open, it switches to show the tracks on your disc. If your Mac is set to open iTunes when a CD is inserted, that will happen, too. To avoid iTunes’ friendly competition, better switch over to make sure that the CD isn’t being imported into your music library. Your Mac may be able to handle simultaneous importing, but it will certainly slow down your work in iMovie. Just quit iTunes, or stop the import if one is in progress. If the CD you want is already in your drive, go to the iMovie Audio pane, click the menu at the top, and then choose Audio CD. Select a track and click Place at Playhead, or drag a track to the timeline (see Figure 4.12). You’re probably wondering about our advice regarding iTunes and CD tracks in your movies. Is it legal? Will the RIAA swoop down on your family reunion and impound the Christmas video? The answer is almost certainly no. Using music you own in a movie that you don’t intend to sell is not likely to earn you a criminal record. Besides, if you’re an Apple Music Store customer, Apple wants you to know that the songs in your iTunes library integrate great with iMovie.

Import Sound Effects

Figure 4.12: Drag a song or a sound effect into one of the timeline’s audio tracks. You can add audio anywhere on either track. When you use Place at Playhead, iMovie adds the audio to the lower track.

iMovie supplies a small set of sound effects, each a few seconds in length. To use one, choose iMovie Sound Effects from the menu at the top of the Audio pane, open the Standard sound effect set, and choose one. Drag or place (click the Place at Playhead button) the effect on the timeline. If you drag, you will only be able to add the sound effect to one of the two audio tracks, not the Movie track. Just like iMovie plug-ins for video effects and transitions, sound effects can be added to iMovie. Apple supplies a few more sounds you can download from www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/audio_ effects.html, and .Mac users have access to even more from Skywalker Sound. As you’ll learn on Apple’s page, Audiodish and The Hollywood Edge both sell collections of sounds for iMovie. To add an effect or group of effects, quit iMovie and drag a folder or an effect into /Users/username/ Library/iMovie/Sound Effects. When you return to iMovie, the new effect will appear.

Narrating Your Movie The clever quips you came up with behind the camera while shooting your video footage may be in the trash, victims of your editing and reorganization work. Perhaps you want to provide a more

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Figure 4.13: The Sound pane of System Preferences shows microphones built into or attached to your Mac.

TIP Because iTunes tracks can be several minutes in length, it’s easier to get a sense of how much of your movie a song will cover if you zoom all the way out in the Timeline viewer. This also makes it easier to move an iTunes track by dragging it.

Figure 4.14: The timeline, zoomed out as far as possible, shows several bits of narration.

Figure 4.15: Use waveforms to examine sound patterns in an audio track.

formal and personal soundtrack than iTunes provides? If your Mac has a microphone, or if you have a compatible external mic, you can record an audio track within iMovie. If your Mac has a microphone, you will probably see the audio display rising and falling because of the ambient noise occurring in the vicinity of your Mac. To verify that your Mac has a microphone, open the Sound pane of System Preferences and click the Input tab. Available mics are displayed there (see Figure 4.13). If your Mac doesn’t have a mic, consider a USB mic. Griffin Technologies’ iMic (www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic/, $39.99) is an adapter that allows a microphone to work with your Mac. You’ll need an external mic to record with the iMic. To record audio “live” as the movie runs, move the playhead to the beginning of the timeline (not the Monitor), but don’t begin the movie yet. If it isn’t already unchecked, click the audio check box to the right of the video track so that its audio won’t distract you while you record a new voice track. In the Audio pane, click the red Record button (to the right of the microphone display) and press the spacebar immediately to play the movie. When you’re done speaking, click the Record button again to stop the recording. The voiceover appears in the upper audio track. You can record multiple chunks of narration by stopping and starting the movie, recording a new piece of voice audio for each section. Your tracks appear along the timeline where you recorded them (see Figure 4.14). Like video clips, audio clips can be renamed. When you drag a song or an effect into the timeline, its name travels with it. To name a voiceover file, double-click it and type a new name. Notice that the file size and the clip’s length also appear in the dialog box.

Editing Audio Clips Like video clips, audio clips can be manipulated on the timeline. You can adjust their volume and even extract all or part of their contents, either to get rid of excess material or to use elsewhere. Add an audio track of any kind to your timeline and take a look at it. A title (the name of an iTunes song, for example) appears on the clip. You can rename it by double-clicking the title and entering it in the Clip Info dialog. A volume level indicator bisects the clip. As you’ll see later, you can use it to change the volume of part or all of the clip. To get a better look at the audio highs and lows in your audio clips, choose iMovie → Preferences and click Show Audio Track Waveforms. Figure 4.15 shows a zoomed-in view of a waveform view. Recall from our previous discussion on recording audio that you can position audio clips anywhere on the timeline. To move a clip, click above or below the volume indicator and drag left or right. You can drag the clip anywhere on the timeline, or even onto the other audio track if you like. The playhead moves with the clip as you drag; if you move the playhead, the audio track stays put.

Chapter 4 iMovie

TIP To fade an audio track quickly, click where you want the fade to start. Then click the indicator at the end of the fade and drag all the way down. iMovie does the fade in one step.

Figure 4.16: Use the volume sliders to mix a voice and music track.

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An iTunes song may be too long for your movie, or you may want to break it up for use in several parts of the timeline. Solve this problem by splitting an audio clip. Click the audio clip to select it. Position the playhead at the spot where you want the clips to break, then choose Edit → Split Clips at Playhead. To separate the two halves, which retain their original names (but with the numbers 1 and 2, respectively), drag one clip away from the other clip. You can either position each of the two track segments within the movie, or delete segments you don’t plan to use by selecting them and pressing the Delete key. When you’ve achieved an audio/video connection you like, move the playhead to the beginning of the audio clip, highlight the clip, Control-click it, and choose Lock Audio Clip at Playhead, or choose Advanced → Lock Audio Clip at Playhead. Mixing Audio Tracks. There are several ways to change what you hear on a movie’s audio track. As we described earlier, you can use the audio check boxes to turn off an audio track entirely. Use iMovie’s volume control (below the timeline) to adjust the audio level of an entire track—audio or video. If you want to use parts of an audio track (but don’t want to split it into multiple audio clips), you can adjust the volume of specific sections of an audio clip, or of the audio that accompanies your video track. To change a track’s volume, move the playhead to the beginning of the track and play it. While it plays, move the Volume slider left or right or type a percentage into the adjacent box. (The maximum is 150% of the original volume, which may result in distorted sound.) Audio volume need not be the same throughout a track. In fact, it’s easy to mix two or even three audio tracks (including the one that’s part of your video footage) so that different tracks are emphasized at different points in the movie. Let’s say that your wildlife adventure movie includes a musical soundtrack and bits of narration. Just for fun, you’d like to add the sounds of hawks and hungry buffalo from the video track. Make sure the music track that you want to hear throughout the movie is placed in one of the audio tracks on the timeline. Then either record some narration, or place a previously recorded narration clip in the other audio track, just a few seconds after the start of the first clip. Click the Edit Volume check box, below the timeline. The audio track display changes to show a horizontal line in each audio track. The line indicates the track’s volume. In the music track, click the volume indicator at the point where the voice track starts. Drag the volume downward almost all the way. At the point where the voice track ends, click and drag the music track’s volume indicator upward to the normal level. Now you’ve put the music track under the voice track. The result looks like Figure 4.16. Volume adjustment within tracks can be useful in other ways, too, to alternate which track’s audio is emphasized at different points in the movie. You can also fade a music track in at the beginning of an audio clip, or out at the end. Extracting Audio. As noted previously in this chapter, the video you imported has its own audio track. If you’ve edited your footage, chances are you won’t be using the track, or at least not in its entirety. You can make use of the audio track, though, by extracting it from the video, splitting and rearranging the pieces. You might do this to capture the toast, but not the party noise, from your rehearsal dinner, or the snorts of buffalo as they approach your car in the wildlife park. If you plan to use parts of a clip’s audio, play the clip and note where the audio you want is located. When you’re ready, select the video clip and choose Advanced → Extract Audio. iMovie copies the audio to the upper audio track. Now you can work with it just as you do with any other audio track.

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TIP If you think you will want to use audio from a section of the movie whose video you plan to cut, you can extract the audio before you edit the movie.

You can open the files in sound-editing software and edit their contents or tweak their audio attributes. If you have sound editing software like Felt Tip Software’s Sound Studio (www.felttip.com, $50) or Bias’ SoundSoap (www.bias-inc.com/products/soundsoap/, $99), you can do lots more with the file, including deleting unwanted sections, equalizing highs and lows, and cleaning up noisy tracks. Once you’ve extracted audio from a clip, you’ll find the file in /Users/username/Movies/moviename/Media. Extracted audio files are named Voice 1, Voice 2, and so on.

Working with Still Images Are you scratching your head, trying to imagine why in the world anyone would use still images in a movie? What’s the point of all this video editing if you’re going to show slides? Actually, there are all sorts of good reasons to add still images to your movie. You might want to hold the focus on a particular image to make an emotional point, show a sign long enough for viewers to read it, or zoom in on an intricate carving. Stills are a great way to close a movie, or mark a switch from one part of the movie to another. Photos also make great backdrops for movie titles. iMovie gives you lots of options for using photos, from the same transitions available for video, to effects that simulate motion. The great thing about importing images is that you can create and edit them precisely before bringing them into iMovie. Whether you make simple edits and crops in iPhoto, or fire up Photoshop to build sophisticated layered works of art, they can all be imported into iMovie with a click of the mouse.

Importing Photos

Figure 4.17: Set the duration and zoom level for a photo from your iPhoto library.

There are two ways to bring an image into iMovie—with iPhoto and without. iPhoto users can see the contents of their entire photo library and albums, and bring images directly into iMovie. You can also import images stored on your hard drive with iMovie’s Import command. To import an image from iPhoto, click the Photos button below the Clips pane in iMovie. Thumbnails of your photos appear, along with a menu listing available iPhoto albums. Unlike the Audio import pane, there’s no way to search your photos, so it’s a good idea to know where the photo you want is before you begin working in iMovie. If you want to use lots of iPhotos, create an album for these images. That way, they’ll all be available when you choose the album from the iMovie menu. When you’ve located the photo you want, use the duration slider above the iPhoto Library menu to set the length of time the photo should be onscreen (see Figure 4.17). You can also time the duration in seconds and frames. Use the Zoom slider to show more or less of the photo, and drag the photo around in the Preview monitor to focus on a portion of the zoomed-in image. To add the photo to your movie project, drag it onto the timeline between two video clips. The photo looks like a video clip in the timeline, with a photo icon above the image. To change the name or duration of the photo, double-click it or Control-click and choose Photo Settings. If the Photos pane isn’t already visible, iMovie switches to it, giving you access to all of the options. Make your changes and click Update. If you don’t use iPhoto, or want to import an image not stored in your iPhoto library, import it directly from your hard drive. Make sure that no photo is selected in the Photos pane. Switch to

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the Clips pane by clicking the Clips button. Choose File → Import and navigate to the image you want. The photo appears in the Monitor and on the Clips pane. Drag it to the timeline. To change its settings, click the Photos button.

The Ken Burns Effect

Figure 4.18: The Ken Burns Effect image in the Movie monitor and Preview pane pans between two twins in their parents’ laps. The photo in the upper left corner of the Photo pane is the zoomed-out version.

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5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

Named for the producer of PBS epics including The Civil War, the Ken Burns Effect brings still photos to life by panning around within them. Burns used this approach to pan between different areas of the same image that desperately needed movement, creating multiple focal points. The effect works the same way in iMovie. To use the Ken Burns Effect, follow these steps: 1. Choose an image in the Photos pane (if you imported it from your hard drive, select it in the timeline and click the Photos button). Click the Ken Burns Effect check box and choose the duration for the image. Click the Start radio button and zoom and pan the section of the image you want. Zoom in first by dragging the Zoom slider to the left (zoom out) or the right (zoom in). If you intend to pan from a large starting image to a close-up of a smaller section, zoom outward to start. If you intend to pan between two equally zoomed parts of the same image, locate and zoom in on the first area. Focus on a portion of the image by dragging the Preview so that only the portion of the image you’re focusing on appears there. You might need to zoom more in order to tighten your focus. When you’re satisfied with your starting image, click Apply. Now click Finish to work with the second part of the effect, and zoom and focus on the part of the image where you want the effect to end, just as you did in steps 3 and 4. Click the Update button (which has replaced Apply) and then click Preview to see your handiwork. Make any adjustments to the duration, zoom, and focus of the effect by first clicking Start or Finish and then making your changes. Don’t forget to click Update again to keep any changes you make. To see how your effect will look when running backwards, click Reverse to switch the start and finish positions of the effect. Select the effect and press the spacebar to see the effect in action. You might need to decide to change its duration based on the pacing of your movie. With the clip selected, use the Duration slider. Figure 4.18 shows the Start position of an image in the Movie monitor, and the Finish position in the Preview monitor.

Creating Stills from Your Movie There are a couple of reasons you might create a still from your video footage. You might want to generate a still as a background for a title or chapter marker, or create a Ken Burns Effect frame. You might also want to export a video still for printing, or to add to your iPhoto library. If you carry both a still and a DV camera, you might decide to leave the still camera at home on occasion. We say “on occasion,” because capturing video frames is no substitute for a decent digital camera.

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Figure 4.19: When you choose Edit → Still Frame, iMovie adds the frame to the Clips pane.

With a maximum resolution of 640×480, exported frames will probably look fine as email attachments, on the Web, or as proofs. To print or save high-resolution images, stick to a still camera, many of which generate images with three times the resolution of frame captures. To create a still frame, move the playhead to the spot in the clip that you want to export as a still image. Use the arrow keys to position the playhead on the exact frame you want—the one that’s the most in focus, best centered, and so on. Choose Edit → Create Still Frame. The frame appears on the Clips pane as a still image (see Figure 4.19). To change the clip’s name or duration (the default is five seconds), double-click the still. You can now add the frame to your movie or export it. You can export a frame you’ve already created from video, or you can save it directly from video. To export a still image, select it and choose File → Save Frame As. The only difference in the procedure for exporting directly from video is that you need to find the frame you want, pause the video, and then choose File → Save Frame As. In the Save dialog box, name the frame and choose a format. JPEG is the standard for web publishing. PICT is an old Macintosh format that isn’t often used these days, and isn’t really a good choice for photographic images in any case. Choose JPEG and click Save.

Sharing and Exporting Movies When you’ve completed your movie, you’ll naturally want to preserve it and share it with people. iMovie can export your project at full quality to tape or DVD for archiving and presentation purposes, or in a compressed form, to QuickTime for use on the Web, or as an email attachment. In this section, we’re assuming that you’re done with your movie and perfectly happy with it. To maintain that illusion, we suggest you don’t watch your movie again.

Compressed Movies: Web, Email, and Direct to QuickTime

Figure 4.20: Each sharing option uses a different compression and frame rate, and choosing one tells you how large the file will be. Clicking Share Selected Clips Only does just that, and shows the size of the compressed clip.

Video compression is expressed in terms of resolution and frames per second. The lower each of these numbers is, the smaller your movie file will be. Higher resolution and frame rate mean larger, better-looking files. All of iMovie’s compression options create QuickTime movies that you can view with QuickTime Player (see Chapter 16, “The Little Guys”) on Macs and Windows machines. To see a range of compression options for your movie, choose File → Share and click QuickTime. Choose an option from the Compress Movie For pop-up menu to see compression options that are optimal for different purposes, and the approximate size of the resulting QuickTime movie (see Figure 4.20). If you want to save the movie using one of these options, choose the one that’s appropriate to how you want to share your movie and then click Share. iMovie compresses the movie accordingly and gives you a Save dialog. If you want to save one or more clips rather than the whole movie, select them first from the Clip viewer and then open the Share dialog and click the Share Selected Clips Only check box. The Email and HomePage tabs in the Share dialog box give you the same level of compressed movies that the Email and Web items in the Compress Movie For pop-up menu offer. The difference is that the Email and HomePage tabs not only compress the movie, but send it on its way, so you don’t need to choose a level of compression first if you plan to mail your movie or post it with HomePage. Here’s how.

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Email. Click the Email tab and choose a program from the list of email applications on your Mac. Rename the movie if you want and click Share. Your email program opens a new message with the QuickTime movie as an attachment. Address and send the message. HomePage. To use the HomePage sharing method, you need to be a subscriber to Apple’s .Mac Internet service (documented in several other chapters of this book, including Chapters 3, 6, 7, 8, and 10). HomePage is .Mac’s web hosting space where you can upload pages, photos, and, as in this case, QuickTime movies. The HomePage tab has a convenient Buy More Space button (.Mac accounts come with 100MB of disk space). Although the size of many movies makes this a somewhat practical option, we find it impossible not to break out in laughter each time we see the Buy More Space button. Click Share to begin uploading a movie to your .Mac web page, or select one or more clips first and then click the Share Selected Clips Only check box in the HomePage pane of the Share dialog. iMovie compresses your cinematic baby (this might take awhile) and uploads it to your iDisk— the remote volume where .Mac stores your stuff. When uploading is complete, your web browser launches and you’re asked to log in to .Mac (this seems silly, as your movie has already been uploaded). When you do, .Mac shows a page containing your movie and begins playing it (see Figure 4.21). You can watch all or part of it and then click the Stop button on the QuickTime player when you’re finished. Next, choose a theme from .Mac’s collection by clicking one. .Mac shows your movie inside the theme you’ve chosen and gives you a chance to give the movie a title and description. Click Preview to watch it again, or click Publish to finish the job. You’ll see a link that will take you to your movie. You can now send an email to your eager fans, announcing that your movie is web-ified!

Export to Tape or iDVD

Figure 4.21: Preview your .Mac movie and then choose a theme before you publish it to the Web.

You can use DV tape to archive a finished movie and/or play it for friends and family. Tape archives are not as durable as DVDs, but it’s far simpler to dump a movie to tape than it is to build a DVD. Besides, you might not have access to a DVD burner. Because you can connect a DV camera to a TV just like a VCR, you or anyone you know who has a DV camera can play your movie back from the camera. Footage from tapes you send to your sister could also end up in her movies, if she is also into editing digital video. To make the movie even more widely viewable, you or anyone with both a DV camcorder and a VCR can copy the tape from the camcorder to the VCR. To export a movie to tape, first connect your camcorder to your Mac via FireWire and insert a blank cassette. Set the camcorder to VCR/VTR mode, so that it can record iMovie’s output. In iMovie, choose File → Share and click Videocamera. You can add blank space at the beginning and end of the recording, and also give the camera a few seconds to get ready to record. When you have the settings the way you want them, click Share. iMovie and your camera will do the rest. There’s not much to say about the iDVD option, at least not here. The “Create and Save a Project” section (p. 110) in Chapter 5 explains how to create DVD chapter markers, which we suggest you do before importing your movie into iDVD. The rest of Chapter 5 is all about making DVDs with iDVD. When you click Share in the DVD tab, iDVD launches with your movie already imported, including any chapters you have created in iMovie’s iDVD pane. You can also use the iDVD pane to initiate the iDVD project, as described in Chapter 5.

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PROJECT: Edit a party video that makes you the star hotos don’t lie, but there’s no reason video can’t do it. Perhaps “lie” is too strong a word, but what we’re after is not a fact-based documentary about your dance party, but a promotional puff piece about how cool you are, and how much fun a party with you as host can be. We’ll show you how to make a movie that puts your best foot forward.

P

1

TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT: A great movie starts with great footage. Don’t be afraid to take lots of it. Resist the temptation to edit with your camera. Just let it roll and use iMovie to pick and choose what you like. DV tape and disk space are cheap. In a party environment, be sure you have plenty of light on your subject. Some video camera makers offer accessory lights that help a little, but there’s no substitute for good ambient lighting. If you can, connect your camera to a TV and use it as a video monitor. You’ll get a crisper, more realistic representation of how your video will look than you can on the camera’s LCD display. Warning: a TV monitor will encourage shameless camera-mugging among your guests. Use a TV to monitor your camera.

2

IMPORT AND TRIAGE VIDEO: In a day or so, when your party-induced fog lifts, connect the camera to your Mac and import the video you shot. If time permits, watch the footage in iMovie as you import it. Make note of interesting sequences, especially those featuring yourself. Write down the clip number so you will be able to find it quickly. When you’re ready to edit, use your clip notes to find those with the best footage. Select and preview a particularly good clip. For other clips with more footage that you’re not yet sure about, preview them and write down the points in Clip names help you remember the clip where good footage begins, for later editing. If any clips mostly contain footage their content. that makes you look boring or catches you picking your nose, either delete the clip permanently (Edit → Clear) or send it to the trash, just in case you want to get it back (Edit → Cut). Name your keeper clips to help you remember what’s in them.

3

CROP AND TRIM CLIPS: Choose a clip containing beauteous footage of you, no matter how fleeting. Let’s say the camera panned quickly by as you instructed a guest in the proper preparation of a mojito, and then on to a bunch of dull people. Crop the ends of the clip and drag the remaining few seconds of footage to the timeline. (Name the clip so you’ll remember its contents.) In a clip with several bits of good footage, you can split the clip, leaving one clip with good footage and a second without (which you won’t use). Keep splitting the clips to break your footage into pieces that you will reorganize for the movie, and use trimming to remove unusable spots from otherwise good clips—like when the camera shook for a couple of seconds during your air guitar solo. To trim out bad footage, locate the end of a good section and then click and drag forward along the Scrubber bar to get crop markers. Stop dragging at the end of the bad footage. Use the arrow keys to Use the cropping triangles to preposition the cropping triangles precisely on both ends, and choose Edit → Cut or Edit → cisely trim footage. Clear.

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USE STILL PHOTOS FOR ADDED IMPACT: Interestingly, there was one celebrity in attendance at your party: a local radio DJ who came with your neighbor Linda. In reviewing your iPhoto party album, you discovered not one, but two pictures of yourself with said DJ. In addition, you find a couple of shots showing you gesturing animatedly before a group of listening party guests. We suggest you use these photos— images not caught on video—to further your reputation. Find the photos in the iMovie Photos pane (they’re in your iPhoto party album, remember). Select the DJ photo and click the Ken Burns Effect check box. Now set the effect to start on the celebrated DJ. Zoom in Use the Ken Burns Effect to on him first, then choose the speed at which the photo will pan from one location to enhance the impact of photos. another. Click the Finish radio button and zoom in on your own smiling visage. Preview the effect, and when you’re happy with the duration of the photo and effect, click Update. Add the photo to the timeline.

5

Twirl between clips with a transition.

SHOW YOU’RE ALWAYS IN MOTION WITH A TWIRL TRANSITION: You’re dancing, you’re mixing drinks, you’re fiddling with the stereo, you’re mingling with your guests. Is there no end to your style and elegance? As you bring scenes of your triumph into the iMovie timeline, use transitions to cut between them. Remember that if you intend to add effects to clips that will also have transitions, you should create the effects first. In the Trans pane, pick a vibrant transition. Twirl is a good choice to create scene shifts that grab attention and create a sense of frenetic movement, especially if your clips are very short. Make the transitions quick, too, to enhance the in-motion effect. And did you know you can place transitions between photos and clips, or even between two still photos?

6

PUMP UP THE SOUNDTRACK: To put sound behind your shameless ego trip, start with the music you used during your party. In iMovie, open the Audio pane and select the iTunes playlist you used during the party from the pop-up menu. As you edit your movie, start playing different tracks from the playlist. If nothing else, this will bring back the party mood. But you’ll also be able to get a sense of which tracks match the mood and visual rhythm of your video. When you find a promising track, open the Timeline viewer and move the playhead to the beginning of the movie, or to a point where you would like music to begin. Click Place at Playhead to import the track. Uncheck the audio track associated with your video footage. Now play your movie. If you don’t like the way the audio and video work together, select the song in the Audio track and delete it. Choose another track and either play it while the movie runs, or import it as you did the first clip.

7

SHARE WITH THE WORLD: So much video, so many ways to share. Perhaps the easiest and most flexible way to share your movie is to turn it into a QuickTime movie. You can post it on .Mac with HomePage, or email a more diminutive version. When you’re done with your movie, choose File → Share. Click the Email tab. iMovie tells you how large your movie will be, so you can get an idea of whether it’s small enough to email without bogging down your friends’ Internet connections. If your movie is larger than 3MB or so, consider distributing it on disc or via the Web. If you have a website with space to spare or a .Mac account, share your movie that way. If not, click the QuickTime button and choose CD-ROM from the Compress Movie For menu. When you click Share, iMovie asks you to choose a name for the movie and then compresses it. When the compression is done, you can switch to the Finder, copy the movie to a blank CD-ROM, and burn the disc. Now anyone with a QuickTime software (Mac or Windows) can insert the CD and play your movie.

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iDVD Can you believe that people once watched movies on VHS tapes? That’s soooo twentieth century. iDVD makes it a snap to create your own multi-chapter, elegantly detailed DVDs, complete with motion and layered menus, video, audio, and slideshows. Aside from the joy you’ll bring to family and friends when you share your glorious productions, and the comfort you’ll take in knowing that those moments are safely stored on durable discs—rather than tapes that can break or deteriorate—people who see your DVDs will think you’re an artistic genius! iDVD is both a creative tool and a disc-burnin’ machine for anyone with a SuperDrive-equipped Mac. Start by preparing video in iMovie; edit the footage and set DVD chapter markers. Next, export the whole thing to iDVD. Using one of iDVD’s nifty themes, build a DVD menu screen with menus, text, and movies. Add sound, photos, and slideshows. When your movie is at its most fabulous, archive, encode, and burn your finished project to a DVD. Your prowess as a filmmaker and art director won’t be in doubt when family and friends pop in the disc and press Play. In this chapter, we’ll not only show you how to use iDVD to personalize your project, but also how to customize its themes and integrate movies with iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie. We’ll clear up the mysterious DVD-related acronym maze, too. Design and burn video projects with iDVD.

Turn your movies and photos into eyecatching DVDs for family and friends

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CUSTOMIZE PANE CUSTOMIZATION TABS

THEME FOLDERS

THEME THUMBNAILS

DROP ZONE

iDVD quick start

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MENU SCREEN

MENU BUTTONS

PROJECT TITLE

IDVD BUTTON BAR

Dazzling DVDs With iDVD, you can wrap your movies and photos in a good-looking package and then burn the results to DVD for all to see.

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Preparing to Work in iDVD iDVD is designed to accept movies you make in iMovie. We say “designed to” because while you can bring other kinds of movies into iDVD (and we’ll show you how later in this chapter), iMovie/iDVD integration is seamless. To get ready to work with iDVD, you should first be sure that you’re happy with your iMovie—its scenes, titles, transitions, and editing. Then create chapter markers in the movie, as described later in this chapter—iDVD will pick these up when it imports the movie, saving you lots of work. To use iDVD, you must have an Apple SuperDrive or a compatible DVD burner. The SuperDrive is a DVD-R/RW/CD-RW device, found in most current Macs and many shipped within the past couple of years. Most other DVD burners do not work with iDVD. If you bought a Mac without a SuperDrive, we’ll pause for a moment while you indulge in a hearty d’oh! If your Mac didn’t come with a SuperDrive, you can buy a SuperDrive equivalent—one that uses the same mechanism as Apple’s burner—from vendors including MCE Technologies (www.mcetech.com) and One World Computing (www.macsales.com). Before you buy, verify that the drive is iDVD-compatible. When we say that you need a SuperDrive to use iDVD, we technically mean that you need it to burn discs. iDVD 4 (unlike previous versions) will run in a non-SuperDrive Mac, and you can build and edit your project there. To burn a DVD, though, you must transfer the project to a Mac with a SuperDrive. We return to this subject in the “Archiving and Burning DVDs” section later in this chapter.

Create and Save a Project Everything you do in iDVD is part of a project. When you launch iDVD, you’re asked whether you want to open an existing project or a new one. If you first get to iDVD by clicking the Create iDVD Project button in iMovie, iDVD will ask you to create and name a project, and then import the video footage from iMovie. Unlike iMovie, which uses several folders and files to store its projects, an iDVD project is contained within a single file—a very, very large file stored in your Documents folder, unless you save it elsewhere. If you have a second internal drive or an external FireWire drive, we suggest you save the project file there when you create it. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with using the startup disk to store iDVD projects—it’s just that the external drive probably has more space available. Save the project there now. Moving an iDVD project in progress can cause links between it and movie and photo files to break. Later, you’ll learn how to archive projects in preparation for burning them on a different Mac.

Start in iMovie In iMovie, be sure your movie is complete and edited the way you want and then click the iDVD button. Now you can create chapter markers for your movie. Just like DVDs you rent or buy, yours can use chapters—entry points within the movie—to let people start viewing wherever they like. You can begin chapters at the start of clips if you like, but that’s not necessary. To create a chapter marker, move the playhead to the frame where you want the marker to appear. (This frame will appear in your chapter marker window and on the final DVD.) Click Add Chapter. iMovie adds one in the iDVD pane. A text field is selected so that you can rename the chapter, which is named for the clip containing it. The time display reflects the marker’s location in the movie. Now find the next frame where a marker should appear and add it as before. The time display shows its

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location relative to the beginning of the movie (see Figure 5.1). You can remove a chapter marker (select it and click Remove Chapter), but you can’t move one. Add a chapter in the location where it should appear and then delete the old marker. When you have created all the chapters you want, click Create iDVD Project. iDVD launches with your movie imported into a new project.

Or Start in iDVD

Figure 5.1: Add markers to create chapters that will appear in your DVD. The chapter names you enter appear in iDVD, too.

Figure 5.2: By default, iDVD brings your movie into the Wedding Bronze One theme.

You don’t have to begin an iDVD project in iMovie, although it’s the easiest way if you created the video footage there. You can also use QuickTime video. To begin, open iDVD. It will either open the project you worked on most recently, or ask whether you want to work with a new or existing project. Create a new project and store it where there’s plenty (10GB plus) of disk space available. Choose File → Import → Video and locate the QuickTime file.

Working with Themes The screen you see when iDVD launches your new project might seem odd. Although you’ve just imported a movie of your trip to the Olympic Peninsula or an old Christmas tape, the screen says Wedding Bronze One (see Figure 5.2). What in the name of all that’s digital is going on here? Simple. iDVD defaults to one of the many themes from which you can choose for your project. Themes consist of background images and color, text, graphics, buttons, motion, video clips, drop zones (more on this later), and audio. You can edit the placeholder content of a theme, or use an existing theme as the basis for your own. Some themes are fully tricked out with music and animation, whereas others are simple. You can add or remove elements from themes, but the way that theme and configuration options are organized is intended to make you choose between accepting an iDVD theme mostly as is, or customizing a theme before you apply it to a specific movie. As we’ll show you in “Customizing Themes,” you can muck around with theme elements and save your results as a favorite theme. For now, we’ll show you how to add content and a few of your own touches to an existing theme. Assuming you don’t think the wedding theme is appropriate for your project, let’s have a look at some other choices. Click the Customize button at the bottom of the iDVD window. A pane containing your theme choices appears. The thumbnails you see represent iDVD 4.0 themes. To see themes that were included with iDVD 3.0, click the menu above the theme list. Choose All if you want access to both sets at the same time, plus any other themes you may have created or installed. To switch themes, just click on one (see Figure 5.3). If you don’t like your choice, click another one to switch again. By the way, don’t assume that iDVD 3.0 themes are less cool than 4.0 themes. On the contrary, they’re included with the updated version because some were quite popular. Check them out! Themes contain several elements that you can use as is or customize. You can also add lots of content to your DVD menu screen. Right now, your project includes buttons to play your movie and to select individual scenes (the chapters you created in iMovie). The kinds of buttons (text or

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Figure 5.3: The theme you choose from the list is applied to your project when you click it in the Themes pane.

TIP If you intend to move text blocks or other text items around very much, be sure that you’re working in the TV Safe Area. Choose Advanced → Show TV Safe Area.

Figure 5.4: Single-click twice to retype a text block, three times to edit existing text.

graphical) depend on the theme you’re using. The name of your iMovie also appears on the page, along with graphic elements that are part of the theme. Some themes also come standard with what iDVD calls motion elements. You might have noticed that the curtain in the Wedding Bronze theme flutters every so often. The scenery in Road Trip One moves by as if you were driving past it. Thumbnails for themes that include motion have a motion icon in the Themes pane. You might hear an audio track or see a preview of your movie, depending on the theme you choose. As you’ll learn presently, any of these features can be added to the theme you ultimately choose to use. Before we begin working with your DVD’s text and media, we need to mention a feature that will help you ensure that what you see on the iDVD screen is what your viewers see on their TVs. Choose Advanced → TV Safe Area. A border appears around the DVD menu screen, and inside that border is the TV Safe Area. Outside it is the no man’s land where buttons, text, or graphics you place there might not appear when the DVD is played via television. Apple says that “some televisions” won’t show anything outside the TV Safe Area. Your mileage may vary, as they say. One way to get an idea how seriously to take the TV Safe Area is to burn a test DVD using the theme you’ve chosen, but before you make significant changes or drag content out of the TV Safe Area. If you notice that items outside the Safe Area don’t appear on your set, stick to the TV Safe Area when building your project.

Editing Text When you first view your iDVD project and choose a theme, you’re working in Edit mode. You will be able to change and add text, move objects around, and so on. The other iDVD mode is Preview, in which you can click through your project as you would when viewing the final DVD. The Preview button is highlighted when you’re in Preview mode, and it isn’t highlighted when you’re editing. If you somehow find yourself in Preview mode, click the Preview button to toggle back to Edit mode. You can edit button and title text that appears on the menu screen as part of the theme, or add your own text blocks. iDVD’s text editing features are a bit limited, though. You can’t move menu titles and text buttons around at will, and text formatting is by the block, not by the character or word, which limits you to one typeface and size per text block. To edit existing text, click once on a text block to select the block, then a second time to select the text. Type over the text to replace it. To edit existing text instead, click a third time to place the cursor within the block (see Figure 5.4). Be careful not to double-click button text. Doing so will play your movie or open a menu, and take you out of the editing view. Add a new text block by choosing Project → Add Text. Click twice to select the sample text inside the block and type your own text. You can move the text block by dragging its border to a different part of the screen. To change the text block’s font size, style, and color, first click the Settings tab in the Customize panel (click the Customize button if the panel isn’t visible). Click to select the text block. Choose a font, alignment, and color from the pop-up menus, and adjust text size using the slider (see Figure 5.5). Click the Drop Shadow check box to add that effect, if you like.

Chapter 5 iDVD

Figure 5.5: Select a text block and then edit text properties in the Settings tab of the Customize pane.

TIP It’s a good idea to save your iDVD project from time to time, especially after you’ve made significant changes.

Figure 5.6: Click a drop zone to select it. You’ll see the slideshow, along with the speed slider and Edit Order button.

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When you change the font and/or text size, the enclosing text box changes in size to accommodate the text. The Alignment command aligns text to the screen you’re viewing. If you choose Custom from the Alignment menu, you can drag the text box around to any location you like, rather than being constrained by horizontal alignments. As we’ve hinted before, text blocks and buttons that are part of an iDVD theme are kind of special. As we describe here, you can’t always move or reformat these kinds of text as easily as you can a text block of your own creation. You can change the formatting of a title or button text in the same way you edit your own text blocks. Beware—a change to one button carries over to all buttons, as they are considered a single text block. If you change text formatting with no text block selected, the changes affect the menu title. All themes include two buttons: one to play your movie, and a second that takes viewers to the chapter menu. You can edit button text as described previously in this section. We’ll show you how to reposition buttons on the menu in the “Customizing Themes” section of this chapter. Don’t forget that format changes you make to one button affect all buttons. One last menu screen tweak you might want to make is deleting the Apple logo that appears on the menu. Open iDVD Preferences. In the General tab, uncheck Show Apple logo watermark.

Adding Movies or Photos Your DVD menu can contain still photos or additional movies that play within buttons, or as motion items on the menu screen. Photos and movies are added to drop zones. A drop zone is a hot spot that can accept media. Most themes include one or more drop zones. You only need to drag or import the media you want to use. Have a look at the Drive In One theme, for example. The movie screen drop zone contains placeholder text indicating where photos should go, as do many of iDVD’s themes. The Wedding Bronze Two, Wedding Silver Two, and Fish Two themes all play a clip from the movie on the menu screen. Because the drop zones in these themes use the movie you’ve imported from iMovie, you don’t need to add media to it. Most other iDVD themes simply include drop zones with placeholders that can be used for additional movies or photos and a button labeled Play Movie—you don’t have to use a video drop zone unless you want to. Drop zones with placeholder text can accept still photos or movies—you can even use a QuickTime movie that isn’t connected to the project you’re working on. You could also make a miniature version of this project in iMovie and import the resulting footage to a drop zone. To add photos to a drop zone, click the Media tab in the Customize pane. Choose Photos from the pop-up menu. iDVD shows your iPhoto library, if you have one, complete with albums. Locate the images you want (there’s a search box at the bottom of the pane if you need it), select one or more photos, and drag them into the drop zone. If you don’t use iPhoto, you can drag photos from the Finder to the drop zone, or Control-click on the drop zone and choose Import. If you’re importing photos, you can select several by Shift-dragging over them. When you’ve imported the selected photos, they appear in the drop zone. If you’re using several photos, a slideshow appears in your drop zone. Click and drag the image within the drop zone to center it. Click outside the drop zone to continue the slideshow. When you see another image that needs to be centered, click on the drop zone again to show the editing controls and then drag the image to center it. Centering is most often necessary in the many themes with wide, flat rectangular drop zones.

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TIP Be careful to drag only within the photo itself when centering photos within the drop zone. Dragging the border of the zone moves it, rather than the image.

When the drop zone is selected, a slider and an editing button appear at the top (see Figure 5.6). Drag the slider to the right to increase the speed at which slides change. Click Edit Order to see the list of slides in a separate window. Drag them around the window to change their order. To see the slides on a vertical list, click the List button in the upper-right corner of the window. To remove an image from the drop zone, select it and press the Delete key. Click the Return button to go back to the menu screen and view your slides in their new order. To delete all images in the drop zone, Control-click on the zone and select Clear. Some themes include multiple drop zones. You can drag an image (or group of them) to each one, or only to selected ones.

Slideshows

Figure 5.7: Use the slider to find the frame where clip playback should start.

We’ve shown you how to add slideshows to drop zones. You can also create standalone shows that fill the screen when activated. You can add a slideshow to the main menu or to any submenu screen. To add a slideshow, click the Slide Show button. An icon and label appear on the menu screen. Single click the label twice to change the name of the item from My Slide Show to a witty title of your choice. Double-click the icon or label to configure the slides with the slideshow screen. With the slideshow screen visible, click the Media tab in the Customize pane. Choose Photos from the pop-up menu and locate the images you want to add to the slideshow. Select and drag them into the slideshow screen (see Figure 5.7). Change the order of the slideshow if you like by dragging slides into different positions in the window. Choose playback options for the slideshow, including looping, arrow display, and a transition, if you want one. If you choose Add Original Photos to DVD-ROM, they will be available on the DVD for download or printing. To add an audio track, choose Audio from the pop-up menu in the Media tab and drag a song onto the Audio button below the list of slides. Click Return to go back to the menu and then click Preview. Finally, click the slideshow label to view your slideshow. To make changes to the show, double-click the label to return to the slides.

Working with Motion

Figure 5.8: Drag photos from your photo library onto the slideshow screen and configure your slideshow with the controls below.

iDVD themes use Motion to animate menu screens and buttons. Some themes include Motion menus by default. Some, like Wedding Bronze One, use animated backgrounds. That’s also called a Motion menu. Others, like Fish Two, play a thumbnail version of your movie (motion buttons). Drop zones are Motion buttons when they contain multiple photos or movies. To toggle Motion on and off, click the Motion button on the bottom button bar. You can get better performance from iDVD if you turn Motion off when you’ve finished editing motion elements. Be sure to turn it back on before you burn a DVD. To edit a Motion button containing the movie, click on it. You can use the slider above it to locate a frame where you would like to begin playback (see Figure 5.8). Click the Settings tab in the Customize pane. In the Motion area, use the slider or the field to enter the duration for the clip to be played in the motion button.

Transitions Just as you used transitions to switch between scenes in Chapter 4, “iMovie,” you can use one to move from menu to movie, or between DVD menus. From the main menu screen, click the Settings

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tab and choose a transition from the pop-up menu. To see the effect of your transition, click Preview and then click the button leading to your movie or to the Scene Selection submenu. If the transition you chose moves onto or across the screen, click one of the directional arrows in the Settings pane to control the direction of the transition.

To scale slides to fit inside the TV Safe Area by default, open iDVD Preferences and click the Slideshow tab.

Using Submenus

Figure 5.9: The button on the right is a submenu folder with an image, rather than a folder icon.

If you imported a movie with chapter markers into iDVD, you already have a submenu. It contains links to each chapter in the movie. To see it, double-click Scene Selection. Some themes include scene selection menus with Motion buttons representing each chapter, while others simply list chapter names. In most cases, submenus use the same visual theme as the main menu, although you can choose a different theme for the submenu by selecting it in the Themes pane while you’re viewing the submenu screen. Submenus are displayed as folders in some themes. That’s appropriate, because you can use them to provide links to DVD content other than the main movie on the disc. Of course, you can create a DVD with several smallish programs and provide links to them from a submenu folder. Your viewers click the folder and see a list of movies available on the DVD. You can create new submenus to an existing project. Perhaps you’d like to include “the making of,” as a bonus for your viewers, or a slideshow that begins on a submenu. With iDVD displaying the menu screen where you want to link to the submenu, click Folder on the button bar below the menu screen. A button called My Folder appears on the menu. If the theme you’re using uses graphical buttons, you can dress up the boring folder icon with an image or a movie. Open the Media tab and drag an image or movie onto the folder icon (see Figure 5.9). Single-click twice to edit the folder name. Double-click the folder to see the submenu screen. If you want to change the theme for the new menu, choose it from the Themes pane. Add movies or photos to the submenu by dragging them into the menu’s drop zones (see Figure 5.10).

The Map Figure 5.10: We chose an iDVD 3.0 theme called Light Box, added a line of text, and then added media to a pair of drop zones. From this submenu, viewers can watch two short movies.

To help you keep track of the structure of your project, iDVD provides the map. Click the Map button to see boxes representing your menus, movies, chapters, and slideshows, with hierarchy lines telling you how they’re all connected (see Figure 5.11). Aside from being a great way to get your brain around how you’ve organized the project, you can use the map to quickly move to a specific part of your project. Double-click a menu or slideshow to set it up. Double-click a movie chapter to play it. To return to the map at any time, click the Map button again. The map offers one more option: drag a photo or movie into the Auto Play square in the upperleft corner of the map. When your DVD is inserted into a drive, the content in the Auto Play window begins playing automatically. If you drag a photo, iDVD creates a slideshow.

Customizing Themes Figure 5.11: The map shows the main DVD menu (and its theme), the movie, and its chapters. Not pictured are the submenus and slideshows on the submenus.

There’s no getting around it. iDVD’s editing tools and options are pretty limited. You can’t just throw text blocks, images, and graphic elements anywhere on the screen, and some of the restrictions confronting you are not very intuitive, especially for Mac users who expect more freedom. Some of this is good, because what looks fabulous on your computer screen won’t necessarily look that way on a TV screen, or even fit there. Some limitations are bad, because they force you to work with a pretty skimpy set of tools, working around the barriers as best you can. OK, we’ll make the best of it. If you’re more demanding, though, take a look at Apple’s DVD Studio Pro (www.apple.com/dvdstudiopro, $499). It’s a professional authoring tool that’s a lot more complicated than iDVD, but also infinitely more flexible.

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TIP You can see your DVD’s menu structure by clicking the Map button. You can also go directly to a submenu by double-clicking one of the submenu squares.

The editing and customization options we have shown you so far are those we think most people will want to use to personalize DVD projects. In the sections you’re about to read, we cover options you are more likely to apply when you’re developing your own themes based on an existing one rather than tweaking a theme for a movie project in progress. This one’s for the nonconformists among you who don’t want to be told that you’re stuck with Apple’s themes. You can customize themes while working with an existing project that contains stuff you’ve imported from iMovie and then save the theme for use with later projects. Another approach is to create a brand-new project—one without imported content—and spend your time building a theme you intend to save for later use. Which is the best way to go? It’s up to you. The advantage to working with a “live” project that contains a movie is that you can preview your theme with real material inside. On the other hand, starting a project from scratch keeps the stakes low, and lets you experiment freely with your new theme without worrying about how playing around with text blocks, drop zones, and menus will affect an important project. To start a project from scratch, launch iDVD—the last project you were working on will open—and choose File → New Project. Name and save your project, and choose a theme as the basis for your new one. We’ll show you how to save the project you’re building as a theme at the end of this section.

Editing Menu Backgrounds Figure 5.12: Drag a movie or a photo onto the Background button in the Settings tab of the Customize pane.

You can use an image or a movie as the background for a menu. It may be busy. It may be hard to read the text, but by golly, a photographic background can be a lot of fun. And a movie clip running on the menu screen? Use at your own risk. To change a menu’s background, follow these steps: 1. Click the Media tab in the Customize pane and then locate the photo or movie you want to use as the menu’s background. (You can also choose a photo or movie from the Finder.) 2. Drag the new background onto the Background button in the Settings tab. If you’ve chosen an item from the Photos or Movie pop-up menu, drag it from the selection area up to the Settings tab, which will open and allow you to drag it onto the Background button (see Figure 5.12). 3. You can revert to the default background by dragging the item you added out of the Background button.

Adding or Editing Audio Some themes include audio tracks; some don’t. You can add or replace audio for any existing theme in much the same way you altered the theme’s background—by dragging the audio file onto the Audio button in the Settings pane. Alternatively, click the Media tab and then choose Audio from the pop-up menu. Find a file on the list that you like, click on it, and press Play to hear it. Click Apply to add it to the current menu. When you click on the Settings tab, you see an icon indicating the audio file you’ve added. iDVD will play the file when you view this menu, unless you click the sound icon on the Audio button, which mutes the audio.

Editing Buttons Figure 5.13: Choose a shape from the options on the Button Style pop-up menu.

There are two kinds of buttons: text buttons and graphical buttons. Each graphical button has a border style, which you can change. To edit buttons, switch to the Settings tab of the Customize menu. Click the Style button in the Button area, and choose a button shape (see Figure 5.13), or choose the T option for a text-only button. Use the Size slider to adjust the button’s size. If you want to move buttons onscreen, click the Free Position radio button and move a button to a new position on the menu. (Press „-T to see the TV Safe Area of the screen while you work.) All buttons on a menu must be of the same style. To return to the theme’s original button style, choose From Theme.

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Saving Favorite Themes With custom backgrounds, audio, buttons, text, and motion, your project is no longer faithful to the theme you started with. If you like what you’ve done and would like to save the theme for future use, you can save it as a favorite theme. The theme will be saved without any content your project might contain, other than background audio and video you added while customizing the theme. You can also add themes to iDVD in other ways—several companies have published iDVD theme packs that you can install and use with your projects. To turn a set of customized settings into a favorite theme, open the Settings tab and click Save as Favorite. iDVD names the theme for the current project, but you can change it, of course. In the Save dialog box, choose whether to make the theme available to all users of this Mac, or just yourself. The Replace Existing check box will do just that, if you have a theme with the same name as the one you’ve just edited. If the box is checked, uncheck it to preserve the original version of the theme. The theme is now available under the Favorites item in the Themes pop-up menu. Adding new theme packs to iDVD is usually done with an installer provided on disc, but themes can be removed by deleting them from /Library/iDVD/Favorites on your hard drive, or from /Users/username/Library/iDVD/Favorites if the theme belongs to one user.

Can’t We All Just Get Along? Decoding DVD Formats

If you’ve glanced at the stacks of blank disc media in your local electronics store, you’ve seen them—the seemingly endless array of CD and DVD formats. Wondering which ones work with your SuperDrive? Read on. Modern DVDs come in two primary writable formats: DVD+R and DVD-R (pronounced DVD minus R). The two standards, developed by different vendor groups, are incompatible with one another. The “R” in each format stands for recordable, and indicates that you can burn data to the disc once. Rewritable (RW) versions of each format are also widely available. The Apple SuperDrive can burn DVD-R and DVD-RW media, but not DVD+R or RW. The maximum speed of writable DVD media appears on the packaging, and in the specs of your SuperDrive or any other DVD writer. Current SuperDrives operate at 4× or 8×, older ones at 2×, and some SuperDrive equivalent drives are rated at 8×, although most media is 2× or 4×. You can use any media speed and drive speed

combination; the drive is the limiting factor, so there’s no point in buying media that’s faster than your drive. Here’s an important note: If you intend to use 4× DVD-R media, it’s extremely critical that your SuperDrive firmware be up-to-date. Older firmware isn’t compatible with newer media, and the combination can damage both the drive and the discs. Read Apple’s explanation of the problem, and get the update from http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86130>. Although current SuperDrives support DVD-RW disc burning, older ones don’t, and iDVD doesn’t support multiple burnings at all. If your drive does support DVD-RW, you’ll need to use built-in disc burning, or a tool like Roxio’s Toast to burn discs multiple times. DVD-RW discs, like CD-RW media, are more expensive than DVD-R, so it doesn’t make sense to buy them unless you’re sure you will be able to burn a DVD more than once. RW media is often used to back up data that changes over time, like your Mac’s hard drive.

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TIP Whichever encoding option you choose, be prepared for burning your DVD to take one to five hours, depending on the length of the project, the encoding method you choose, and the speed of your DVD burner and CPU.

Archiving and Burning DVDs With all of your project elements in place, you’re almost ready to burn a DVD. First be sure that you’re completely happy with it: View each submenu, preview the movie and any slideshows you’ve created, and make sure all of your content appears in the TV Safe Area. Be sure, too, that Motion is turned on, if you’re using it. If you plan to burn the DVD from a Mac other than the one where you built the project, you have a bit more work to do. If you will burn your DVD on the Mac where you created the project, skip to the “Encoding” portion of this section.

Archiving a Project As we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, iDVD will let you create a project on a Mac that’s not equipped with a SuperDrive. However, you’ll need to move the project to a “superMac” to burn it. Before we get down to the business of burning a disc, we need to show you how to archive a project so that it can be moved to a different Mac if you’ve built yours on a Mac without a SuperDrive. Most folks who create and burn their projects on the same computer won’t need to archive their projects, and can skip on down to “Encoding.” Why archive, rather than simply copying the iDVD project file? The answer is that the project file does not contain your movie or the other items you’ve added to your project. Instead, the project has pointers to these items on your hard drive—iDVD won’t be able to find the assets you need if you simply move the project file to another Mac. Archiving a project imports all the essential pieces, such as the slideshow photos, movies, and so on, into the project, allowing you to copy a single file to the Mac with the SuperDrive. Archiving also makes the project file considerably larger, so your destination should have plenty of free disk space. Although a DVD only holds 4.7GB of data, a project file might be double that size because the video files have not yet been compressed. When you’re ready, save your project and choose File → Archive. You may be asked to save again. Next, iDVD presents a Save dialog for the archive. Notice that the dialog shows the size of the project you’re about to save. If you aren’t sure how much disk space you have available, switch to the Finder and check. The Save dialog also has two check boxes that allow you to include themes and/or encoded files. You should include themes if you are using a theme that isn’t on the Mac where you will burn the DVD. If you’re using a theme you have created or a third-party theme, you definitely need to include themes. Include encoded files with your media files on your project, and it will improve the performance of your DVD burn because you won’t have to re-encode them when you burn. Notice that disabling the two check boxes changes the size of the archive file, but not by much, especially the themes option, which reduced the archive size by 100MB for a 9GB project. Click Save to build the archive. When the project is saved, you can copy it to a Mac containing a SuperDrive using an Ethernet or wireless network and file sharing, or by connecting the two Macs using FireWire Target mode—connecting the two Macs with a FireWire cable and mounting one of them as a disk drive on the other one’s desktop. When the Macs are connected, copy the archived DVD project file to the SuperDrive-equipped one, and open the archive. Next you’ll choose an encoding method, and finally, burn your DVD.

Encoding If you’ve used 700MB CDs for any length of time, you might think that a 4.7GB DVD holds an enormous amount of data. That’s true by comparison, but video files are so large that they must be highly compressed in order to fit on a disc. When video footage is compressed, a DVD will hold a

Chapter 5 iDVD

Figure 5.14: The Status pane provides statistics about the disc you’re about to burn and shows its media elements.

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two hours of movie. iDVD compresses video by converting it into a compressed format (encoding) it. You have two encoding choices: Best Quality and Best Performance. As usual, there’s a trade-off between the two, but it’s not as simple as it might sound. As the name suggests, the Best Performance setting speeds up the DVD burning process. Video content is limited to 60 minutes because the Best Performance encoding scheme compresses all video at the same rate. Best Quality is slower because it examines all video content more closely and optimizes compression settings based on the quality and content of your video. Because of its greater compression capabilities, Best Quality encoding allows you to stuff up to two hours of video onto a DVD. With Best Performance selected, you can also choose background encoding, allowing you to use your computer while the DVD is being burned. Best Quality doesn’t allow this, and burning will also take longer. To help you decide which encoding method to use, click the Status pane in the Customize pane. iDVD shows the amount of time your video requires, along with other statistics about your project (see Figure 5.14). With less than 60 minutes of video, you can choose Best Performance. To pick an encoding option, choose iDVD → Preferences. In the General tab, select one of the two encoding options.

Burn a Disc

Figure 5.15: We chose an iDVD 3.0 theme called Light Box. When the red warning indicator appears, click to verify that you want to burn a DVD.

Get ready to burn your DVD. First be sure there’s enough hard disk space available. You should have free space equivalent to twice the size of your project. You can switch to the Finder to see how much disk space you have, or choose Project → Project Info within iDVD. You can also set the name of the DVD (it is named for your project by default) and see the video, images, and audio files that link to your project. In iDVD’s main window, be sure that Motion is enabled if your project uses motion. Click the Burn button on the iDVD button bar. The button changes to show a red warning indicator (see Figure 5.15). Click it again to confirm that you want to burn a disc. If iDVD has all the information it needs (links are working, Motion is turned on), iDVD asks for a blank DVD. If there’s a problem, iDVD presents you with an explanatory error dialog. The four-stage burning process begins when you insert the blank media into your SuperDrive. iDVD first prepares the disc and then renders menus and slideshows, encodes (compresses) project assets, and finally multiplexes and burns the disc. When the burn is complete, your SuperDrive spits out the disc and iDVD asks whether you would like to make another disc. Even if you want to make additional copies, test the disc you’ve made first. Quit iDVD and insert the new disc into your SuperDrive. (DVD Player should open and display your DVD’s main menu.) You should also test the DVD in a DVD player connected to a television, and in a PC with a DVD drive, if possible. If everything looks as it should, burn additional copies with iDVD, or with other disc duplicating software you might have.

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PROJECT: Commemorate that dance party with a highly customized DVD ou can dump your dance party video onto a disc, but we’re going to use iDVD’s theme customization options to make a truly unique project. We’ll use two movies, a slideshow, and some dance music, largely obliterating the visual elements of Apple’s canned themes but relying on its underlying drop zones and “hooks” to design something groovy.

Y

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EXPORT THE PARTY FOOTAGE: Add chapter markers to the edited video of your dance party in iMovie. Although we showed you how to make a movie that focused on you in the last chapter, we’re going to assume that you’ve made a longer one that doesn’t ignore your friends. Make chapters short, because this is a party video. Name them for the people or events featured in them, so that DVD viewers can quickly browse to the parts they want to see. While you’re still in iMovie, find some footage that would make a good background movie for your DVD’s main menu. The ideal choice would be a 10–30 second clip with lots of dancing or other activity. Select only this clip on the timeline and choose File → Share. Click the QuickTime tab and click Share Selected Clips Only. Choose Full DV Quality from the Compression menu and then click OK and save the movie to your Movies folder. Back in the iDVD pane, export the main movie to iDVD.

Export a clip to use as a background.

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Here’s the Montage theme with our movie’s title.

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CHOOSE A THEME FOR THE MAIN MENU: When iDVD launches, give your party project a name and choose a theme from the Customize pane. We chose Montage because it uses bold, bright type and (currently) has text buttons. We’re going to replace the theme’s current background with a movie, so these contrast-enhancing features will come in handy. In case you’re wondering why we aren’t going to plop the movie down in Montage’s existing drop zone, we did, but then realized that the animated background interfered with the movie. The beauty of the Clear command (Control-click an item in the drop zone and select Clear) and instant theme switching is that it doesn’t take much work to completely change the look of your menu screen. We learned through trial and error with other themes the movie looks great with Montage.

CHANGE BUTTON STYLE: The Montage theme uses text buttons in a vertical line. Looks OK, but we like the irregular rectangles. Select a button on the menu and click the Style button on the Settings tab. Choose the irregular square buttons shown at left. The main movie now shows in the Play Movie button, and a folder indicates Scene Selection. Unfortunately, the buttons are a bit stacked up. Click the Free Position radio button and drag the Scene Selection folder somewhere else on the screen. Press „-T to remind yourself of the TV Safe Area. To dress up the Scene Selection button, go to the Media pane and drag a photo from your party album onto the Choose a button style folder button. from the menu.

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ADD THE MOVIE BACKGROUND: OK, it’s finally time to bring in the QuickTime movie you exported from iMovie. Because you saved it to your Movies folder its thumbnail appears with the other movies in the Media pane. Drag it up to the Settings tab to open the tab, and then down onto the Background button. iDVD begins to play the movie and its audio. Because you want to use party music for this DVD, choose audio from the pop-up menu in the Media pane and locate your party playlist. Now choose just the right track to match the clip, select it, and click Apply. With the movie and audio in place, take a look at your menu screen. Do the text and still image in the drop zone still stand out, now that a movie appears in the background? You can change text color and size by selecting a text block and using the menus and sliders in the Settings pane to make adjustments.

Drag the movie to the Background button.

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ADD A SLIDESHOW: A batch of slides will serve two purposes—we can show off some of the cool digital photos taken at the party, and we can share high-quality copies on the DVD. Choose a location for the slideshow button, probably on the main menu screen. Click the Slideshow button to add it there. Under the Media tab’s Photos menu, find your party album and drag some or all of the photos onto the new Slideshow button. To change the button’s icon, click once on the Slideshow button and use the slider to move through the slides until you find one you want to use. Single-click twice to edit the slideshow’s name. Double-click the slideshow button to configure and organize the show. Change the order of the slides, set their duration onscreen and choose a transition if you like. Be sure to check Add Original Choose an icon with the Photos on DVD-ROM to include high-res copies for your DVD slideshow slider. viewers to keep.

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EDIT THE SUBMENU: Double-click the Scene Selection button to open this project’s submenu. You’ll see a list of scenes, probably in a theme you don’t want to use. Choose another one, preferably one with photo buttons. We dug into the iDVD 3.0 theme list and picked Portfolio Color, partly because many of the 4.0 themes with multiple images had wedding or kids’ themes. Of course, you can edit the background and text color of any theme, and there are several that use text buttons for scene selection, but contain photo drop zones as well. You could drop your own still into one of these themes to represent the scene, rather than relying on the movie’s first frame, as the Portfolio theme does.

Choose a submenu theme.

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Chapter 6

iChat AV Instant messaging has come a long way since it first popped up in the America Online (AOL) software as a means for members to communicate with each other instantly. Today, instant messaging is more than a way for teenagers to pass notes. Lots of folks have cut their long distance phone bills by chatting up a storm with friends and relatives. Even businesspeople use chat as a substitute for the phone, meetings, and even email. With audio and video support built into Apple’s iChat AV, AT&T and the baby Bells should be quaking in their boots. Chat has permeated the culture, too. IM has become a verb, as in “IM me later.” Someone you know is probably IMing you right now. Apple got on the messaging bandwagon with iChat, an application that lets you use its own .Mac, AOL, or AOL’s nonmember AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) services to communicate with anyone on the Internet. You can type text, speak to your chat partner, or connect a webcam to your Mac and send your image across the Internet. Even if you don’t have an iChat-compatible account from AOL or .Mac, you can IM other Mac users on your home or office network. In this chapter, we burrow deep into iChat AV. We give you a bunch of tips on how to customize your chat windows, use the Connection Doctor, transfer files, set up chat rooms, override your buddies’ image icons, use video chat effectively, and a lot Stay in constant touch with iChat. more.

Whether you’re chatting for fun or profit, iChat AV gives messaging a Mac look and feel

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RENDEZVOUS WINDOW

STATUS ONLINE BUDDIES

iChat AVquick start

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SCREEN NAME A/V ICON

OFFLINE BUDDIES

ADD BUDDY

AUDIO CHAT

TEXT CHAT

VIDEO CHAT

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BUDDY ICON VIDEO WINDOW

Keep in Touch for Free

INTERNET CHAT WINDOW

You don’t need a phone card or a fistful of cell minutes to stay connected to people around the world. Type your thoughts, or use audio and video to express yourself to one person or a small group with iChat AV.

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Getting an iChat Account You need three basic ingredients to begin using iChat: an Internet connection, an account, and some chat partners. We’ll assume you already have the first. Fortunately, like iChat itself, a chat account can be acquired free. You can also chat using a .Mac or AOL account, if you have either. Acquiring chat partners depends upon your own wit and charm, and we can’t help you with that.

Chat the .Mac Way Apple’s $99-a-year .Mac service provides subscribers with an email address, web and disk storage space, and a batch of tools for using it all. .Mac’ers can use a mac.com email address to log in to iChat and to communicate with both .Mac members and AOL/AIM users. You can also get a free iChat-only account from .Mac, along with a 60-day trial of the full .Mac service. Learn more about .Mac and the trial at www.mac.com. As you will see in the “Basic Accounting” section, you can begin your free iChat account within iChat.

AIM Free for All AOL offers free AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) accounts that work with AOL’s own client software for Macs and other platforms, and a variety of third-party clients, too. AIM users can talk to one another and to AOL users. The good news for would-be iChatters is that if you have either an AOL or AIM account, you can use it with iChat AV. You can get an AIM account at my.screenname.aol.com. You’ll need to provide a valid email address, but otherwise you won’t have to surrender personal information. The choice between free .Mac and AIM accounts is a matter of personal preference. You can log in to your .Mac chat account from any AIM client, even that non-Mac you’re forced to use at work (ugh!).

Basic Accounting

Figure 6.1: When you are logged into iChat, your screen name appears in the Buddy List window.

Do you have your .Mac, AIM, or AOL login information handy? Good. Fire up iChat. If you have never launched iChat on this Mac, the iChat wizard opens. From here, you can log in with your existing account, or get your free iChat account from .Mac. The wizard will ask if you want to activate Rendezvous messaging, a tool for trading messages and files on your home or office network. If a camera is connected to your Mac, the wizard will show you a live video image of your face (or whatever you’ve pointed the camera at). You can readjust the camera now or later. When you’ve finished with the wizard, iChat launches and displays an empty buddy list (see Figure 6.1).

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If you have used this AIM or .Mac account on another computer, notice that names show up in the Buddy List window when you log in. Both .Mac and AIM maintain your buddy list for you, so it’s not necessary to enter the info again. As you will learn later in this chapter, however, you can add your buddies to your Mac OS X address book, turning those cryptic screen names into your friends’ real monikers.

Using Multiple Accounts Your multiple personalities are welcome in iChat AV, but you must set up all your accounts separately, rather than creating entries for them all at once. Set up each chat account you have and select one when you launch iChat. If multiple people use your Mac, you can switch iChat identities on the fly, or have each person log in to their own user account on the Mac and use their own identity in iChat. Choose iChat → Preferences and then click the Accounts tab. To add an AIM account, type a user ID in the Screen Name field. iChat warns that you are changing your screen name and logs you out of the previous one. In the next dialog box, type your password and click Log In. To add an existing .Mac account, choose Use My .Mac Account from the AIM Screen Name menu. A .Mac account that has already been configured will open automatically. If you haven’t used the account on this Mac, type the screen name (your .Mac email address) and your password. iChat logs you in. To switch between accounts, choose a screen name from the pop-up menu. You’ll be asked to confirm the change.

Find Some Buddies

Figure 6.2: Filling out this dialog with your buddy’s screen name and first and last names creates an entry for that person in your Mac OS X address book.

You can’t very well chat with yourself, now can you? The next step in your iChat adventure is to locate some folks to talk with. (AOL called them buddies and the name stuck.) All you need to know are your friends’ screen names and the service they use (AIM/AOL or .Mac). Click the plus sign in the lower-left corner of the Buddy List window, or choose Buddies → Add Buddy. A window showing the contents of your Mac OS X address book appears. If you haven’t used the Address Book application, you’ll see entries for yourself and for Apple Computer. If you do use Address Book, you can use the search field to locate someone who’s already listed there, or you can add a new entry for your buddy. To add a screen name to an entry, double-click the name and enter the service and account name. To make a new entry, click New Person. Choose .Mac or AIM and type your buddy’s account name. Add more information if you like—filling in the first and last name fields display your buddy’s name, rather than a screen name in your buddy list (see Figure 6.2). Click Add when you’re done. There’s another way to collect buddies. When someone initiates a chat session with you—a friend who knows your .Mac or AOL address and has converted it to a screen name—you can add that person to your buddy list after you have accepted her invitation to chat. Choose Buddies →

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife Add Buddy <username> to your address book. The familiar buddy-adding dialog box appears, with the screen name filled in. Enter first and last names if you wish, and click Add.

Buddy Groups

Figure 6.3: Drag a buddy name to a group to add it to the group.

iChat gives you the option to organize your buddies into groups. You might use these groups to sort your buddy list, to quickly begin a chat with all members of the group, or simply to manage a large number of buddies. Like buddies themselves, groups are stored on your chat service server, so you can use the groups when you log in to your account from a different computer. To see buddy groups, choose iChat → Preferences. In the General tab, click Use Groups in Buddy List. A new menu appears in your buddy list with the item All Groups selected. Choose Groups from the menu to view the Groups pane. To add a group, click the plus button and then type a name. To add members, drag them from your buddy list onto the group’s name (see Figure 6.3). A buddy can be a member of multiple groups. By default, all buddies are members of the Buddies group. To move a buddy to a different group, drag it to the new group. Option-drag a person to a group to copy the buddy. To remove a buddy from a group but not from your buddy list, first be sure that the buddy is in at least one other group, and then delete the name from one of the groups. To see the members of a group, select the group from the Groups pop-up menu. Multiple groups may appear simultaneously (see Figure 6.4), so uncheck a group to hide it.

Customize the iChat Experience Before you invite company over, you make sure your home looks its best, right? So it is with iChat AV. You can make the text and images you see and those you send to your friends look their best. You can control the look of text and images in iChat, as well as set up alerts and status indicators.

Custom Text

Figure 6.4: Two groups appear in the Groups popup menu, and all members of each show up on your buddy list.

Customize the look of text you send and receive in iChat AV, as well as the chat windows themselves. Choose iChat → Preferences and click the Messages tab. You can change the color of the balloon and the text you type during chats. The changes affect your view and that of your buddies. To choose a color that doesn’t appear on the pop-up menus, choose Other and use the color picker to make your own. It probably goes without saying that picking contrasting balloon and text colors is a good idea. To change the look of text your buddies send, click Reformat Incoming Messages and then choose colors from the menus below. Leaving this box unchecked allows your buddies to send you custom text.

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TIP If your buddy’s computer doesn’t have the font that your customized text uses, your font choice will be ignored. However, any changes to text size will apply to the font your buddy is using.

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For control of the type, style, and size of messages, click either Set Font button. Pick a font from the Family list, and notice that the display in iChat Preferences changes to reflect it. Choose size and weight options from the dialog box if you like. When you’re happy with the font, size, and weight you’ve chosen, click the close box. We’re not sure why, but you can add a background image in your chat window. The image appears only in your chat window. To add a background to a current chat, drag an image into the chat window. To add a background to all chats, open a new chat window and choose View → Set Chat Background and then navigate to the image you want to use. Figure 6.5 uses a desktop image as its background. To remove the background, choose View → Clear Background. You might need to experiment to find an image that looks good as a chat window background. Only a small portion of most large photos will appear in the chat window, and small images will tile and be repeated. Try an abstract image, or perhaps a logo or bit of clip art.

Chat Status

Figure 6.5: Chat on a pretty background.

Figure 6.6: Icons for available buddies are green, idle ones are yellow, and those who are away are red.

When you’re logged in to iChat, your buddies see a status indicator next to your name. It can be green (available), red (away), or yellow (idle). By default, you are available unless your Mac has been idle for some time, changing your status to idle until you type or move the mouse again. You can change your status to Away to let your buddies know that you are around, but that you would prefer not to be disturbed. You can still initiate chat sessions or send and receive messages while you’re away. Figure 6.6 shows all of the default status options. All buddies you enter appear on the buddy list. Those who are online and available right now are at the top. Next come those who list their status as “away,” those whose computers are idle, and finally, the names of buddies who are not online (hide these by choosing View → Show Offline Buddies). You can use custom labels instead of Available or Away, to give your buddies more details about your doings. Buddies’ custom status messages appear below their screen names. To add new status menu items, choose Edit Status Menu from the Status pop-up, right below your name. Click the plus button below either the Available or Away columns to add a new label and then type a word or phrase. Delete an item from the menu by selecting it and clicking the minus button. Click OK to finish editing the menu. To add a new status item on the fly, choose Custom from either the Available or the Away sections of the menu. The Status display changes to a text field where you can type your new status. Status Preferences. To change the look of your buddies’ status indicators, choose iChat → Preferences and click Use Shapes to Indicate Status, found on the General tab. There’s also an option to add an iChat status menu to the menu bar. You can use the When I Return to My Computer and My Status Is Away radio buttons to give iChat instructions for changing your status automatically. A Cool Way to Customize Status. David Remahl’s iChat Status displays the currently playing iTunes song to update your status menu automatically. Your buddies will know instantly what you’re listening to by looking at your iChat status line, and you can customize both the look of the status item, and when iChat invokes it. Figure 6.7 shows how it looks when you and some of your buddies have iChat Status and iTunes going.

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Get Some Buddy Icons

Figure 6.7: With iChat Status, you can broadcast the song you’re listening to. If your buddies use it, you’ll see their songs.

The image to the right of your screen name in the Buddy List window is your buddy icon. As you might have guessed, these icons can easily be changed. When your name pops up on a friend’s buddy list, your custom icon goes with it. To add a custom buddy icon, drag an image over your current buddy icon; or choose Buddies → Change My Picture and then click Choose and locate your image. Now the window displays a portion of the image. Use the slider to see more or less, and then click and drag to center the image in the square (see Figure 6.8). When the icon is sized and centered, click Set to use it. We’ll show you how to use a video snapshot as your buddy icon in the “Audio and Video Chat” section of this chapter. Each buddy icon you use is added to a palette of recent pictures. To change your icon to one of these, click and hold your current icon. Drag to the one you want.

Buddy Actions and Alerts

Figure 6.8: Use the slider to place more or less of an image in the square, and then drag the image so that the portion you want to use as an icon is centered.

You can use actions and alerts to find out when a buddy comes online, when his status changes, and when he’s left the proverbial building. Alerts apply to yourself and all buddies. Actions are attached to a specific buddy. To configure alerts, choose iChat → Preferences and then click the Alerts tab. Alerts consist of sounds, bouncing icons, and/or speech. They can be triggered when you log in or out, when any buddy becomes available or unavailable, and when messages and chat invitations are sent and received. All of the configurable alerts have some sort of sound or animation associated with them already. Change them with the pop-up menus. Announcing when your buddies become available is one of the coolest alerts. To set it up, choose Buddy Becomes Available from the event pop-up. Click the Speak Text check box (see Figure 6.9). Notice that the field is filled in. You can edit the text if you want. Leave the “@” characters somewhere in the field to hear your buddy’s screen name spoken. If you have entered a buddy’s first and/or last name, iChat will say it. To set up actions for a specific buddy, select it in the Buddy List (if your online buddies aren’t visible, choose View → Show Offline Buddies) and press „-I. Choose Actions from the Show menu. Choose from the same events and responses that are available under Alerts. When you configure an action, you tell iChat to always take this action. You can also click the Perform Action Only Next Time Event Occurs.

Text Chat

Figure 6.9: Type a custom sentence to announce your buddy’s arrival. Be sure to retain “@” to hear your buddy’s name or screen name.

There are several ways to exchange text messages: send an instant message over the Internet, using .Mac or AOL/AIM to find your buddy, or send a direct message from your computer to theirs. Direct messages bypass the services’ server, sending the message directly to the other computer. Some network firewalls prevent this feature from operating. To begin an instant message chat with a buddy, double-click the buddy’s name. Type your opening gambit in the message box and then press Return. If your buddy accepts your chat invitation, you should receive a response presently. From there, it’s simply a matter of typing, waiting and typing some more (see Figure 6.10). Notice that your buddy’s icon sometimes appears before a response does. This lets you know that your buddy has started typing—so hang on before you jump in with another bit of sparkling repartee. If, as sometimes happens, your buddy changes her mind about what she was typing and deletes text instead of sending it, the icon disappears. Use your discretion about jumping in.

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To begin a direct chat, Controlclick your buddy’s name and choose Send Direct Message.

Figure 6.10: One buddy waits for the other to finish typing a reply.

Editing, Spell-Checking, and Emoticons All of the usual text editing techniques work in iChat. You can cut, copy, and paste text, and check spelling before you send. Selecting and Control-clicking text in the Send box gives you access to font, spelling, and speech menus. The most useful way to check spelling is to do so as you type. Choose Edit → Spelling → Check Spelling as you Type. iChat underlines misspelled words. You can correct them with the contextual menu. To include a hyperlink in a message, type the text you want to link and then select it. Press „-K and type or paste the URL in the text box that opens. To help you get your point across, iChat supplies emoticons, a.k.a. smileys. You don’t have to remember how to type ‘em to use ‘em. In the chat window’s end box, click the emoticon to see smileys (see Figure 6.11). Drag over one to read a definition. Click to select the one you want. If you do by some chance remember how a smiley should be typed, iChat will convert your keystrokes into a graphical smiley when you send the message. Figure 6.11: Choose an emoticon from the list.

TIP Be sure to choose a unique name for your chat so your buddies will be sure to join the right one.

Group Chats You can set up chats with multiple people, too. To invite them, choose File → New Chat, or select several online buddies and Control-click. Choose Invite to Chat from the contextual menu. The usual chat window opens, with a pane on the left for your prospective chat partners’ names. To add even more people to your chat, click the plus button. A list of online buddies appears. To add someone not on your buddy list, choose Other and type the person’s screen name. Be sure to include @mac.com for .Mac users. Type a chat invitation and press Return. As people accept your chat invitation, their status in your chat window changes, and each buddy appears in everyone else’s window. Send and receive messages just as you would in a two-person chat. You can also create chat rooms—public sessions that folks who know the session’s name can join at their leisure. To start one, choose File → Go to Chat. Type a name for the chat, such as AcmeBudgetchat, and click OK. An empty chat window with a Participants pane opens. Now let people know about the chat. To enter it, your participants repeat the same steps. Choose File → Go to Chat and then type the chat name. Each participant appears in the Participants pane.

Sending Images and Files iChat and the services it supports allow you to exchange files during chats. You can quickly transfer an image file right from the chat window, or attach any kind of file as you would to an email message.

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Sending Images. To send an image during a chat, type the text you want to send and then drag the image into the text field. An icon appears in the text field. Be careful not to drag the image into the chat window, or you will change the chat background rather than send an image. Your buddy sees the image in the chat window (see Figure 6.12). Sending Files. To send a file during a chat, choose Edit → Attach File and navigate to the one you want. A file icon appears in the text field. Your buddy receives the file as a link in the chat window. Singleclicking the file downloads it to your default downloads folder. Double-clicking opens the file.

Audio and Video Chat iChat AV supports both audio and video chat between people with microphones and cameras connected to their Macs. One quick way to find out whether you have what you need for audio chat is to take a look at the spot next to your buddy icon. If you see a phone receiver icon, you’ve got a mic. Same goes for your buddies. With a camera connected, the icon looks like a movie camera. Control-clicking a buddy’s name shows audio and/or video chat options enabled.

Speak Your Mind

Figure 6.12: Here is a true multimedia chat. Shelly has sent Frank a photo, and Frank has responded with a file.

TIP You can send files, email, or text messages to buddies while you’re chatting via audioby using the Edit menu to choose an option.

To begin an audio chat, click a name in your buddy list, and either click the Audio button (the phone receiver below the list), or Controlclick the name and choose Invite to Audio Chat. When your invitation has been accepted, you see the audio controller onscreen. The controller has a volume control and a Mute button. Simply speak into your microphone and listen for your buddy’s response. The keys to successful audio chat are the sound level and your ability to communicate with your buddy. Set the level to maximum, and be sure to speak directly (but not too loudly) into your mic. When you’re finished speaking, give your buddy time to answer. Depending upon the speed of your respective Internet connections, you may experience delays that disrupt the rhythm of your conversation. Be patient and give each other time to speak and be heard. If your buddy doesn’t have a mic, but you do, you may be able to host a one-way audio chat. Your buddy must have software and hardware that supports it. If the one-way chat option is available from the menu, you should be able to get it done. The audio equivalent of Away buddy status is to disable your mic. Choosing Video → Microphone Enabled (unchecking it) makes you aurally invisible, even if you’re quite willing to participate in text chats.

See and Be Seen with iSight or a DV Camera With an iSight, a FireWire webcam, or a compatible FireWire digital video camera, you can send your image and voice to other iChat AV users. To work with iChat AV, a DV camera must support analog pass-through, a feature typically used to connect an analog video recorder to a digital camcorder (see Chapter 4, “iMovie” for more details). Fortunately, many consumer-grade video camcorders support pass-through.

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Slumming Use a cheapo USB webcam with iChat AV

iChatUSBcam’s video settings help cheap camera images look better.

Thanks to the intrepid Mac software community, you can beam your visage across the Internet over USB. You’ll spend between $10 and $30 for the software you need (plus the cost of a webcam), but you can try before you buy with demo versions of it all. First, get a USB webcam if you don’t already have one. We’ve seen them for $20–$70. Next, you’ll need to download drivers and supporting software. Get the free Macam driver at http://webcam-osx. sourceforge.net. As we write this, the driver had not been updated for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Camera-maker Multi-Cam has a patched version (www.multicam.net/camera_downloads.html) that works with Panther. To see whether the driver works with your camera, plug in the camera and double-click the Macam application. Click the Play button to see video. Don’t worry if it’s dark, fuzzy, or otherwise ugly. We’ll show you how to position and light yourself when we’ve finished installing the software.

If you see a video image, the Macam driver is working. Quit the application and copy the macam.component folder into /Library/QuickTime on your startup disk. If the Macam driver doesn’t work, try the $19.95 IOXperts’ (www.ioxperts.com/ usbwebcam.html) driver and follow the site’s installation instructions. With a working driver installed, you need to enable iChat support for the camera. You first need Unsanity’s Application Enhancer (APE), a tool for adding new modules to System Preferences. Get it at www.unsanity.com/products. If you already have APE, be sure you’re using the latest version. Restart your Mac after installing or updating APE. Next, install Ecamm’s iChatUSBcam (www.ecamm.com/mac/ichatusbcam), which allows the camera driver to work with iChat. To verify that it’s installed and working, choose Apple menu → System Preferences and open APE Manager. Click the iChatUSBcam item. You should see an iChat icon. In iChat, the camera icon appears next to your buddy icon. As we were putting this book to bed, Ecamm was testing iChatUSBcam 2.0, which doesn’t require APE and lets you share your Mac’s screen via iChat AV. To get the best image from your cheap camera, preview your video in iChat and choose Video → Video Settings. Use the brightness, contrast, and other settings to improve image quality. By the way, these settings come from iChatUSBcam, not iChat itself.

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TIP Be sure to run Software Update after you connect an iSight for the first time to make sure you have the most recent iSight software.

Figure 6.13: Perfect your own video image before you invite others to chat.

Getting an iSight to work with your Mac is as simple as plugging it into a FireWire port (and keeping it from flopping over, but we’ll get to that a little later). To use your FireWire DV camera, turn it on and connect it to a FireWire port. Apple says you need at least a 600MHz G3, G4, or G5 processor to use video chat. The guideline gives you some idea of the horsepower required to send and receive video. A slow Internet connection can also make video chat difficult. Fear not. Budget-conscious folks and those with older Macs can use a USB webcam to work around the speed bump, and save a few bucks in the process (see the “Slumming” sidebar).

Video Setup Mount your camera so that it points toward you. Be sure that there’s plenty of ambient light available, especially if you are using an iSight or a webcam. The iSight’s greatest weakness is that you must either clamp it or stick it to your Mac or another surface. Your goal is to be able to sit comfortably and be seen on camera while you also make eye contact with your buddy’s video image. If the iSight’s inability to stand on its own (nonexistent) feet gets you down, try the SightFlex iSight stand from MacMice ($30, www.macmice.com). We’ve also seen homemade stands involving tripods, and even a compact disc combined with the supplied iSight clip. To be sure that your camera is working and aimed correctly at its subject (your head, most likely), click the movie camera icon next to your name. A video window opens, displaying a live image. Readjust or move the camera into position, and bring in additional light if the image is too dark. Griffin Technology’s SightLight ($40, www.griffintechnology.com), which fits around the business end of the iSight, is both effective and unobtrusive. Sit as you intend to during your video chat, looking at the camera (see Figure 6.13). If your Mac or camera has a microphone, speak into it and notice the effect on the sound level. Adjust the mic or your voice, or go to the Sound pane in System Preferences and adjust the mic’s volume. Click Preferences to choose an audio source, and to adjust bandwidth settings if you want. Choose from available sound inputs with the microphone pop-up menu. If your connection to the Internet is a slow one, you might want to choose a bandwidth limit that corresponds to the speed of your connection. To begin a video chat, select a buddy who also has a camera and click the Video Chat button below the buddy list, or Control-click the buddy’s name and choose Invite to Video Chat. If your buddy accepts your invitation, a video window opens showing your buddy’s image and your own in a corner of the window (see Figure 6.14). You can now see and talk to each other. Center the video window so that you can make eye contact with your buddy in it. Having the window in line with your camera also helps you see both your buddy and the camera. To enlarge the chat window, click the full screen button, or drag the window to enlarge it. You can mute chat audio by clicking the microphone button, or pause the chat by choosing Video → Pause Video.

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Move your inset image to a different part of the video window by dragging it. In full-screen mode, mousing over the image displays buttons for closing the inset, muting your own microphone, and viewing full-screen. You can also resize the inset by dragging the upper-right corner. Just as iChat supports one-way audio chat, you can use the one-way video option to make a presentation. Just Controlclick your buddy’s name and choose Invite to OneWay Video Chat. Your buddy need only have iChat AV and a Mac with enough horsepower to receive your image. Figure 6.14: The person you’re chatting with appears in the main video window, while your own image is an inset in the corner.

TIP If you use your Mac’s built-in firewall, Rendezvous messaging might be blocked. If you get an error when you try to enable Rendezvous in iChat, you can enable iChat in the Sharing pane of System Preferences. Click the Open Sharing Prefs button to go there.

Rendezvous with Destiny Rendezvous is Apple’s local networking protocol. Now don’t get freaked out—we’re not going super geeky on you. A networking protocol simply establishes a common language that computers and other devices can agree upon and use. Rendezvous’ job is to give Macs on a local network instant access to one another’s stuff. Sharing in iTunes and iPhoto uses Rendezvous, for example. iChat users on the same network don’t need to know one another’s screen names to use text, audio, and video chat. All you need to do is enable Rendezvous messaging and choose Window → Rendezvous to see who else has done the same. Instead of your .Mac or AIM screen name, Rendezvous displays your name as entered when you registered your Mac or added your own info to the Address Book. If you didn’t enable Rendezvous when you used iChat for the first time, choose iChat Preferences and then click the Accounts tab. Click Enable local Rendezvous messaging. Choose Window → Rendezvous to open the local equivalent of your buddy list. All iChat features are available in Rendezvous. All chats on a local network are direct chats because they don’t use a remote server as an intermediary. When you type during a Rendezvous chat, your text appears almost immediately, even before you send the message. This takes a little getting used to, and might put you on your guard for ill-conceived or badly typed messages. We’ve also noticed that when you send an image in a Rendezvous chat session, it does not appear in the chat window, but is transferred as any other file would be, with an icon and a link.

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PROJECT: Plan your next party with your friends in a group iChat

Y

our party was a great success, so much so that you’re planning another one. Why not plan it using an iChat group chat, have a little fun with buddy icons, and share some party pix, while you’re at it?

1

ENTER SCREEN NAMES: Did you think to get the screen names of those really cool people your friend Steve brought to the party? Hope so, because you’ll want to see them at the next soirée. In iChat, add new people to your buddy list and update those already in your address book by adding their screen names. If you add screen names to Address Book, you’ll need to add them as buddies within iChat, but if you start in iChat, adding their name and buddy information updates both your address book and buddy list. Now open iChat Preferences and click the Messages tab. Be sure that the Automatically Save Chat Transcripts check Add and update buddies to your list. box is enabled.

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ADD BUDDY ICONS: Have a little fun by giving your buddies their own party-themed icons. Each person can transmit a custom icon, but you can override it (only on your Mac, though). Go through the digital photos you took at the party. Find images that include your chat buddies and have good icon potential. Because icons are tiny and square, look for large and definite shapes with plenty of contrast. Then enhance or sharpen the image as necessary. Crop the image to a square. Because iChat has zoom and crop tools, you don’t need to make a precise zoom in your image editor; just get close. In iChat, click on a buddy (he doesn’t need to be online) and press „-I. Select Address Card from Your custom icon appears on your buddy’s the Show menu. Now drag your image from iPhoto or the Finder into the icon address card and the buddy list. square. The Buddy Picture window opens. Drag the image to center it in the square and use the zoom slider to see more or less of the image. Click Set when you’re satisfied with the look of your icon. Click Always Use This Picture to override your buddy’s own icon.

3

CREATE A CHAT GROUP: Now you’re ready to relive last night’s good times and plan for your next shindig. Select several buddies who are online (click one and then Shift-click the rest) and then Controlclick and choose Invite to Chat from the contextual menu. Your buddies appear in the left pane. Type an opening message and send your chat invitation. As they accept your invitation, your buddies can all see one another’s messages. As new buddies come online, you can add them to the chat by clicking the plus button below the list of chat participants. The Buddies can exchange messages with multiple people pop-up menu shows your online in a group chat. buddies.

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4

TALK SMACK TO EACH OTHER: Go ahead. Tell the story about Joe’s rather unusual interpretive dance on the front lawn. Illustrate your amusement with a smiley. Click the pop-up menu at the end of the text field and choose an emoticon from the list. When Mary compliments you on those fabulous crab cakes, send everyone a link to the recipe. Type crab cakes and select the text. Press „-K and then add the URL. Get your rowdy buddies’ attention by applying a crazy font and large type size to a message.

Express yourself with smileys, links, and text.

5

SEND FILES: Don’t be the only one to enjoy the photos you’ve made into silly buddy icons. You can’t send images or other files within a group chat, but you can send a file to one person by Control-clicking her name in the Buddy List—not the group chat window—and choosing Send File. Navigate to the file and send it.

Select a buddy and choose Send File.

6

CONFIRM IN EMAIL: Turns out your chat was almost as much fun as the party, and included lots of great ideas for the next one. To preserve it along with the rest of your memories, choose File → Open in iChat, and navigate to username/Documents/iChats and locate the one you want. Look it over and notice that the custom buddy icons you made for your own amusement are preserved. When you send the transcript to your buddies, they will be able to see what a creative person you are. Choose File → Save a Copy As and rename the file and save it. While you’re still in iChat, select one or more buddies. Choose Buddies → Send Email. Your mail program opens and addresses a blank message to the buddies you’ve picked, assuming that their address cards contain email addresses. Attach the chat transcript and send the message.

Chapter 7

iCal Knowing your own schedule is a good thing. Tapping into the doings of others— including your spouse’s social calendar, sports events, movie premieres, and Radiohead’s concerts—is a very good thing. iCal makes it simple not only to manage happenings in your own life, but also to keep tabs on the world around you. Start with one or more calendars of your own. You can create separate calendars for your home and work lives. You can keep them private or share them with family and friends. Use to-do items for each calendar to jog your memory about those tasks you’re likely to forget. Then subscribe to a shared calendar for your local Mac users’ group, your bicycle club’s group rides, or upcoming DVD releases. When you’re offered the prestigious position of soccer coach for your kid’s team, publish a calendar of the games and invite the other parents to subscribe via iCal, or to read it on the Web if they’re stuck using Windows. From your iCal control center, you can view events for today, the current week, or an entire month. Suddenly, it’s all making sense. You know what you have to do, and which outside events you have time for. The light dawns. Your schedule is at your fingertips, and you are totally organized! In this chapter, we’ll show you all the details on how to do so—from creating an event to inviting someone to it, and from creating a to-do list to prioritizing it. Plus, of course, how to publish your calendar and subscribe to others’ using either a .Mac account or one of Keep track of your life with iCal. several iCal-friendly websites.

Keep track of your home and work schedules, and connect to shared calendars around the world

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PUBLIC CALENDAR

ALL DAY EVENT

PRIVATE CALENDAR

CALENDAR EVENT

SHARED CALENDAR

EVENTS PANE

iCal quick start

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REPEATING EVENT

MINI-MONTH PANE

ADD CALENDAR

NEXT

PREVIOUS

SHOW/HIDE MINI-MONTH

VIEW BUTTONS

SEARCH EVENTS

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TO-DO PANE

EVENT INFO PANE

I Think iCal, I Think iCal SHOW/HIDE SEARCH RESULTS

SHOW/HIDE INFO

SHOW/HIDE TO-DO ITEMS

Get a quick look at a day, a week, or a month’s worth of events, and manage your to-do list while you’re at it.

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Getting Started with iCal To bring your schedule into iCal, you can either start from scratch or import information from another application. iCal can import from Microsoft Entourage, the email and personal information manager included with Office for Mac OS X; vCal, a cross-platform calendaring standard; and iCal files. Unfortunately for the old-school among you, there’s currently no way to import little scraps of paper. iCal starts you off with two calendars: one for home and one for work. There’s nothing special about either of these calendars, and you can change their names, delete one, or add more.

Understanding Calendars You can create and use as many calendars as you like in iCal. In fact, iCal is designed around the idea of multiple calendars that you display in any combination. Calendars are either shown or hidden, public or private. When several are selected, events from all appear in different colors. A public calendar is either one that you publish for others to see, or someone else’s to which you subscribe. A calendar event is associated with a date and time, and appears as a box on the calendar grid. All-day events don’t have a time element, and appear right below the date listing. Besides scheduled events, each calendar can include its own to-do list. Hide a calendar, and its to-dos are also hidden. Public calendars often don’t include to-dos—there’s an option to disable them.

Importing Information

Figure 7.1: Choose the type of calendar file to import.

The steps for importing calendar information in iCal or vCal formats are the same. First, be sure you know where the file you want to import from is located. Choose File → Import and choose Import an iCal File or Import a vCal File. Navigate to the calendar file you want and click Import (see Figure 7.1). iCal does its import thing and new events appear in the current calendar. To import events from a copy of Entourage that’s on your computer, choose File → Import and pick Import Entourage Data. iCal finds your data, opens Entourage briefly, and imports events automatically to a new calendar called Entourage. You can either use this calendar as your new one (rename it by double-clicking its name), or move events from the imported calendar to an existing one. Select each event and choose a new calendar for it in the Event Info pane. (Learn more in “Calendars and Events” in this chapter.) When all events are moved over, you can delete the Entourage calendar.

Custom Viewing

Figure 7.2: Click the diamond in the mini-month pane to return to the current date.

When you open iCal for the first time, your two default calendars, Home and Work, appear in the Calendars pane. Each is enabled, and iCal shows the current week in the Events pane. If you’ve imported calendar events, take a good look. You probably have a meeting coming up. Buttons below the Events pane let you view a day or a month’s worth of events. The arrows on either side move the display forward or back by one increment. To see more than a single month in the mini-month pane, drag the divider upward toward the Calendars pane. The up and down-facing triangles in the mini-month pane let you go back or forward in time. Clicking the diamond in the middle returns you to the current month and date (see Figure 7.2). Resizing the iCal window won’t show you more of your day—it makes the blocks for the hours you see larger. Use iCal preferences to change the display of hours, days, and weeks in the calendar view. We’ll show you how in “Customizing the Event View,” later in this chapter.

Chapter 7 iCal

TIP Insert a line break within the title of an event by pressing OptionEnter.

Figure 7.3: Add events to the selected calendar by double-clicking in the Events pane.

Figure 7.4: Drag down with the two-headed cursor to lengthen an event. Drag sideways to cause the event to span multiple days.

TIP To set up an email alert, your address must be entered on your card in Address Book. In iCal, choose Window → Address Book and edit your card if necessary.

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iCal uses two more panes that don’t appear by default; Event Info and To-Do Items. Buttons in the bottom-right corner of the iCal window open them. Again, there’s more on how to use each pane later in this chapter. When these panes are visible, you can use the pane dividers to resize them.

Calendars and Events If Home and Work aren’t enough calendars for you, double-click in the empty part of the Calendar pane to create an untitled calendar. The calendar’s generic name is selected by default, so go ahead and type your own name for it. There are only a couple of configuration options for a local calendar. With the calendar selected, click the Show/Hide Info button, enter a description, and choose a color, if you want (iCal will choose one for you otherwise). A calendar’s color differentiates it from other calendars onscreen, or when you print in color. The quickest way to add an event is to double-click on the day and time you want to schedule. First, make sure you’ve selected the calendar you want. Several calendars may be checked (enabled) but only one is highlighted (selected). iCal creates a new event where you double-click (see Figure 7.3). While the box is still selected, type a name for the event. To name the event if you have already deselected the box, double-click it again. To change the duration of the event from the default of one hour, move the mouse to the top or bottom of the event box and watch for the cursor to change to a double-headed arrow. Drag the event up or down to make it longer or shorter. Dragging upward from the top changes the start time. Dragging to the right while using the two-headed cursor expands the event across several days (see Figure 7.4). To change the start time of the event, click and drag the title bar (where you see the current start time) to move the entire box. You can move the box anywhere within the currently displayed time period (day, week, or month).

Editing Events Just knowing when the meeting starts is usually not enough. Knowing little things like where it’s going to be are also a necessity. Customize calendar events further in the Event Info pane with these steps. 1. Select the event and click the Show/Hide Info button in the bottom-right corner of the iCal window. You can now edit the name of the event, change its date and time, set a notification method, and more. 2. Edit any field by clicking on it and then typing over existing text. Add a location by clicking the Location field. The location will not appear on the calendar, although it does appear in the Info pane whenever the pane is visible. 3. Click on any item in the From or To areas to make a time change. Your calendar display updates right away.

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Figure 7.5: Type the first few characters of the name in the Attendees field to narrow the search for names from your Address Book.

TIP You can also switch an event from one calendar to another by Control-clicking it in the Calendar pane and choosing a calendar from the Calendar submenu.

Figure 7.6: A completed item in the event pane looks like this.

4. Clicking the All-Day check box overrides previous start and end times. You can use the From and To fields to turn an all-day event into a multi-day event. They appear above all other events in the Calendar pane. 5. The Time Zone menu shows your own zone, as defined when you set up your Mac. Choose Other to select a different one from the world map. 6. Type the names of attendees for your own information, or use the list to create invitation lists. If you use the Address Book application (Chapter 9, “Address Book,” p. 161, has the scoop on Address Book) and have entered names there, typing into the Attendees field shows a menu of matching address book entries (see Figure 7.5). Use the down arrow to move to and select the one you want, and then press Return. Type the first letter of your next attendee’s first name and press Return again. 7. The status menu allows you to designate the event as tentative, confirmed, or canceled. 8. Repeating events appear on your calendar at the intervals you specify on the Repeat menu. To repeat an event every month on the fourth Monday, choose Custom and use the pop-up menus to set up the interval. 9. The End menu works with Repeat to tell iCal how long to repeat this event. If you need to make changes to a repeating event later, iCal asks whether they apply to this instance only, or to all of them. 10. iCal has all sorts of ways to get your attention. Use the Alarm menu to set up a text or audio alert, send an email or open a file (iCal itself is the default) to notify you that an event is coming up. When you choose one of these options from the Alarm menu, another menu appears with which you can tell iCal how far in advance to send the alert. 11. An event you create appears on the calendar you were using when you created it. Change calendars for this event with the calendar pop-up menu. You can move the event to any calendar you control (but not someone else’s that you have subscribed to). 12. Last but not least, you can attach a URL and/or notes to your event. These won’t appear in the calendar view, or when you print a calendar, but they do travel with events you export or email. Type the unique part of the URL (such as www.macaddict.com) and iCal adds the web protocol. To use an FTP or other URL, type the whole thing, as in ftp://ftp.mozilla.org. Figure 7.6 shows a completed iCal event.

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TIP To include a clickable URL in an event, add it to the event’s title, and use brackets around it like this: .

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Copying and Removing Events Just like text or an image, iCal events can be copied and pasted. Select the event and press „-C. Then paste it to any time or date you like. Pressing „-D instead of making a copy will place a duplicate of the event on top of the original. Drag it to a new location, or use the Event Info pane to edit it. Copying or duplicating a repeating event copies only the selected instance of it. To delete an event from iCal, select it and press Delete.

Customizing the Event View The default calendar pane view shows all seven days of the week and lines for all 24 hours in the day. To see only the hours and days you actually use, choose iCal → Preferences. You can choose to see only certain days (the work week, for example) and tell iCal on which day your week begins. Use the Starts At and Ends At pop-up menus to frame each day. The Show menu controls the number of hours you see on a single screen.

To-Do Lists

Figure 7.7: To-do items are sorted by priority and due date.

A to-do list is associated with an individual calendar. You can view multiple calendars’ to-do lists together by enabling the calendars and then opening the To Do Items pane. Click the To Do List button to open the pane if it isn’t already open. To create a new to-do item when the To Do Items pane is hidden, choose File → New To Do. The pane opens and a new item is selected. You can also open the pane and then double-click in an empty area to add a new item. Type a description of the to-do item. If it isn’t already open, the Info pane appears and shows your options. To sort to-do items, assign a priority. Higher priority items appear above other todos, even if their due dates are later (see Figure 7.7). You can sort by due date instead. Controlclick in the To Do pane and choose an item from the Sort By menu, or choose iCal → Preferences, and then select Due Date from the Sort To Do Items by pop-up menu. Other preferences let you hide to do items that fall outside the current calendar view, and hide items a specified number of days after they’ve been marked completed. Click the Due Date field to set one. When you’ve entered the date, press Tab to see two new fields: Time Left, which is filled out for you based on the due date, and Alarm. Set an alarm just as you would for a calendar event. Like events, todo items can include URLs and notes. You can mail a to-do item to another iCal user: Controlclick and choose Mail To Do from the contextual menu. Later, when you’ve actually done your todo item, select it and click the Completed check box in the Info panel. It will disappear from the To Do pane. All righty. We’re ready to mark this section done in our to-do list.

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TIP Shared or local events and calendars can be exported and viewed by others. If you export events from a password-protected calendar, the person who imports it will need a password.

Printing and Exporting Calendars iCal’s printing options are somewhat limited, we’re sorry to say. You’re constrained to a printed page that roughly approximates what you see onscreen. As you will see, you can export your calendar and use other tools to print its contents.

Printing To print events from a single calendar, make sure that only that calendar is enabled. To print events from multiple calendars, enable them all. Switch to the view (Day, Week, Month) you intend to print. Choose File → Print. From the unlabeled menu below the Presets menu, choose iCal. In the iCal dialog, choose calendar dates to print. By default, the currently visible day, week, or month will print. Choose time parameters from the Print From fields, and choose whether to print to-do items and mini-months, as they appear in the iCal window. Be sure you’re printing what you intend to by clicking Preview. The Preview application shows the pages you’re about to print. Go back to iCal and click Print when you’re happy with what you see.

iCal Helpers Integration, calendar syncing, and more with iCal-smart shareware Those clever shareware developers have taken iCal’s limitations and run with them, thank goodness. Their tools enhance iCal’s integration with other iApps, add support for alternative ways to export calendars, and support for non-Apple email programs. BirthdayCal (www.versiontracker.com/ dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16484) turns birthdays entered into Address Book into iCal events. Use iAlarm (www.xultrasoft.com/ iAlarm) to speak the day’s iCal events or todo items out loud. MiCal ($9.95, homepage.mac.com/icalmenu) lists current calendar events and to-do items on the menu bar.

To publish an iCal calendar to a nonWebDAV server via FTP, try iCal FTP (www.findleydesigns.com). PHP iCalendar (http://phpicalendar.sourceforge.net/ nuke/) takes another, more complex approach to publishing calendars on the Web. Zapptek (www.zapptek.com/ical-mail) offers a series of tools that lets you email iCal events from programs other than Apple Mail, including Entourage, Mailsmith, Eudora, and PowerMail. To find more fun iCal tools, search for iCal at www.versiontracker.com.

Chapter 7 iCal

TIP Calendars for movie listings, DVD releases, and other items that have a date, but not a specific time, are often entered as all-day events, which take up lots of space in iCal. Disable a shared calendar with allday events to hide the calendar until you want to consult the listings.

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Exporting Calendars and Events The Export command creates a file containing all events in a single calendar. The file’s extension is .ics, and it can be read by iCal or any application that uses the iCalendar format. Copy the file to a different Mac to be imported into iCal, or send the file to a friend. You can also export individual events as .ics files. To export a calendar, click on it in the Calendar pane and choose File → Export. Navigate to a convenient location and click Export. Email or copy the file to another iCal user, who can add your calendar events to an existing calendar or create a new one. Notifying others of an event on your calendar takes one less step. Control-click the event you want to share and choose Mail Event. Mail opens a new message with a short message and the event’s .ics file attached. Just address the message and send. If you don’t use Mail for email, check out the “iCal Helpers” sidebar to learn how you can get iCal to pay attention to programs besides Mail.

Searching in iCal We have to be honest: iCal’s search feature is pretty limited. (Can you tell we’re not in marketing?) You can search for text in the title of a calendar event, but not in other fields, and not in to-do items. To search, be sure that all calendars you want to search are enabled. In the Search field below the Calendar pane, type some text. As you type, iCal locates all titles that match your search. Results appear in a pane below the calendar. Move to an item by clicking it in the Search Results pane. You can use search results to get a quick list of calendar events (see Figure 7.8). With the search pane open, click the Show/Hide Search Results button next to the Search field.

Sharing Calendars Figure 7.8: Open the Search Result pane to see a text list of calendar events.

Shared iCal calendars live on Internet servers, and can be viewed with iCal or, in some cases in a web browser. The types of shared calendars you typically find belong to organizations with scheduled events to promote. Some of Apple’s retail stores publish calendars of upcoming classes and other events, for example, in 2004 at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival used iCal to give attendees access to film, music, and conference schedules. You can share your own calendars using a .Mac account from Apple, or via a WebDAV Internet server. As we described in Chapter 3, “iPhoto,” .Mac is a $99-a-year Internet service where you can store files and post shared web pages and photos, as well as calendars, for all to see. WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) servers are web servers that allow users to develop websites collaboratively. For iCal purposes, the WebDAV server owner must enable access for calendar publishing. In fact, .Mac calendar-sharing is WebDAV-based, but you don’t need to know that to use it.

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Figure 7.9: When you click on a calendar link, iCal opens with the Subscribe dialog. Choose how often you want to refresh the calendar with the Refresh menu.

Subscribing to Shared Calendars Like websites, shared iCal calendars can be reached by entering a URL. If you know the URL of a shared calendar, enter it in iCal by choosing Calendar → Subscribe. Type or paste the calendar URL. Leave the Remove alarms and Remove To Do Items check boxes checked. Click the Refresh check box and choose an interval from the menu to have iCal update the calendar. Click Subscribe. iCal adds the shared calendar to your list and downloads its events from the Internet. Figure 7.9 shows the Austin City Limits calendar, our latest subscription. Several websites collect lists of shared calendars. You can subscribe to them simply by links to them. Reach Apple’s list of calendars from inside iCal. Choose Calendar → Find Shared Calendars. The Apple page lists calendars related to sports, entertainment, holidays, and Apple events. Clicking on a calendar opens iCal and the shared calendar dialog box. Click Subscribe and you’re done. See the “Shared Calendar Sites” infobox for several sites where you’ll find others’ shared calendars, and places where you can list your own. Once subscribed to a shared calendar, you can get an update anytime you like (between refresh intervals you’ve already set). Select a shared calendar and choose Calendar → Refresh. Choose Refresh All to update all public calendars, including those you are sharing.

Publishing Your Calendar

TIP Mac OS X Server supports WebDAV. Ask the OS X server manager at your company about hosting your iCal calendars there.

Create a calendar that you want to publish. Perhaps it’s a calendar of family events for your spouse and kids, or a schedule of meetings and deadlines for your business. You can even publish your band’s gigs, and email the calendar URL around to fans on your mailing list. Next, you must decide where to publish your calendar. Both .Mac and WebDAV servers allow other iCal users to subscribe, as we’ve described in the previous section. Both also provide a browser-based calendar that non-iCal users can view. Several WebDAV-based iCal communities offer free accounts and calendar hosting. If you have a .Mac account, though, it’s especially quick and easy to post a calendar, and your web-based readers will see an attractive, iCal-like interface. When you have events added and are ready to publish a calendar, select the calendar and choose Calendar → Publish. Using .Mac. Your .Mac username and password may already be entered in the .Mac area of System Preferences. If they are, you won’t need to enter them again. If not, iCal will take you there when you click Publish in the Publish dialog box. Choose .Mac from the Publish Calendar menu. Using a WebDAV Server. First, find a WebDAV server that will host and display your calendar. It can be a public iCal community such as iCal Exchange or iCalDates (see the “Shared Calendar Sites” Infobox), or a private WebDAV server. If your employer will allow you to use it, you can upload your calendar to your account on the server via iCal. Check with your system administrator

Chapter 7 iCal Figure 7.10: To publish your calendar to a WebDAV server, you need the server’s URL, a username, and password.

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to find out whether this is possible. Most ISPs do not offer WebDAV access. In iCal’s Publish dialog, choose On a WebDAV Server from the Publish Calendar pop-up menu. Choose Publishing Options and type the base URL that the server administrator or hosting service has given you. Enter your username and password (see Figure 7.10).

Setting Publishing Options (.Mac or WebDAV). Publishing

INFOBOX Shared Calendar Sites Calendar-sharing communities abound. You can subscribe to shared calendars. Some of these sites will host your shared calendar. Apple’s calendar library B www.apple.com/ical/library

iCalDates B www.icaldates.com

iCalShare B www.icalshare.com

iCal Exchange B www.icalx.com

iCal World B www.icalworld.com

options are the same for .Mac and WebDAV. Use your calendar’s name, or type one you want others to see. Click Publish Changes Automatically to upload updates immediately after making them. Subscribers actually receive all updates according to their own refresh settings. In most cases, you do want to publish subjects and notes, but not alarms or to-do items. You might use either of these options on a calendar for a child or an assistant, including to do items that you assign. Click Publish to upload your calendar. Announcing Your Calendar. Your hosting service (.Mac or WebDAV) will probably give you two URLS: one for iCal users, and one for use with a web browser. The iCal URL ends with .ics. When you publish with .Mac, a dialog box shows both URLs and gives you the option to send an email announcing your new calendar. To notify people by email about any calendar you publish, select it and choose Calendar → Send Publish Email. iCal creates an email message containing iCal and web URLs for the calendar.

Synchronizing Your Calendars Mac OS X makes it pretty simple to copy your iCal calendar from your primary Mac to another Mac, an iPod, a PDA, or a cell phone. You can also move calendars around with the import and export features we’ve described in this chapter. iCal itself doesn’t include tools for synching calendars. You’ll need to use iSync, a little app whose only job is to compare two versions of the same information that are stored on different devices, and synchronize the files. We’ll cover all of iSync’s features in Chapter 8, “iSync,” as well as how it works with different devices. From an iCal user’s point of view, though, iSync gives you the same access to private calendars that you have to shared ones, making them available on other devices you use. You can update calendars from a second Mac, a Bluetooth phone, or a PDA. iPod users have read-only access. You can also use iSync to upload information from calendars to which you’ve subscribed.

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PROJECT: Schedule Your Next Party with Shared Calendars ver since that fabulous dance party, your friends have been asking when you plan to have another one. And they’ve offered to help you plan and decorate for the big event. Besides making room on your own schedule for the setup and the party, you want to be sure that all your friends can come. We’ll use shared calendars to find a convenient date, and invite everyone via iCal and email.

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SUBSCRIBE TO FRIENDS’ CALENDARS: Start narrowing down potential party dates by subscribing to your friends’ calendars and finding a date when you’re all free. With your first friend’s calendar URL in hand, choose Calendar → Subscribe. Paste in the URL and click Subscribe. Repeat the process with your other friends’ calendars. When you’ve added them all, be sure that all are checked in the Calendars pane. To keep the calendar display uncluttered, uncheck any calendars you subscribe to that don’t affect your party plans. Switch to Month view to quickly spot available dates. You will only see an event’s description unless you have enabled Show Time in Use iCal’s month view Month View, To get a closer look at your tentative party to spot an available date, click on it and then click Day. Now you can see date for your party. whether the time you want is already spoken for.

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CREATE OR UPDATE YOUR SHARED CALENDAR: You’ve got a tentative date for your next dance party. Perhaps you’ve come up with a couple of dates. Now set up (or update) your own public calendar with the party date, and other party setup events or to-do items. Create and publish a new calendar, or publish an existing one. To publish it, select the calendar, then choose Calendar → Publish, if it’s a new one. To include public party planning to-do items, click the To Do Items check box in the Publish dialog, or in the calendar’s Info pane. Add a new calendar event for your party on the date you’ve chosen. In the event’s Info pane, choose Tentative from the Fill out the Publish dialog for your Status menu. If you already have to-do items you shared calendar. need help with, add it to the calendar.

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INVITE FRIENDS TO SUBSCRIBE: Send the first party announcement to your iCal-using friends, specifically those whose public calendars you used to narrow down the party date. Select your public calendar and then Calendar → Send Publish Email. Apple Mail opens a new message containing a link to your public calendar. Address the message to let your friends know that you’ve picked a tentative party date that doesn’t seem to conflict with their schedules. Remind them of their promise to help you out, and ask that they uncheck Remove To Do Items in the Subscribe dialog box, which will appear when they click the link you’ve included in your email. Your party-planning posse will use the to-dos to make sure everything is done before the crowd arrives. Address and send the message.

iCal opens a notification message in Mail. Edit and send it to your pals.

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OOPS, CHANGE OF PLANS: A couple of days after you publish your calendar, your friend Joe writes to remind you that the annual Reggaefest is happening the same day as your planned party. You smack yourself upside the head, realizing your mistake. No one, not even you, wants to miss Reggaefest. Add Reggaefest to your public calendar. Choose Calendar → Refresh All to upload the change, and to download updates to all calendars to which you have subscribed. Use the month view to locate a new party date, and drag the Dance Party event to the new date, or use Event Drag your party event Info to type it. Control-click the event and choose Mail Event. from the date that won’t Send a message to your friends with the confirmed party date. work, to one that will. They can click the link to add it to their own calendars.

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POST TO-DO ITEMS: Planning a party is a lot of work, and your friends have promised to help. Select your public calendar and add to-do items. Use each to-do item’s notes field to describe what needs doing, and to list those who have volunteered for each. Include your email address in the to-do item description, so that people can write to you and offer their help.

Add shared to-do items to your calendar.

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INVITE EVERYONE TO THE PARTY: The date is set, the keg is ordered, and you’re ready to spread the word far and wide. Check out the Event Info for your party. Make sure that everything you want people to know about the party is in place: correct date and time, a URL for the map, notes about what to bring. Control-click your party event and choose Mail Event. Address the message in your email application. If your calendar is hosted by .Mac, the message includes both an iCal link and a web link, so anyone can read your announcement. If you use a WebDAV server, you might be able to obtain a web URL for the event from the hosting service. Paste the link into the email and send your invitation.

Add detail to your party event and send it to everyone.

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Chapter 8

iSync Unlike the other tools we’ve described in this book, iSync isn’t a show horse, with loads of features and a snazzy interface. No, iSync is a one-trick pony with a simple look and a single job: synchronizing information on your Mac with other Macs and devices, including iPods, Palmbased PDAs, and Bluetooth and USB cell phones. iSync can transfer your Address Book contacts, Safari bookmarks, and iCal events and to-do items from your Mac to a supported device, or to the .Mac Internet service, from which you can sync contacts with more Macs. As an added bonus for .Mac users, you can also view your Address Book to send email from the .Mac website when you’re away from your own computer. If your device allows you to edit contact and calendar information, as Palms and cell phones do, iSync will bring the updates back to your Mac. iSync is even smart enough to manage synchronization between multiple Macs, cell phones, Palm devices, and iPods. Thanks to third-party software from MarkSpace, you can even use iSync with PocketPC-using handheld devices. In this chapter, we will show you all the ways you can use iSync, describe the devices it works with, and give you some tips for painiSync lets you take your data everywhere. free syncing.

Synchronize your contacts, calendars, and even your Safari bookmarks with another Mac or a hand-held device

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The Kitchen Sync Use iSync to exchange contacts, calendars, and bookmarks with Macs and other devices.

PDA ICON

.MAC ICON IPOD ICON

iSync quick start

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TIP With iSync on the menu bar, you can quickly see when the last automatic synchronization occurred.

Not everyone gets to use iSync. You need to be plugged into the OS X personal info management tools: Address Book (contacts), iCal (calendaring and to-do lists), or Safari (web browsing). iSync’s job is to update the files associated with these three applications for multiple-Mac users. If you don’t use these, read Chapter 7, “iCal,” Chapter 9, “Address Book,” and Chapter 11, “Safari.” Perhaps you’ll be intrigued enough to give one a try. iSync gives you the capability to share data between your Mac and other devices. You know that, right? But which device do you want to use as your syncing partner? First, check out Apple’s iSync compatibility list at www.apple.com/isync/devices.html. See whether a device you already have, or one you’ve been considering, is on the list. Although you need a .Mac account to sync multiple Macs, you don’t need one to sync your Mac to a PDA, iPod, or phone. Let’s take a look at your options and some syncing limitations.

iSync Preferences It’s kind of dull to start out with a description of preferences, but that’s where the action is in iSync. To customize the way iSync works, choose iSync → Preferences. Your options include adding iSync to the menu bar, enabling a Palm HotSync warning (dimmed unless you have HotSync Manager installed), and a threshold at which you want iSync to warn you that a large amount of your data has changed since you last synced (see Figure 8.1). Figure 8.1: Choose a warning behavior with iSync Preferences.

Sync Two or More Macs If you use two Macs, a PowerBook and a desktop, a G5 at work, and an iMac at home, you need a .Mac account (Apple’s $99-a-year Internet hosting service) to use iSync (see Figure 8.2). First, you sync your primary Mac to your .Mac folder and then download the information to your second Mac, also using iSync. The process also works if you want to sync more than two Macs: each Mac is “registered” within iSync, allowing you to choose which one you want to sync to or from.

Sync Your Mac to an iPod

Figure 8.2: See the .Mac sales pitch at www.mac.com.

An iPod is not a PDA, but it is smaller than most paper address books, and the prospect of using it to store contacts and calendars might, just might, convince your boss to let you have one. Although you can’t edit contacts or calendar items on an iPod, you can view the information on the iPod screen. That’s handy if you have invested your spare change in a music player (fun) rather than a snazzy PDA or Bluetooth phone (work). You can read phone numbers or events from the iPod’s seven-line display (while you’re listening to it, we should point out).

Sync Your Mac to a Palm PDA Palm OS devices can accept data from your Mac in several ways. Palm Desktop, a Mac OS X application, can manage your Palm and Mac contacts, but you need conduit software to synchronize the Palm with your Mac. As we’ll show you later, you can download a conduit that works with iSync, Address Book, and iCal. Your Palm device must use Palm OS 4 or 5 to work with iSync.

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Sync Your Mac to a Cell Phone Some, but not all, cell phones that support Bluetooth or USB work with iSync and your Mac. Many Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia phones work with iSync, and most major U.S. cell carriers support it. But if you’re planning to get a new phone or service provider, check Apple’s compatibility list (www.apple.com/isync/devices.html) before you buy. You will be able to sync address book information (including phone numbers) and calendars.

Sync Your Mac to a Pocket PC Device Apple doesn’t provide support for PocketPC-based handhelds. PocketPC, as you know if you own a handheld from HP/Compaq, Dell, Hitachi, Samsung, T-Mobile, Toshiba, or another compatible device, is a Windows-based operating system from Microsoft. MarkSpace Software’s Missing Sync (www.markspace.com) provides a full range of PocketPC/Mac connectivity, including the capability to mount PocketPC memory cards on the Mac desktop, and support for iTunes and iPhoto files. As the name suggests, you can also use it to sync your Mac to a PocketPC device. Missing Sync is currently $39.95.

Setting Up for Syncing To get started with iSync, identify the current location of your contacts, calendar, and address book data. That’s probably your primary Mac at home or at work. The first time you use iSync, you will upload all this information to another device or to .Mac. Next, you should choose the device or devices to which you plan to sync. You can sync to as many devices as you like, but the more devices you use, the more confused you’re likely to get. Always be sure that your primary Mac has the most up-to-date information available, and try to sync directly from that Mac to each of your other devices.

.Mac

Figure 8.3: Syncing options for your .Mac account let you choose what to synchronize, and whether to do it automatically.

We aren’t shilling for .Mac, really we’re not. As we mentioned earlier, you don’t need .Mac to sync with handheld devices. If your gadget bag doesn’t include any iSync-compatible devices, though, you need to spring for a .Mac account so you can sync your two Macs. To begin syncing with .Mac, open iSync and click the .Mac icon. If you have never used a .Mac account with this computer, iSync warns you to set up your account first. You can click the Configure button in .Mac, or find configuration options in the .Mac pane of System Preferences. If you do have .Mac set up, but haven’t used iSync, you’re asked to register your computer, which you do by clicking Register and accepting or entering a name for it. With that done, your sync options appear (see Figure 8.3), along with the name of this computer and any others you have registered. The default settings will sync this computer with your .Mac account, including all supported types of information. The first time you sync from this computer, the For First Sync menu appears at the top of the dialog. You can merge your data with .Mac (the normal procedure after your first sync), or designate your Mac or your .Mac account as the source of data for your first sync. Because this is your primary Mac and you have no contacts, calendars, or bookmarks on .Mac, choose Erase Data on .Mac and then sync. Moving through the dialog: If you click the Automatically Synchronize Every Hour check box, iSync makes it so, whether or not iSync is running, when it’s time to sync. If you don’t want to synchronize all of your data, click the appropriate check boxes. Click the name of the registered computer and then click Sync Now. When your sync is complete, you can log in to the .Mac website and click Address Book. You’ll see all the contacts from your Mac. You can use them to send email with .Mac, and edit them if you like. Your calendar and Safari bookmarks are also available on the Web.

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To register and sync a second Mac, open iSync on the second Mac and register it as you did with the primary Mac. From the For First Sync pop-up menu, choose either to merge this Mac’s data with .Mac (if it contains information you want to add to your primary Mac), or to erase data from this Mac. This will bring your .Mac data to the second Mac, and thereby synchronize it with your primary Mac.

iPod Figure 8.4: iSync discovers your iPod in the Device window.

To get started, connect an iPod to your Mac. In iSync, choose Devices → Add Devices. An icon representing the iPod should appear (see Figure 8.4). If it doesn’t, click Scan to locate it. Select the icon and close the Device window. The iPod appears in the iSync window. Click to see your configuration options (see Figure 8.5). You can sync some or all your contacts and calendars with your iPod. To sync selected contacts, you must be using Groups in the Address Book. Each group appears on the Synchronize pop-up menu. Choose calendars by clicking the Selected radio button and checking off the calendars you want to sync to the iPod. Instead of hourly synchronization, you can tell iSync to launch and do its thing whenever an iPod is connected.

Palm Devices

Figure 8.5: iSync gives you the option to send selected contacts and iCal items to your iPod.

TIP Many Palm devices support Bluetooth, making it possible to sync wirelessly. But using the device cradle is a quicker way to sync large amounts of data. On phones that support it (currently, Nokia 6000 Smart Phones and Sony Ericsson P800 and P900s), Address Book pictures are transferred when you use iSync. To learn about adding pictures to Address Book, see Chapter 9.

Before you can use iSync with a Palm OS PDA, you need to install Palm Desktop (probably included with your Palm device) and iSync Palm Conduit. The iSync conduit can be downloaded, along with Palm Desktop, from Apple at www.apple.com/isync/download/ index.html#palm. Install the software before you open iSync. Open HotSync Manager, which you’ll find in the Palm Desktop folder. Select HotSync → Conduit Settings. Click iSync for this Palm Device and then click OK. Launch iSync and click the Palm icon to open the Palm sync settings. Like the iPod options described earlier, Palm settings allow you to turn on automatic syncing, and to sync only certain calendars and contacts. Because Palm devices have their own calendaring software, you can choose whether to sync items you create on your Palm. If you want to bring Palm events into iCal, choose a calendar for them. To control event time zones, click Set and choose one from the display that appears. When you’re ready, initiate a synchronization from your Palm device by clicking the HotSync button. iSync launches and runs with the ball. You can’t sync a Palm with the Sync Now button.

Cell Phones First things first. Be sure you have the latest version of Apple’s Bluetooth software installed. Run Software Update (choose it in System Preferences) to get it. Then make sure that your phone is set to Discoverable mode, and that it is within range of your Mac. Open the Bluetooth pane in System Preferences and pair your phone and this Mac. Then click the Synchronize Your Contacts and Calendar check box. If you have a USB phone, skip the Bluetooth instructions and open iSync after connecting your phone to your Mac. In iSync, use the Device window to find and enable your phone for syncing. Options for configuring phone syncing are very similar to those for Palm devices. You can choose specific calendars and groups of contacts, and choose an iCal calendar for phone-created events. You can also restrict syncing to contacts that include a phone number. Limiting the date range of events synced to the phone provides another way to save space in the phone’s memory.

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PROJECT: Carry your schedule and party guest list everywhere you go. arty planning is more work than you thought. You need constant access to your guest list and your schedule while at home, at work, and on the road. It’s five days before the big event, and you’ve got a busy week ahead, with work projects that keep you traveling, and all those party-related errands. Get your calendar, to-do items, and contacts uploaded to your home and work Macs and your cell phone.

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UPLOAD YOUR SCHEDULE AND CONTACTS TO .MAC: Because you have been using iCal on your home Mac to plan the party, start by syncing your schedule to .Mac from there. In iSync, click the .Mac button and set up your sync. If you have never synced this Mac with .Mac before, iSync asks you to name and register the computer. Leave Merge data on computer and .Mac. Click the computer’s name on the list of registered computers. Finally, click Sync Now. Sync your home Mac’s calendar to .Mac.

2

ADD YOUR WORK MAC TO THE SYNC: To add the calendar and contact updates you made over the weekend, sync your work Mac when you get to the office. Again, choose .Mac in iSync. Click your office Mac’s name on the list of registered computers, and then click Sync Now. If your updates to this Mac amount to more than 5% (or whatever threshold you have set in iSync Preferences) of this Mac’s bookmark, calendar, and contacts, iSync warns you and gives you the chance to cancel or continue syncing. As it happens, you left your iPod in the desk drawer last Friday iSync warns you when you are about to sync more (d’oh!). So why not bring its calendar and contact info up-to-date, too? than 5% of your data. When the .Mac sync is done, connect the iPod to your Mac. Click the iPod icon and make any changes to the sync settings. Click Sync Now.

3

USE YOUR ADDRESS BOOK FROM ANYWHERE: One day until the party. You’re in an airport, waiting for a plane to take you home from an emergency business trip (ugh!). You remember that you need to pick up a margarita machine from a rental store, but your plane doesn’t get in until late tonight. Your buddy Jeff has offered to help with the party, but you don’t have his number in your cell phone. From an Internet kiosk, you connect to your Address Book from the .Mac website. Log in at www.mac.com and then click Address Book. All of the contact info you uploaded from your Mac before leaving town is right there. Find Jeff’s number, call him, and send him a follow-up email with the address (also from your Address Book) of the rental place. .Mac provides web-based access to your account. Then get ready to mix up a batch Find your contact info on the .Mac website. of ‘ritas for the party.

Part II

The iApps That Don’t Start with “i” T

hose i-rresistable iApps get all the press and probably sell a whole lot of Macs, but your Mac is full of less glamorous, but darn cool stuff that you’ll use every day, whether you’re toiling for the man or goofing around on your iMac at home. Mail, Safari, and Sherlock, for three, will keep you connected to the Internet. Those stalwart companions, Address Book and Font Book, will keep track of your contacts and your typefaces, respectively. Not to be outdone are Terminal, your window to the Mac’s Unix nuts and bolts; Preview, which will read darn near any image or PDF file; and a group of tools we affectionately call “the little guys.” All in all, there’s gold in that there Applications folder.

Chapter 9

Address Book Address Book may be the most useful program you hardly ever launch. Whether you’re composing email or looking for your buddies in iChat, Address Book is behind the scenes, ready to help. In the crowded field of contact management software, Address Book has one advantage over the others—it’s integrated with the rest of the OS X tools you use every day. And it’s right there on the Dock, too. Like other good contact management programs, Address Book allows you to enter names, addresses, phone numbers, email accounts, screen names, and photos for everyone you know. But because Address Book is integrated with other OS X applications, the contact info you enter there will find its way into all sorts of places. Mail, iCal, iChat, and even Safari all use Address Book information. You can add contacts to the address book from within some of these applications. As if to prove that Address Book has its fingers in lots of pies, smart software companies like Qualcomm (makers of Eudora), and Bare Bones Software (makers of Mailsmith) have integrated Address Book support into their software. Chances are, Address Book is not your first contact management tool. You may not even think you’re ready to switch to Address Book. But we’ve found that integration is seductive. The capability to add complete contact info for a buddy you’ve just began talking to in iChat is pretty darn cool, and inviting that same friend to a party via an iCal invitation ain’t bad either. Although you probably won’t be able to duplicate the prices recently paid at auction for Katharine Hepburn’s well-thumbed address books, we’re sure your electronic one will still be invaluable, once it’s filled with contacts. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to get information into Address Book, including tips on importing contacts from other applications, and then we’ll take you on a tour of its features, showing you how to send email, find contact information, and print or export your contacts.

Enter information about your family, friends, and co-workers just once, then use it everywhere

All the vital contact details.

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CARD VIEW CONNECT TO BLUETOOTH PHONE LIST VIEW NAME PANE

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The Address Book Octopus You’ll manage your contacts in Address Book, but you’ll use them in lots of other applications, including Mail, iChat, and iCal.

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Enter and Import Addresses

Figure 9.1: Here’s a minimalist Address Book card.

TIP To add or remove fields on all cards, choose Address Book → Preferences and click Template. Add a field with the pop-up menu. Delete one by clicking the minus button next to it.

An entry in the Address Book is called a card. Your Address Book contains at least two cards: one for you and one for Apple Computer. Your card includes whatever information you entered when you set up this Mac. If you didn’t register OS X , your card might look like the one in Figure 9.1. If you gave Apple all the information it asked for at registration time, your card is more flushed out (and you’re in its database for sure). The Apple card doesn’t give you a direct line to Steve Jobs (or even to tech support), but you can use the postal address to send a holiday card. Get started by adding info to your own Address Book card. Besides your name, you can identify your card by the silhouette icon. Click on your name in the Name pane and then click the Edit button. Your name is highlighted and buttons for adding new fields appear. Tab through the fields and add information to blank ones. To add a new phone number, click the plus button next to an existing number and type the new one. To change the label assigned to the number, select an item from the adjacent pop-up menu. If you’ve used iChat, your screen name appears on your card. You can add more screen names and specify both the location (home, work) and the service (Yahoo!, ICQ, and so on) for each. If you don’t like the location choices for any field, choose Custom and type a better one. By default, cards in Address Book are sorted by last name and then first name. You can sort a card by company instead. Type the name in the Company field and then click the check box next to the field. To put the finishing touches on your card, add a photo. You can add an image to your own or any other card. Very helpful when trying to remember the face of the guy you met at a trade show last March, and just plain fun if you use a picture of a baboon to represent your friend Steve. In Edit view, double-click the square next to your name. A window opens with the current icon. Click Choose to navigate to an image you want to use, or click Take Video Snapshot if you have a camera connected to your Mac and want to use a live image. Your Mac beeps twice to warn that it’s about to take the shot, then beeps again when the camera is activated. When you have an image in the window, use the zoom slider to view more or less of the image, and drag the square to choose the portion of the image you want to use as your card icon. Click Set when you’re done. You can also change a card photo by dragging it onto the image square (see Figure 9.2). Your card image will be transmitted with email messages to other Mail users.

Adding New Contacts Figure 9.2: The card’s image appears next to the name and will show up in email messages from this person.

To add a new card, click the plus button below the Name pane. You can also add new cards from within other applications, including iChat (see Chapter 6, “iChat AV”), and Mail (see Chapter 10, “Mail”). Type your contact’s name and tab through the remaining field to add more info. You can also add vCards sent to you in email. Many Microsoft Outlook users attach their vCard to every message they send, giving you an easy way to bring their info into Address Book. When someone sends you a vCard, double-click the card to add it to Address Book (assuming that Address Book is your default contact manager). You can also drag a vCard into Address Book, or Control-click the card and choose Address Book.

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If you add a vCard that Address Book thinks is a duplicate, Address Book asks if you want to review the duplicates, or simply overwrite the old card. If you review them, you’re given the choice to keep the old or new contact, or to merge the two (see Figure 9.3). Click OK to complete the update.

Importing Contacts

Figure 9.3: When you try to add a duplicate vCard, you can choose the old card, the new one, or to merge the two.

TIP If you have a choice between LDIF and vCard importing, choose vCard. Address Book handles them elegantly and automatically.

If you have used computers for any length of time, you probably have contact info stored in another contact management application, or in a file somewhere. Address Book can import two kinds of contact data: vCards and LDIF files. With a little fancy footwork, you can get other kinds of data into Address Book, as we’re about to show you. The vCard format is a cross-platform standard for exchanging contact information. Address Book uses it, and can import or export cards to other vCardfriendly software. Address Book also imports LDIF (LDAP Data Interchange Format), used by Netscape Communicator, Mozilla, and the late lamented Claris Emailer, among others. LDIF is also often used as an intermediary format for moving contacts from applications such as Microsoft’s Outlook Express and AOL, which are not directly compatible with Address Book. There are three basic ways to import your contacts into Address Book: • Direct import. To import contacts from a vCard or LDIF file, choose File → Import and then choose the format you want to use. You can also double-click vCard files to import them. • Scripted import. From the Script menu (between the Window and Help menus), choose Import Addresses and then choose the application to import from. Instructions tell you how to proceed; in some cases, Address Book imports directly from the application. In others, you’ll need to open the other program and export your contacts. • Middleman import. Programs for which Address Book doesn’t include a script, or that don’t spit out a vCard or LDIF, require an extra step. Export your contacts into a program that Address Book can work with and then either use an Address Book script or export to a friendly format, usually LDIF. Table 9.1 lists some popular contact management programs and the easiest methods for bringing their info into Address Book. When you import new cards, the Last Import group is added or updated. Click on it to see your new cards. Click on a card to see what’s been imported, or to edit it.

Working with Groups Why type everyone’s address when you can create a group that includes everyone in your family, your bridge club, or the folks in your department at work. Address Book groups are a convenient way to send an email message to, or export contact information for, a bunch of people. To create a group, click the plus button below the Group pane (lower-left corner of the Address Book window). Type a name for the group. To add members, click All to view all your contacts and then browse or search for those you want. Drag each to the group you’ve created. You can also create a group by selecting cards and choosing File → New Group from Selection. Combine two groups by dragging one group onto another. The original group remains on the list, and can still be used.

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Table 9.1 Importing contacts from popular information management tools requires different strategies.

TIP Change your contacts sort order in the General pane of Address Book preferences.

Import From

Kind of Import

Comments

AOL

Middleman

Open your AOL address book and choose Edit→Select All. Then choose Edit → Copy. Go to homepage.mac.com/ phrogz/CSV2vCard_v2.html, a page containing a script that converts your AOL information to vCard format. Follow the three steps described on the page to convert and import addresses.

Claris Emailer

Script

Entourage

Script

Eudora

Script

Mozilla

Direct import

Netscape Communicator

Script

Now Contact

Middleman

Outlook Express

Script

Palm Desktop

Script

Yahoo!

Direct import

Export addresses as LDIF and then import the LDIF into Address Book

Export to Netscape or Mozilla, and then import to Address Book

Export to vCard Address Book opens automatically

To send email to members of a group from within Address Book, Control-click the group name and choose Send Email to Group Name. Mail opens a new message, addressed to the members of the group. You can also begin a group message in Mail. Type the first few letters of the group name in the To: field. Mail fills out the field with the recipients. Like individuals, groups have vCards. To export one, Control-click the group name and choose Export Group vCard.

Using Address Book If you’re like most folks, you will probably use Address Book most often to send email. You can also look up phone numbers (and dial them), print labels and lists of contacts, export information, or initiate iChat sessions.

Finding Contacts You can’t use ‘em if you can’t find ‘em. By default, Address Book cards are sorted by last name and then first name (unless you’ve chosen to sort on a specific card’s Company field), but are displayed in first name-last name order. You can search, using the field in the upper right corner of the window. Address Book displays the results as you type. An overlooked feature of Address Book search is the capability to search by postal address, email address, or even area code. Typing Austin finds both contacts named Austin, and those who live in the Texas and Minnesota cities. Limit your search to the Lone Star state by typing Austin TX.

Address Book and Email You’ll probably spend more time using and updating Address Book from Mail than from any other app. Yet another reason for converting to Mail, if you aren’t already using it. You can also initiate

Chapter 9 Address Book INFOBOX Flexible Addressing Shareware authors make Address Book work better. iAddressX ($8) puts Address Book access on the menu bar. B http://www.mibasoft.dk/ index.html

Mail Scripts includes AppleScripts to export cards to a text file, improve searching, and add more addresses from within Mail. B http://homepage.mac. com/aamann/Mail_Scripts. html

Birthday Reminder ($5) shares contacts’ birthday information between Address Book and iCal. B http://www.micheldalal. com/sw/macosx/br/index. html

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email messages in Address Book. As we mentioned in the “Working with Groups” section, you can quickly address a message in Mail by typing a few characters into the To: field. Just as Address Book narrows search requests, Mail eliminates non-matching entries from its pop-up menu as you type in the To: (or CC) field. If you have assigned multiple email addresses to a contact in Address Book, the Mail menu lists them all, allowing you to choose one. To add someone to the Address Book who’s sent you an email, select the message and choose Messages → Add Sender to Address Book. Although Mail gives you no confirmation, a card with your new contact’s name and email address is added to the Address Book. If you try to add a duplicate from Mail, Address Book ignores you. To add to the card, find it in Address Book, or choose Window → Address Panel in Mail. Search just as you would in Address Book, Control-click the contact, and choose Edit Card. To send an email from Address Book, select a card that contains an email address. Control-click on the label next to the address and choose Send Email.

More Connections The contextual menus behind Address Book’s field labels provide more connections to other apps and places. Each label offers different options. Select a card and Control-click a label. Here’s what you can do: • Phone numbers. Large type displays the adjacent number in a huge font. • Postal addresses. Map Of opens your browser and displays a MapQuest map of the address. Copy URL of Map does so, allowing you to paste it anywhere you like. Copy Mailing Label puts the contact’s name, company, and postal address on the Clipboard. • Screen names. When you have iChat open and a contact on your buddy list is also online, her Address Book card shows a round indicator near the contact’s name (see Figure 9.4). Controlclick on the label next to an iChat-friendly screen name to initiate a chat. This option is available even if iChat isn’t open. In that case, iChat launches and a chat window opens. If the contact isn’t online, the chat will fail. • Home page. You don’t need to Control-click a web URL to go there. Just click the link. • .Mac options. A couple of extra items appear when you Control-click a .Mac email address. Visit HomePage takes you to the contact’s .Mac website. Open iDisk connects to the user’s .Mac file storage area, or, if the user hasn’t granted public access to it, asks you to enter a username and password.

Directories

Figure 9.4: When someone on your iChat buddy list is online, an indicator appears on their Address Book card, along with their buddy icon.

Address Book can be used as an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) client. LDAP is a server-based system that allows you to search a database of address information. Companies and universities use LDAP servers to manage contacts within their organizations. If your company has one, you can use Address Book to search it. If you have access to an LDAP server, gather the info you need to access it. Choose Address Book → Preferences and then click the LDAP tab. Enter a descriptive name for the server, and then the hostname, search base, and authentication information, if any (see Figure 9.5). To search the LDAP server, click Directories in the Group pane and then click the server name, or click All to search multiple servers. Type in the search field. All matching entries appear as you type. Double-click an item to see its card. You can also export the card or send email, assuming

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife the card includes an email address. Add the LDAP card to your address book by dragging it onto the All item in the Group pane, or onto a group you’ve created. When you add an address this way, the Last Import item appears in the Group pane.

Printing Address Information

Figure 9.5: To use an LDAP server, you need to configure access to it in Address Book preferences.

Figure 9.6: As you choose label options, the preview image on the left is updated.

Address Book provides templates for printing lists and labels. You can choose which fields to include in a list, as well as one of two font sizes. To print all cards, click All in the Group pane. You can also select groups or select multiple cards to print. Next, choose Print. Lists is the default style, and a preview shows how the printed page will look. Check or uncheck fields you want to print, and choose Regular or Large from the Font Size menu. The Zoom slider magnifies the preview. To print labels, choose Mailing Labels from the Style menu. Address Book will print labels for all contacts with data in their postal address fields. Pick a type of label from the Pages pop-up menu, and a specific template from the right-hand pop-up. The dimensions and number of labels, along with the preview, are updated (see Figure 9.6). You can create your own label format by choosing Define Custom from the Pages menu. Name the new label and choose the page size, margins, and number of labels per page. The new label type is saved to the Page menu. Click the Label tab and choose whether to use home, work, or other addresses on your labels. The Sorting menu lets you arrange labels by last name or postal code (useful for bulk mailing). Finally, you can add an image to your labels, and choose a font. Unlike the Lists template, you can pick a specific typeface, size, and weight.

Chapter 10

Mail For many OS X users, Mail, sometimes called Apple Mail or Mail.app, was an acquired taste. Many folks were perfectly happy with their previous email program, thank you very much, and others quickly discovered that Mail was not, as they say, ready for primetime in early OS X versions. But we have good news for Mail skeptics. The version of Mail released with OS X 10.3 (Panther) is not your father’s Mail.app. It’s chock full of features, and a worthy rival to competing programs, especially those minted in Redmond, WA. You’ll find the most important email features in Mail: junk mail filtering and rules-based mail handling, the ability to use multiple email accounts, and support for custom mailboxes. You can use Mail with IMAP or POP email accounts, and compose and read mail in plain text or rich text. As you might have guessed if you’ve been reading this book for a while, Mail is integrated with other OS X apps, including Address Book (well duh), iCal, iChat, and even iPhoto and iMovie. You can even use it to connect to Microsoft Exchange servers. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to manage your mail, whether you get a little or a lot, using rules and mailboxes, using one account or a fistful of them. You’ll learn how to work with attachments and signatures, and how to make the messages you send look their best.

Apple’s entry in the crowded field of email apps has a lot to offer

Mail, your personal post office.

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TIP Some email programs have their own address books. Because Mail relies on Address Book for contact info, you’ll need to import that information separately. See Chapter 9, “Address Book,” p. 161 for the scoop.

Setting Up Mail Did you follow the Mac OS X registration process all the way through when you set up your Mac for the first time? Did you supply an email address, or allow yourself to be walked through getting a .Mac account? If you did, you’re a little ahead of the game. If you’re the impatient kind, as we often are, you may not have set up Mail. Or perhaps you began your OS X-using life with a different email program. We’ll take a little time to describe account setup, and show you how to import messages and contacts.

New Mail Accounts

Figure 10.1: All the fields required to enable an email account appear within the Account Information tab of the Accounts pane of Mail’s Preferences window.

We’re assuming you have an email account. To use it with Mail, yours must be a POP (Post Office Protocol), IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), .Mac, or Exchange account, not an AOL or Web-only account. When we say Web-only, we’re talking about Yahoo!, Google, Juno, and other services that require you to check mail from the Web. If your ISP offers access to your email via Web, POP, and IMAP, you have choices. You might, for example, use Mail when at home, and connect to your account via the Web while traveling. To get started, find all the information you got when you acquired the account: username, password, incoming and outgoing mail servers. Then fire up Mail. The Welcome to Mail dialog box opens. Enter your information, including whether you have a POP, IMAP, or Exchange account in the dialog. If you’re setting up an Exchange account, enter your Outlook Web Access Server, too. The Full Name field can contain whatever you want. If you want to call yourself Monkey Boy, be our guest. Let’s hope the folks you write to recognize the moniker. In the email address field, enter the one given to you by your ISP ([email protected]) unless you use a different domain, such as your own or your company’s. We might enter [email protected]. Your ISP or system administrator should provide the info you need to fill out the Incoming Mail Server, User Name, and outgoing Mail Server fields. You should have created or been given your password when you established your email account. Incoming mail servers often have names like pop.ispname.com or imap.ispname.com. Outgoing mail servers are often named in the format smtp.ispname.com (see Figure 10.1). You can try these options with your new account or, as we suggested earlier, look for the correct information in the paperwork provided by your ISP, or on its website. Click OK when you have everything filled out. Mail connects to the server to verify your account info. Next you’re asked whether you want to import mail from other email programs. If you agree, Mail presents a respectable list of other programs, and importing is easy and painless if you use one on the list. Mail will find (or ask you to find) your old mail and list the mailboxes it’s about to import. You can uncheck those you don’t need. When the import is done, Mail’s mailbox pane contains a new folder called Import with all of your old mailboxes inside. You can rearrange these mailboxes or add their contents to your Mail mailboxes. See “Managing Mail,” p. 178 for tips on how to move mail and mailboxes around. While you’re importing messages or pondering whether to do so, Mail checks the account you’ve just set up for new mail and downloads it. You don’t have to import mailboxes immediately. Choose File → Import at any time to get access to the same options.

Adding Accounts If, like lots of people, you have several email accounts—such as one each for home and work, or an old one you’ve hung onto because lots of people have your address—you can tell Mail to retrieve messages from all of them. To add an account to Mail, choose Mail → Preferences and

Chapter 10 Mail

Figure 10.2: Tell Mail whether to check this account’s mail and whether to remove messages from the server.

Figure 10.3: Advanced settings for IMAP and Exchange accounts control how and when Mail downloads messages to your Mac.

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click the Accounts tab. Click the Plus button below the Accounts list to start a fresh account, and choose one of the four options from the Account Type menu. Besides POP and IMAP, you can choose .Mac (Apple’s Internet hosting service) or Exchange (Microsoft’s popular enterprise email server). Again, enter the information your ISP or employer has given you. Because you have already set up an account, there’s a menu next to the Outgoing Mail Server label on which any SMTP servers you’ve already used will appear. To use a server associated with the new account, choose Add Server from the menu. Some SMTP servers allow connections from outside their own domain, so it’s possible for you to use one account’s SMTP server with another’s mail. You probably will have no reason to do this if you’re checking mail from home or work, but you might have to pick an alternate SMTP server while traveling, because some services tie access to their servers to your physical connection to their network. For now, add the SMTP server associated with this account. If your server requires authentication, click the Server Options button and enter your username and password. Check with your ISP or company network geek if you don’t know what to enter here. Click the Advanced tab in the account setup dialog. Here you’ll tweak Mail’s interaction with this account. By default, Mail has enabled the account and set it to check mail, along with any other accounts you have set up. If yours is a POP account, the Advanced tab looks like Figure 10.2. The default settings are a little different if you have an IMAP account, such as a .Mac account. If you leave the account enabled but disable checking, you will be able to send mail, but you’ll have to check mail manually rather than counting on Mail to do it according to a schedule. In the POP version of the dialog, the next check box is Remove Copy From Server After Retrieving A Message. Not removing mail from the server means that if you check this account from another computer, the mail you’ve already downloaded will still be there. Some folks leave mail on the server for just this reason, so that they can download mail from different locations. The menu gives you the option to leave the mail right where it is for a while, and then to clean it out automatically. The Prompt Me To Skip Messages Over field lets you determine a certain size limit if you want to avoid downloading large attachments—some ISPs impose their own attachment size limits. The Account Directory field lets you change the location of your account’s directory by typing a path or clicking the Choose button to locate the new directory. You probably won’t need to change the location of the account’s directory, but you could, for example, if you want to back your email up along with a related document folder. Using an IMAP Account. IMAP accounts, as you will learn if you read the thrilling “Hop on POP or IMAP” sidebar, store your mail on the mail server, snagging only the senders and subjects of messages when you check mail, and typically downloading a full message only when you open it. Hence, instead of removing mail from the server, you can choose an option from the Keep Copies of Messages for Online Viewing pop-up menu (see Figure 10.3). In this case, offline viewing means when you’re not connected to the IMAP server. You might only have access to it from work, but you might take your PowerBook home at night. In that case, downloading messages and (if you like) attachments for offline viewing is the only way you’ll have your mail when you’re away from the office. You’re now ready to send Mail, but we’ll clue you in about one more important option first. Be sure you’re at the Advanced tab of one of your email accounts. By default, Mail will check accounts that you have enabled for checking once every five minutes. You can change the frequency in the General tab of the Preferences dialog. While you’re there, you can also change the sound Mail plays to announce new mail.

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Hop on POP or IMAP Each email scheme has advantages

Mail supports both POP and IMAP mail accounts. The type you use probably isn’t up to you if you’ve already acquired the account, although some ISPs offer both options. POP, which has been around for many years, retrieves mail from a server and downloads it to your computer. You can leave mail on the server, but its real job is to store mail until you can retrieve it. POP gives you complete control over your mail, and constant access to it, even when you’re not connected to the Internet. IMAP, on the other hand, is server-based. Many companies have installed IMAP servers as a way to maintain

and back up all mail at a central location. Because mailboxes are maintained on the server, they’re safe from local computer crashes, and available from any IMAPcapable email program—at home, at work, or on the road. With an IMAP account, you download headers (information about each message, including sender, recipient, date, and so on) when you check mail, but the message itself remains on the server. You can set mail to download everything to your Mac, but the originals remain on the server. ISPs who offer IMAP often limit the amount of mail (10MB or so) that can be stored on a server. If this is too little for you, get a POP account.

Sending and Receiving Mail We’re not going to teach you how to type, or spend a lot of time reminding you to observe good netiquette when you compose email. You’ll have to work all that out for yourself. But we will point out some useful mail-making features.

Addressing Mail

Figure 10.4: Mail finds addresses that match what you type in the To or CC fields.

To get started, press „-N, or click the New button on the toolbar. If you have created contacts in Address Book (Chapter 9, p. 161), type the first couple of letters of one of your contacts’ names in the To: field of the blank email you just opened up. Names matching the letters appear on a popup menu (see Figure 10.4). Choose one by clicking on it, or use the down arrow key to move through the list. Then press Return. Add more addresses by typing a comma and then the first few characters in the name of your next recipient. When you’re done, press Tab. You can also get to Address Book contacts by clicking the Address button on the toolbar. Select one or more names and then drag, double-click, or click the To button to add the names to the To field. Same goes for the CC button—just click it and the selected name appears in the CC field of your email. If you have created Address Book groups, address a message to the entire group by dragging or double-clicking the name of the group. Lest you think we own stock in Address Book, here’s a tip: Mail can remember addresses that don’t appear there. Create and address a message, and then send it to a friend who is not in your address book. Now open another new message and type the first letter of the same friend’s email address. Mail fills it in for you. In the same way, Mail also keeps track of those who have sent you a message, even if they’re not in your address book.

Chapter 10 Mail

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We’ve covered addressing mail to others. But how do you want to send it? If you have created multiple accounts in Mail, the Accounts pop-up menu in each message you send lists all accounts you have enabled (including those you don’t check automatically). To use an account other than your primary one, choose it from the Accounts pop-up. This also works when you’re replying to messages: The account to which a message was sent (default or not) appears in the Accounts popup when you open a reply. You can change it if you like.

Email Stylin’

Figure 10.5: Select text and choose a font and size from the Font dialog.

Mail (and many other programs) supports rich text. With it, you can style, format, and size message text, and include images within a message. The alternative is plain text, which contains no formatting, but which all email programs display in the same way. You must choose one of the two formats as your default style, but you can override it for individual messages. To choose a format, open Mail Preferences, click the Composing tab and choose Rich Text or Plain Text from the Format menu. If you click Use the Same Message Format As the Original, Mail overrides your chosen format, using the original sender’s chosen style instead. We’ll return to Composing preferences later, but first let’s create some rich-text mail. With Rich Text selected, close Preferences and open a new message. Type a greeting and then select the text. Control-click and choose Show Fonts and Colors. You can also get here by clicking the Fonts button on the toolbar before you type, or selecting text and then clicking the Fonts button. With the Font dialog open, choose a typeface from the Family list (see Figure 10.5). If you’re not sure how your chosen font will look, drag the Font dialog away from your email window so that you can see the selected text. Clicking a font changes the text right away. Select a Typeface and Size from their respective lists. You can also use the buttons above the lists to choose alignment and color. For more on the Font dialog, which is brought to you by the Font Book application, see Chapter 13, p. 203. When you’re happy with the font you’ve chosen, close the Font dialog. You can use the contextual menu to choose text colors directly (Show Colors) and to make it bold (Style). To quickly resize text, choose Bigger or Smaller from the Style submenu, or type „-+ or „-- (minus sign). The contextual menu also features a Make Plain Text command. The change applies to the entire message, not just selected text.

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Spell-Checking By default, Mail checks your spelling as you type a message. Misspelled words are underlined. If you don’t want to check your spelling for some reason, uncheck the corresponding box in the Composing tab of Mail Preferences. To use spell-checking, type a message with a few misspellings. Control-click an underlined word and choose the correct spelling from the top of the contextual menu (see Figure 10.6). To check the entire message, choose Spelling from the menu. The spell-checker takes you through all the words it doesn’t know, offering corrections if it can. You can add an unknown word to the dictionary by clicking Learn, or use the Ignore button to skip over the questioned word. You can check the spelling of messages typed in languages other than English. Control-click in a new message and choose Spelling → Spelling. Choose a language from the Dictionary menu and close the Spelling dialog before typing your message.

Signatures Figure 10.6: Mail presents suggested alternatives when you misspell a word.

Lots of people and businesses use email signatures to provide contact info, or even to plug a website or pass along a pithy quote. We’ve been known to suggest good books in our signatures. You can use a signature for all messages by simply creating and enabling one, or you can apply a signature on a message-by-message basis. You might want to create different signatures for work and home mail. Start by going to Mail Preferences (Mail → Preferences) and clicking the Signatures tab. Click Add Signature to create one, and then give a description and type the message. Keep it short; a few words on two to four lines. Notice that you can use rich or plain text. To use rich text, select the text and Control-click for the contextual menu you’ll need to make your style selections. The Automatically Insert Signature menu lets you choose a specific signature or a random one from those you’ve created. Otherwise, your default signature (if one has been created) will appear at the end of your messages. If you use the Show Signature Menu on Compose Window check box, you can choose a signature for each message as you compose it. The menu appears immediately above the message body in any message you compose, whether it’s a new message or a reply.

Reading Mail

Figure 10.7: Unread messages appear in bold, with an indicator at the left of the sender’s name.

Mail checks for new mail in all accounts you’ve configured for automatic checking. To check a specific account, choose Mailboxes → Get New Mail and choose the account you want to check. All enabled accounts appear on the menu, even those not set up for automatic checking. Click Check Mail on the toolbar, or press „-Shift-N to check all enabled accounts. Status and Threads. Mail indicates unread messages with bold headers and an indicator in the status column (see Figure 10.7). When new mail arrives, your chosen mail sound plays, and the number of unread messages in your inbox updates. When you click on an unread message’s header, Mail changes its status to Read. To make it unread again, Control-click the message and choose Mark → As Unread. You can also flag the message (Mark → As Flagged) or designate it as spam (Mark → As Junk Mail). You can change the status of one or more selected messages by choosing Mark and then the status you want from the View menu, or by adding status-related buttons to Mail’s toolbar (see “Pane and Toolbar Views,” p. 177). In addition to the Status column, the Message list also includes a column that indicates whether a message sender is online in iChat (assuming the sender is on your iChat buddy list), as well as

Chapter 10 Mail

Figure 10.8: Triangles indicate message threads, and the number of items in the thread appears to the right of the Status column.

Figure 10.9: Drag the divider to see more or less of the Messages list, or double-click the marker in the center to hide the Messages pane.

TIP You can add any address (From, To, or Cc) to the address book by Control-clicking and choosing Add to Address Book. If a contact already has an Address Book card, the option is labeled Open in Address Book, and will display the card for further editing.

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columns for sender, subject, and date. If you flag a message, a flag column also appears. Choose more columns from the View → Columns submenu, and then use the dividers between columns to change their width. To sort messages in a mailbox, click on the column header that you want to sort by. Use the View menu’s Organize by Threads command to group messages and replies containing the same subject line. Mail adds a column to the Messages list and the number of messages in the thread. When a threaded message is selected in the Message list, the others in the thread are listed in the message pane below. To see and navigate through individual messages, click to expand the thread triangle (see Figure 10.8). Pane and Toolbar Views. You can control the size and visibility of the Mail window’s four parts. To hide the Mailboxes Drawer, click the Mailboxes button on the toolbar. Click again to bring it back. To change the relative size of the Messages list and Message pane, drag the divider between them up or down (see Figure 10.9). To hide the Message pane altogether, double-click the marker at the center of the divider. With only the Message list showing, the marker is at the bottom of the window, and you can double-click again to get the Message pane back. In case you’re wondering, the fourth part of the Mail window is the toolbar. You can customize it by adding commands you use frequently and deleting those you don’t. Choose View → Customize Toolbar. To add an item, drag it up to the toolbar. Other existing items move over for the new one. Drag an item off the toolbar to remove it. Select the default set by dragging it from the bottom of the window to the toolbar at the top. Use the Show popup menu if you want to change the default Icons & Text view to Text Only or Icons Only. If you want to put lots of items on your toolbar, click Use Small Size to make more room. When you’re happy with the toolbar, click Done. Navigating Mailboxes and Messages. You can do most moving around between and within messages using the keyboard. With a message selected in the Messages list, use the Page Down and Page Up keys to scroll through the message. To move to a different message, use the Up and Down arrow keys. To view a message in its own window, select it in the Message list and press Return or double-click. Now the page and arrow keys both work within the individual message. Snagging Addresses. As you learned in “Addressing Mail,” Mail remembers addresses to which you’ve sent mail. You can also capture addresses from folks who send mail to you, and add them to your address book. Click on a message in the Message list, and choose Message → Add Sender to Address Book. If you want to add more information to this contact’s Address Book card, Controlclick on the sender’s address on the From line of the message itself (not the Message list). Address Book opens and shows a new card with the sender’s email address. Add her name and any other info you have.

Replying to Messages Replying to a message you’ve received is as simple as pressing „-R or clicking the Reply button while a message is open in its own window or is selected in the Message list. Mail opens a new message, addressed to the sender, and places the cursor in the first line of the message. The

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife contents of the message you’re replying to appear below your cursor. (To reply to all of the people who received a particular message rather than just the sender, press Shift-„-R or choose Messages → Reply All.) There are a couple of schools of thought about composing replies. One says that your new message should appear right where the cursor is: at the top, and that older messages (several, if you’re replying to a thread) appear beneath it. The other common practice, which seems to be popular with Mac users, is to add your reply after the original, or intersperse your reply with the original in a sort of question and answer format. To add replies below the original message, just use the arrow keys to move down the original message to the point where you want your reply to begin. Press Return. The vertical bar that identifies the original text breaks at the point where you are about to type. You can, of course, choose not to include the original message in your reply. Just delete it. Whichever way you choose to reply, notice that Mail colors the original message. If the message is part of a multilevel thread, each person’s contribution appears in a different color. You can change the color in Mail Preferences. Click Fonts & Colors and choose colors from the Color Quoted Text menus. You can disable coloring with the Color Quoted Text check box.

Working with Attachments

Figure 10.10: Click the triangle to see what is attached to the message. You can drag attachments to the desktop, open them, or save them.

Mail supports any type and size of file attachment. Some ISPs limit attachments to a few megabytes, and you can use Mail’s preferences to restrict those you receive. To attach a file to an email, drag it into an open message. Attachments you drag into a message will be inserted exactly where you drop them. You can also use the Attach button on the toolbar. Add as many files as you like to a message, but consider compressing large attachments, whether they consist of one file or several. Compression can squish some attachments down to as little as 30% of their original size, saving lots of time for you and your recipients. DropStuff is part of Aladdin’s Stuffit Standard Edition package, which also includes other compression tools (www.stuffit.com/mac). When you receive a message with an attachment, Mail shows the number of files below the To line and icons for each file at the end of the message. Images appear within the message if you’re using rich text. To open all attached files, click Save All and navigate to a folder where you want to save them. You can also drag one or more attached files (either click the triangle on the Attachment line (see Figure 10.10) or scroll to the bottom of the message to see the file) to the Finder. Finally, you can double-click an attachment to open it. If you do, be sure to save the file to a location you’ll remember. Mail attachments are stored deep in the Mac OS X hierarchy, and they’re hard to find unless you save them specifically to your Documents folder or some other convenient place. In addition, an attachment that hasn’t been saved outside the Mail directory structure will be lost if you delete the enclosing message.

Managing Mail How many emails do you get each day? Count the ones from friends, from co-workers, and from mailing lists and discussion groups you’ve joined. Unfortunately, you also must count spam, that insidious scourge of modern life. Mail gives you several ways to organize the messages you want to keep and dispatch the spam to the trash. The three tools you’ll use to manage your mail are mailboxes, rules, and junk mail management.

Mailboxes The Mailbox pane contains four mailboxes: In, Out, Drafts, and Sent. You can add any number of additional mailboxes to the list. Let’s look at each of them:

Chapter 10 Mail

TIP The Mailboxes pane appears on the right side of the Mail window by default. Click the Mailboxes button on the toolbar to hide mailboxes. If you would rather have mailboxes on the left side of the window, hide them first and then move the Mail window to the right side of the screen and click Mailboxes.

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• In. When mail arrives, it lands in the In mailbox. If you use multiple email accounts, yours has an expansion triangle next to it that reveals an inbox for each. Click on In to see all incoming mail, regardless of where it comes from. • Out. When you click Send, a message goes to the outbox and remains there until Mail has finished sending it. If there’s a problem with sending mail, messages get stuck in the outbox until the problem has been solved. • Drafts. If you’re not ready to send a message you’re working on, but want to save it, press „-S. Mail saves it to the Drafts folder. You can reopen the message later and send it when you’re done with it. Like the inbox, there’s a drafts mailbox for each account you use. When you save a draft, Mail places it in the one selected on the Account menu. • Sent. When you send a message from a POP account, Mail copies it to the Sent mailbox for the account you’re using. IMAP users’ sent mail is stored on their server unless you change that in Mail’s Preferences. You can control how long sent messages stay in the Sent mailbox for both POP and IMAP accounts. See “Special Mailboxes” for more. There are two more mailboxes to discuss here that don’t appear until you begin working with Mail. The first time you send or delete a message, Mail creates a Trash mailbox. Again, there’s one for each account you use. Junk is another repository for unloved mail: Junk mail filtering and mail rules that deal with spam send messages to each account’s Junk mailbox.

Special Mailboxes Drafts, Sent, Trash, and Junk are all “special” mailboxes. You can set preferences related to how these mailboxes are used and how and when they are emptied. Preferences are slightly different for POP and IMAP accounts. Choose Mail → Preferences and then the Accounts tab. Choose an account, and click the Special Mailboxes tab. If the account uses POP, you can tell Mail when to delete messages from the Sent, Junk, and Trash mailboxes, or click the Move Deleted Messages to a Separate folder check box to disable the trash (see Figure 10.11). IMAP users can choose to store the Drafts, Sent, Trash, and Junk mailboxes locally or on the mail server. You have the same options for deleting Sent, Junk, and Trash that POP users do. Figure 10.11: Change the way Mail handles messages in special mailboxes in each account’s preferences. This is an IMAP account.

Making Your Own Mailboxes Think of mailboxes as folders for your messages. Just as you store your Mac’s files by project or type, you can organize mail in mailboxes according to topic, sender, or any other way that strikes your fancy. You can also store multiple mailboxes within a single mail folder. For example, create a folder called Projects, and add a mailbox for each one. Using rules, you can direct email to an appropriate mailbox as it arrives. To create a new mailbox, click the plus button below the Mailboxes pane. Type a name for the mailbox. To associate it with an IMAP account, and place the mailbox on the server, choose the IMAP account from the Location pop-up menu. Otherwise, save the mailbox On My Mac. To create a folder, start with a new mailbox and drag other mailboxes on top of it. Mailboxes are sorted alphabetically. When you drag mailboxes within the pane, they snap to their proper place on the list, or you can drop them into a folder. Lines show you where your mailbox will drop as you drag it (see Figure 10.12). Using the Actions menu below the Mailboxes pane, or the Mailboxes menu on the menu bar, you can delete or rename a selected mailbox.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife To file a message in a different mailbox, drag the message from the inbox onto the other mailbox in the Mailbox drawer, or Control-click and choose Move To → mailbox. You can also copy messages to a mailbox from this menu.

Setting Up Rules Figure 10.12: Drag a mailbox into a folder to add it to the folder.

Figure 10.13: This rule detects messages addressed to the MacDV mailing list and sends them to a mailbox.

Figure 10.14: This bulk mail rule finds messages from people in your address book that are not individually addressed to you, and colors them orange.

Rules tell Mail how to handle messages, based on their content, the account that received them, header information, and more. You can use a rule to move a message to a mailbox, reply automatically, change the message’s color, and so on. All rules are structured like this: If Condition (X) is true for a message, perform the following action (Y). You can use multiple criteria, and have those criteria result in multiple actions. Rules are a very effective way to filter out spam, organize mail you receive from specific sources, and alert you to important messages. Rules are applied in the order they appear in the Rules list. We’ll explain how to order rules after we create some. Let’s try a few examples. Open Mail preferences and click the Rules tab. Click Add Rule. First let’s send all messages addressed to the MacDV mailing list to their own mailbox. (MacDV is an excellent list for folks who use their Macs for digital video.) Name the rule MacDV. All messages to the list are addressed to [email protected], so we could have the MacDV rule catch any messages to that address. Because the list uses [MacDV] as the prefix for all messages, we can also catch messages containing those characters in the subject line. We’ll do that, just in case MacDV ever changes its address. From the first Conditions menu, choose Subject, and leave Contains selected. Type MacDV. To use the group address too, click the plus button. Select To and Is in the fields on the new Conditions line, and type the address. Because we want to rule to capture messages that use either condition, leave “any” selected at the top of the dialog. To send all messages received from the MacDV list to a mailbox, choose Move Message under the Perform the Following Actions label, and select the mailbox to move the messages to. (If you haven’t created a MacDV mailbox, do this first and then you can choose it from the menu.) Figure 10.13 shows the finished rule. You can add more actions if you like, or click OK to finish the rule. Next we’ll give priority to messages from people we know that send bulk mail. The cartoons, jokes, or political messages sent by your friends may be welcome, but are probably not as important as those addressed directly to you. Your friends probably use blind carbon copy to send messages to lots of people without revealing the recipients’ addresses, so you can manage them with this rule. To get good bulk email out of your way, create a new rule and choose To as a condition, along with Does Not Contain. Mail adds your email address. To also catch messages that are copied to you by name, add another condition and choose Cc (and Does Not Contain). Type your email address on both lines. Now add one more condition that looks for messages from people in your address book. Change Any to All at the top of the rule dialog so that only bulk messages from your friends will be caught by the rule. Choose an action that will separate these messages from those you want to read right away. You can move the messages to a mailbox, change the messages’ color, or forward. Figure 10.14 shows the completed rule. Here’s one last rule for dealing with email while you’re on vacation. Vacation auto-replies are very common, and usually misused. If a member of a mailing list leaves for vacation with an auto-reply message running, chances are that everyone who posts to the list during that person’s absence will

Chapter 10 Mail

Figure 10.15: Here’s a very narrowly defined auto-reply rule.

Figure 10.16: Drag rules up or down the list to change the order in which they are applied.

Figure 10.17: Choose junk mail filtering preferences.

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get an auto-reply. Not good! The ideal situation is to enable an auto-reply from your mail server, or to use your ISP’s webmail feature. But here, we’re going to show you a Mail-based way to do it. A proper auto-reply will not respond to all messages you receive, just those from people you know, and who really need to know why you’re not responding to their emails, or how to reach you. The broadest approach would be to reply automatically only to people in your address book (assuming that you don’t have the addresses of mailing lists, newsletters, or any other bulk mailers in your address book). To limit the auto-reply to people you work with, limit the auto-reply to messages from your company. Flag messages whose From address contains “@yourcompany.com”. If you use Address Book’s group feature to organize addresses of people you often email at the same time, make “Sender is a Member of a Group” one of your conditions and choose the group. For this rule’s action, choose Reply to Message and then click Reply Message Text and type your auto-reply. If you like, you can add another action that either moves messages caught by this rule to a mailbox, or perhaps redirect them. Let’s say that your vacation is a working one. You’re not carrying a laptop, but you have access to a personal account via the Web. You could forward those messages to that account. Figure 10.15 shows an auto-reply rule. Organizing Rules. As we mentioned, the order in which rules kick in is important. You can move rules up in the pecking order by dragging them up or down the list (see Figure 10.16). In general, rules that delete spam should appear at the top of the list or rules in the Rules tab. Get the spam out of the way so that Mail can “drill down” into the conditions and actions you’ve set for the mail you want to keep. By clicking the check box next to a rule’s name, you can temporarily disable a rule without deleting it. So when you return from your vacation, don’t delete the auto-reply rule, just disable it until next time.

Dealing with Spam Canned meat: it’s not just for email junkies anymore. Even if you don’t knowingly spread your email address all over the Internet, you have experienced spam, probably on a daily basis. Mail will help you can the stuff with junk mail filtering. In Mail Preferences, click Junk Mail. When you enable junk mail filtering, Mail looks for messages that aren’t specifically addressed to you. As you see in the dialog (see Figure 10.17), messages that don’t come from someone you know (an address in your Address Book, or one from the list of those who’ve sent you mail) are assumed to be good. You can also require that non-junk email include your full name, although that’s a little dicey unless you’ve clued everyone in that your junk mail filters require it. To use the “full name” criteria as the basis for a spam-killing mail rule, click the Advanced button. You can add conditions or change the action if you like. While you’re getting started with mail filtering, leave filtering set to send junk mail to your inbox (Training mode). You’ll be able to see which messages are junk by their color. If you think Mail has made a mistake, click the “junk” message and then click the Not Junk button on the toolbar. The message changes color. If, on the other hand, a “good” message should be labeled junk, click it and then the Junk button. This process trains the junk mail filter to catch more bad messages that get through the filter you created. Spammers, as you probably know, are sneaky. To delete junk email from your inbox, just delete it. When you’re satisfied with the way your junk mail filter is working, open Junk Mail preferences again and choose to have junk mail moved to the junk mailbox when it arrives.

Chapter 11

Safari We might as well admit it: Behind the windows filled with text and images that we use to make this book is our copy of Safari, open and waiting for break time, so that we can catch up on the news of the day, or see what our friends are blogging about. We suspect that your web browser is similarly ever-present on your desktop. Now you can bring that browser window forward guilt-free, ‘cause we’re going on a Safari. Apple knows you have your choice of web browsers—heck, two are shipped with OS X, just in case you can’t decide, but they think you’ll pick Safari. They’ve done a good deal in the year and a half since Safari hit the streets to make it a worthy alternative to better known offerings. The Mac OS X web browser does what all web browsers do—it displays web pages. But Safari, as part of OS X, is integrated with the other tools in your iLife arsenal, including Address Book and iSync, and with other apps through system-wide hooks. Safari packs its share of groovy features you won’t find elsewhere, such as SnapBack, and a few that have been borrowed, such as Google search and tabbed browsing. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to browse with the best of them, how to keep track of websites three ways with bookmarks, and how to use tabs, buttons, the keyboard, and the History menu to surf your way from Apple to zebra and back again.

Browse the Web, search the Web, tab the Web—Safari can do it all

Here’s a good place to begin your Safari.

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HOME

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GOOGLE SEARCH BUG

Surfin’ Safari Hop on your board and point your bookmarks at the waves.

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Setup and Browsing Truth is, you don’t need to do much to get Safari up and running. Just make sure you’re connected to the Internet and then launch the browser. Soon you’ll be staring at a web page full of links and images. Like a furnished apartment you’ve just moved into, Safari is livable, but can be improved with a few personal touches. You can set Safari preferences and use the toolbars to customize your browsing experience. First, an easy change we suspect every Safari user will like. Choose Safari → Block Pop-Up Windows. With this option checked, Safari will banish most, but not all, pop-up ads. To give it a test, go to the New York Times website at www.nytimes.com with pop-up blocking turned off. You will probably receive an ad window. Block ads in Safari and come back later to see the Old Gray Lady sans pop-ups.

The Safari Window

Figure 11.1: Here we have a link and a folder from the Bookmarks bar.

Figure 11.2: Tabs appear between the Bookmarks bar and the browser window.

At the top of the Safari window are the Address bar, containing navigation buttons that will move you from page to page, fields where you can type your desired destination, and the Bookmarks bar, which is (or can be) chock full of links to your favorite websites. The two toolbars can be customized—add or delete any item, or hide a toolbar entirely. You can add or remove any of the buttons from the bar by choosing the button’s name from the View menu. Your changes remain in effect when you quit and relaunch Safari. If you don’t want the Address bar to appear, choose Address Bar from the View menu. Choosing it again brings back the Address bar. The Bookmarks bar can contain individual bookmarks, or folders full of links. Safari comes with a set of bookmarks for Apple sites, Mac-related content, and a few news sites. Click once on a link to go there. Click a folder button and drag down to choose one of its links (see Figure 11.1). You can hide the Bookmarks bar by selecting it on the View menu. We describe how to add and delete bookmarks from the bar in the “Bookmarks” section on p. 188 of this chapter. Safari’s tabbed browsing feature is hidden from view until you start browsing. Tabs are links to pages you have viewed recently, or intend to view. If you set Safari to always use the tab bar, each link you visit appears in a new tab as the page loads (see Figure 11.2). You can also invoke tabs for an individual session by Control-clicking a link and choosing Open Link in New Tab. Finally, we complete our Safari bar tour with the Status bar at the bottom of the window. When you move your cursor over a link in the browser, its URL appears in the Status bar. When you click to go to a different page, the status of your connection appears there. You can show or hide the Status bar via the View menu.

Setting Browser Window Preferences The options you use to change the behavior and appearance in the browser window are under the General, Appearance, and Tabs areas of the Safari Preferences. We’ll highlight the most useful ones. General. Start by choosing Safari → Preferences. In the General tab (see Figure 11.3), choose whether to make Safari your default web browser (the one that opens when you click a URL in Mail or another application that supports live links), and what page to display when you open a new window. Choose where outside links should open with the radio buttons at the bottom of the

Chapter 11 Safari

Figure 11.3: Choose your home page and other options in the General preferences.

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dialog. For reasons that are a bit baffling to us, Safari is set to launch an Apple-branded Netscape page that’s rather uninteresting. To choose a different one, type a URL in the Home Page field. You can also change the default home page by navigating to a page on the Internet that you want to designate as your home page and choosing Set To Current Page. Next, tell Safari what folder to use when saving files you download while browsing the Web. You might want to create a Downloads folder inside your Documents folder, or simply choose your Documents folder. In Safari, files appear in the Download Manager window as they are retrieved, and they stay on a scrolling list based on the setting you choose from the Remove Download List Items menu. Finally, the Open “Safe” Files After Downloading check box speeds up your access to downloaded files, but could present risks as virus writers become sneakier. Image files, PDFs, sound files, and so on are not usually susceptible to viruses that are sometimes contained within applications, although transmission of some new viruses in documents files has been reported. Proceed with caution! (You would not want to open an application automatically after downloading it. Applications can make changes to your system, or install viruses and worms.) Appearance. The Appearance section of Safari Preferences has only a few options, but along with the Text Size buttons on the toolbar, they’ll help you change the look of web page text. You can choose a font, size, and style for standard- and fixed-width fonts. If you want the flexibility to change text size during a particular session, press „-- (minus sign) or „-+ to shrink or enlarge text. To use the Address bar buttons instead, be sure the buttons appear on the Address bar and click one of the two buttons to shrink or enlarge text. Tabs. To use tabbed browsing, click Tabs and be sure that Enable Tabbed Browsing is selected. You can also choose to see the tab bar all the time, and select new tabs as they are created. Universal Access Preferences. Did you know that there are two universal access preferences hidden under the Advanced tab of Safari Preferences, making it easier for visually impaired users to work with Safari? If it was a snake, it woulda bit ya, is what we say. The Never Use Font Size Less Than check box overrides website font settings. Choose a size that’s comfortable for you. The Highlight Links As You Press the Tab Key check box makes those links a bit easier to find for some users.

Just Browsing

Figure 11.4: Type a few characters in the Address field to see a list of matching sites.

Surfing the Web with Safari is as simple as entering a URL in the Address field. To go to a URL with the usual http://www.macaddict.com format, just type the significant part of the link (macaddict, in this case) and press Return. Safari fills in the rest and takes you there. For .org or other domains, use the format sitename.org. Now let’s go to Apple’s site. In the Address field, type a and then p. Hey, what’s this? Safari fills out the link for you and displays a menu with links matching what you’ve typed (see Figure 11.4). The links that appear on the menu are those you’ve visited recently and those you’ve stored as bookmarks.

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Link Draggin’. As you’ll learn in the next section, Safari provides several ways to turn links you’re

Figure 11.5: Click the SnapBack button to return to the first page you viewed on the current site.

Figure 11.6: The Activity viewer shows the windows you have open and all of its links.

visiting into bookmarks. You can also drag URLs to the Finder or to other applications. With the link you want displayed, click the icon next to the URL and drag it onto the desktop. The link appears as a clipping. Double-clicking it opens the link in Safari. With Mail or TextEdit open (other text-friendly apps work, too), drag the link from the Safari Address bar. It appears as a URL in the destination application. You can, of course, use Edit → Copy, but we think dragging is just more fun. SnapBack. Have you noticed the little button at the right end of the Address field? If it’s not there, click a link on the page you’re viewing. The SnapBack button makes its debut (see Figure 11.5). Now click another link and then click the SnapBack button (or press „-Option-P). Safari takes you back to the first page you viewed on this site. Returning to the link where you began exploring a site is especially useful if the site has poor navigation. If you open a link in a new browser window, SnapBack doesn’t appear until you follow a link on that page. When you click SnapBack in this window, Safari takes you to the first page browsed there. To reset the SnapBack page for this site to the current one, press „-Option-K, or choose History → Set Page for SnapBack. Control-Click Rewards. Control-click on any link in the browser window and choose Open Link In New Window. You can also open it in a tab, or copy the link to the Clipboard. If you click on a downloadable file or image, the options change, allowing you to copy the item to the Clipboard, or save the file to your Mac. By Control-clicking somewhere on a web page, but not on a link, you can view the code (source) behind the page, save the page to disk, or print it. History. We’ve mentioned the History menu, which contains links you’ve visited recently. Below the links to individual pages, which are sorted from most recent to oldest, are folders for previous days’ surfing (as much as a week’s worth, in our experience). If you’ve been at it a while today, you will see a folder called Earlier Today, whose contents are self-explanatory. Then come folders for previous days, going back as far as Safari’s cache will allow. To empty Safari’s historical memory, choose History → Clear History. The Activity Viewer. The Activity viewer takes a different approach to tracking your doings on the Web. Choose Window → Activity to see how it works. The Activity viewer shows the page you’re currently viewing, with all elements of the page listed below it, including images, scripts, and style sheets. If multiple windows are open, the Activity viewer displays an entry for each open page, with the elements displayed below the link (see Figure 11.6). When you switch web pages, the Activity viewer updates to show the new page and its elements. To maintain access to a page in the Activity viewer, open subsequent pages in a new window. You can open any link or image by double-clicking it in the Activity viewer.

Bookmarks Figure 11.7: Add the MacAddict site to the Bookmarks bar.

Safari gives you not one, not two, but three ways to manage bookmarks: the Bookmarks bar, Bookmarks menu, and the Bookmarks library. The Bookmarks bar sits below the Address bar, immediately above the web page you’re viewing. You can store individual bookmarks there, or folders full of them. Apple starts you off with a minimal set of popular sites that you can use, move, or delete. The best way to use the bar is to place items you use every day there because the bar is the easiest bookmark manager to reach. The Bookmarks menu contains commands for working with bookmarks. You can also add bookmarks to both the Bookmarks bar and menu.

Chapter 11 Safari

TIP To change the name of a bookmark you’ve dragged to the Bookmarks bar, click Bookmarks bar in the Bookmarks library and then select and rename the bookmark.

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Finally, the Bookmarks library (click the book icon on the left edge of the Bookmarks bar) is a two-pane window where you can store bookmarks in bulk and organize them, including those on the bar and the menu. To add a bookmark for a page you’re viewing, press „-D, click the plus button on the Address bar, or choose Bookmarks → Add Bookmarks. The resulting dialog tells you exactly what to do. Type a name for the bookmark, or keep the existing name and choose where to add it: to the Bookmarks bar (see Figure 11.7), a menu, or to any folder that already exists. To give your link an express ticket to the Bookmarks bar (without a stop at the dialog box), click the icon next to the link and drag it to the Bookmarks bar.

Organizing Bookmarks Click the book icon on the Bookmarks bar to view the Bookmarks library. The Collections pane shows folders for the Bookmarks bar and menu, Address Book, Rendezvous, and History. Below the pane are folders containing more bookmarks. Let’s take a look at the special folders at the top of the list. • Bookmarks bar and menu. You can add items to these folders while you’re browsing as described in this section, or you can drag items into their Bookmarks library folders. • Address Book. URLs you enter on Address Book vCards appear in this folder. • Rendezvous. Websites hosted on your local network or subnet appear here. These are typically sites published by folks using Personal Web Sharing on an office network. Those sites appear only while you’re connected to this network. Rendezvous is Apple’s resource sharing technology that allows users to find local computers with stuff to share, including printers (Appendix A, “The iApps You Don’t Know You Have”), iTunes (Chapter 1, “iTunes”), and iPhoto (Chapter 3, “iPhoto”) libraries, and iMovie files (Chapter 4, “iMovie”). • History. Organized by date, folders in the History folder contain lists of sites you’ve visited. The same information appears on the History menu. History links are stored in Safari’s cache, and disappear after a few days. • Bookmarks folders. You can add your own folders with the plus button below the Collections pane. To use any bookmark, just double-click it. The Bookmarks library is replaced by the bookmarked site. To get back to the library, click the Back button or the Book icon. You can move links and folders to or from any folder in the Bookmarks library. If you want to turn an item in your History folder into a bookmark, drag the link from History into another bookmark folder. Similarly, you can drag a Rendezvous URL to the Bookmarks bar or another folder. The link will only work while you’re on the Rendezvous network where the site is located, however. You can nest bookmark folders by dragging one folder onto another. Figure 11.8: Drag a folder of bookmarks from the library to the Bookmarks bar folder.

The Bookmarks bar and menu can both contain folders, but you need to add the folders to the library first, and then to the Bookmarks bar or menu. You can move links and folders that are stored elsewhere within the Bookmarks library to the Bookmarks bar or Bookmarks menu folder using the Collections pane of the library (see Figure 11.8). Just drag a bookmark or folder onto either the

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife Bookmarks bar or Bookmarks menu collection in the library. You can also drag bookmark items to the Bookmarks bar by dragging them directly from the library to the bar. To change the items displayed in the library and Bookmarks bar, choose Safari → Preferences and click the Bookmarks button. To hide the Address Book or Rendezvous items, uncheck the check boxes on the Bookmarks bar, menu, or in the Collections (library).

Imported and Synchronized Bookmarks

Figure 11.9: The Search field collects terms you’ve searched recently.

INFOBOX Safari Companions Safari users hungry for features they like in other browsers have created lots of add-ons and bookmark managers. B www.lordofthecows.com/ safari_enhancer.php

Safari Enhancer adds appearance tweaking and cache management features. B www.edot-studios.com/ index.php?category= 5&item=15

Safari Menu adds your browser’s bookmarks to a menu in the Finder. B www.arcadiadesign.it/ deerdesign/sbe/english/ english.html

Safari Bookmark Extractor exports all of your bookmarks to an HTML file. B batista.org/extender.html

Safari Extender adds a contextual menu with enhanced tab management, printing, and email integration. B www.scifience.net

Safari Aquifier replaces the brushed metal of Safari with the aqua look of other Mac OS X windows.

When you launch Safari for the first time, it imports bookmarks from other browsers you might have on your Mac. Unless you’ve removed it, Internet Explorer is there, and Safari brings its bookmarks into the Bookmarks library in a folder called Imported IE Favorites. Safari will also import Netscape and Mozilla bookmarks if it finds any on your Mac. As we showed you in Chapter 8, “iSync,” on p. 153, .Mac users can synchronize Safari bookmarks between two Macs, using .Mac as an intermediary. Click the Configure button in the Safari Bookmarks preferences to open iSync, and read Chapter 8 for more about synchronizing bookmarks among several Macs using .Mac. If you’re not a .Mac user, you can transfer your Safari bookmarks between Macs (replacing, not synchronizing them) by copying the bookmarks.plist file from /Users/username/Library/Safari to the corresponding folder on the other Mac.

Search A Google search is as close as the Search field on Safari’s Address bar. To get started, type a term in the Search field to the right of the Address field and press Return. Google opens with a page of results for your search term. Now click on an interesting link and explore it to your heart’s content. Want to go back to the search results page? Click the SnapBack button on the Address bar. Once you’ve gotten addicted to Google searches, which is quite likely, you can return to your favorites. Click the magnifying glass in the Search field and choose a previous search term from the menu (see Figure 11.9). You can empty the menu by choosing Clear Recent Searches. To clear the term currently in the Search field, click the button to the right.

AutoFill Filling out web forms is a lot less painful than working with the paper kind, but typing the same information gets old nonetheless. When enabled, Safari’s AutoFill feature memorizes contact information and other text commonly needed in web forms. Later, when you begin typing in a web form, AutoFill drops the information into that form, saving mucho keystrokes. To get started with AutoFill, open Safari Preferences and click the AutoFill tab. You can use any or all of the three options, allowing you to control how much info is available for auto-filling. If you want to use AutoFill even more selectively, click the Edit button next to one of the three options and change or delete information for the AutoFill source. The three sources of AutoFill information are: • Address Book card. All of the info you’ve entered on your Address Book vCard is available to AutoFill. Clicking Edit opens Address Book and your card, where you can edit fields if necessary. • Usernames and passwords. With the User Names And Passwords check box selected, Safari can save that information and AutoFill the form the next time you go to the site. Each time you enter a username and password, Safari asks whether you want to save the information for

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AutoFill purposes. You can accept, decline, or tell Safari not to ask again. In the AutoFill Preferences dialog, you can manage usernames and passwords by clicking the Edit button next to the User Names And Passwords option. • Other forms. As you travel around the Web, the preferences and other custom views you choose on various sites are saved to your Mac. Click Edit to see which sites have sent you form-related information (see Figure 11.10). You can remove one or all of them if you want.

Figure 11.10: You can remove any or all sites from the Other Forms editing dialog.

To use AutoFill, go to a site that requests contact information. With your cursor in the first field, click the AutoFill button on the Address bar. If the button isn’t on the bar, either add it from the View menu or press „-Shift-A. In many cases, it’s not even necessary to activate the feature. Try automated AutoFill by clicking in a field that requests your first name and type the first letter. Autofill often fills the name and other fields for you. Whenever you let AutoFill add information for you, check it before you submit it to the website and correct any errors.

Cookies, Security, and Other Black Arts

TIP Be very careful when username and password AutoFill is enabled. Your information is vulnerable to anyone who has access to your computer or your account on this Mac.

You probably know that your travels around the Web leave footprints. Cookies, those little files transmitted to your computer when you enter many sites, are the most well-known of the ways in which you make tracks. In most cases, cookies are benign or even helpful because they preserve the preferences you’ve chosen when viewing a site—they supply your log-in information when you return to the site, keep your shopping cart just as you left it last time, or “save your place” on message boards. Safari allows you to choose not to accept cookies, or to delete some or all of those you have accepted. Open Safari Preferences and click Security. Choose whether to accept cookies, or choose Only From Sites You Navigate To, which will give you more control of your cookies. This option prevents sites that send you pop-up advertising windows from also sending you unsolicited cookies. If you choose this option, you can see a list of cookies you’ve already received from the Show Cookies dialog. You can review cookies and remove individual ones if you like. You can also review cookies if you choose the Always option. There will just be more of them to look through. Safari’s other footprint-covering features are on the Safari menu. Choose Empty Cache to delete the temporarily saved information about web pages you’ve visited. Caches are used to speed up the display of sites you visit frequently, but deleting the cache gives you a clean slate—sort of. The History menu still lists the places you’ve been recently, unless you use the Clear History command to delete the links. Finally, if you really want to start from scratch, choose Safari → Reset Safari. Read the warning you’re given carefully. Resetting the browser deletes cookies, history, and the cache, as well as AutoFill information. It does not delete your bookmarks or preferences, however.

Chapter 12

Sherlock Does my Mac support DDR memory? Where can I find a picture of Seabiscuit? How do I say “Two rolls of film, please” in Italian? Answers to these and other questions large and small can be found with the amazing and versatile Sherlock, the Internet search tool on steroids. Sherlock began life as a souped-up version of the old Find command in Mac OS. Find has been folded back into the Finder (File → Find), and handles file and content searches on your Mac. Sherlock has morphed into an advanced interface for Internet searching. The Sherlock toolbar includes search channels for: • eBay • Internet • Flights • Pictures • Dictionary • Stocks • Translation • Movies • AppleCare • Phone Book

Sherlock helps you look under every Internet rock for the information you need

Amuse or educate yourself with the dictionary and the Translation channel. Your life will change. You’ll pick up a second language. You’ll never get any work done. Read on. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to search the Internet with Sherlock, how to find and use more channels, and how to customize your Sherlock toolbar.

Sherlock, your search command center.

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Sherlock: Internet Detective Channels that perform custom searches help you zero in on the content you want.

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Meet Sherlock You’ll find Sherlock in your Applications folder. Older versions of Mac OS X included Sherlock’s icon on the Dock. We recommend that Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) users bring Sherlock back to the Dock so that it’s in easy reach the next time you need to check an eBay auction or a stock price. Just drag the Sherlock application onto the Dock. Now open Sherlock and have a look at the toolbar. Here you’ll find 10 search channels. A Sherlock channel is your window into a searchable Internet database. Each channel’s search screen looks different, with search fields and results that match the kind of information the channel has to offer. Results pages rank results by relevance or other criteria that make sense for the kind of search you’ve performed, and a preview below the list gives you a peek at each result. From the results page, most Sherlock channels take you to a web page when you double-click on an item in the list. Below the Sherlock toolbar are folders containing more channels. You can use these channels to perform a search, or add them to the Sherlock toolbar if you like. You can also download and install more Sherlock channels. We’ll educate you on all these customization options later in the chapter.

Searching with Sherlock The best way to learn everything there is to know about Sherlock is to try it out with a tour of the toolbar channels.

Internet Like a Google search in Safari (Chapter 11, “Safari”), Sherlock’s Internet search is a free-for-all. The results you receive are varied, and may or may not take you exactly where you want to go—but they’ll get you started. Unlike a Google search, Sherlock’s Internet search digs into several databases. Interestingly, Google isn’t one of them. Click the Internet icon on the toolbar, type a search term into the Topic or Description field, and press Return. The Results appear, sorted by relevance (see Figure 12.1). You can click one of the other column headings to change the sort order. Click a result that looks interesting to see the preview below the results list. Double-click a link you like to launch your web browser and see the page.

Pictures Figure 12.1: Your Internet search reveals results from all of Sherlock’s content providers, sorted by relevance.

Picture searches in Sherlock return images that link to sites where you can buy high-quality stock imagery (see Figure 12.2). Just enter a search term in Picture Topic or Description. This channel does a pretty good job of finding art and nature images, but other searches we tried were a bit disappointing.

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Figure 12.2: Thumbnail images link to the Getty Images and Lycos websites.

Figure 12.3: Search for a stock by name or ticker symbol to see a current quote, along with recent news items.

Stocks We like this channel, not only because it’s one of the quickest ways to get a nearly real-time stock quote, but also because you can build a portfolio of securities that will be checked each time you open the channel. Sherlock starts you off with Apple stock information. Just enter a company name or ticker symbol to add more. You will be rewarded with a stock quote, chart, and current news stories, all displayed within Sherlock (see Figure 12.3). You can get detailed stock information by double-clicking the Sherlock link. The Stock channel doesn’t specifically support entering multiple symbols and company names, but if you do, Sherlock returns with a list of companies matching what you entered. You can add one, or Shift-click to add several. To delete a stock, select it from the list and press Delete, or choose Edit → Clear.

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Movies

Figure 12.4: Find a movie and a showtime with the Movies channel.

Using the Moviefone database, this channel will find movie showtimes in your city (or near your ZIP Code) by film or theater. A search for “78701,” the ZIP Code for downtown Austin, Texas, turns up a long list of movies playing all over town today. You can choose a different date from the Showtimes pop-up menu. Click a movie to see where it’s playing (middle column), at what time (right column), and info about the film (below). Many listings also have QuickTime trailers. Click the Play button to see one. When you click the Theaters tab, the first and middle columns are switched, and you can browse to find out what’s playing at your neighborhood theater (see Figure 12.4). The lower half of each movie listing screen includes a batch of links to related items. Above the movie description is a live link to Moviefone’s page for the film. Below the trailer area, you’ll find web links to businesses located near the theater. Most interesting of all, though, are the two buttons below the movie description (see Figure 12.5). The left button adds information about the selected theater to your address book. Next door is a button that links to Sherlock’s Phone Book channel, with a map to the theater.

Phone Book Figure 12.5: Add this theater to your Address Book, or get driving directions.

Figure 12.6: Click a search result in the Phone Book channel to see a map.

White and yellow pages from Switchboard give you access to businesses and people, along with maps and driving directions. The Info buttons in the upper-left corner of the channel display different sets of fields. Click the yellow info button on the left to search for businesses. Type a name or business type in the Business Name or Category. Sherlock autofills the field as you type, using category names. You can type over the autofill text, accept it, or click and drag down the pop-up menu in the field to see more categories. In the Find Near field, type a city and state or a ZIP Code if you want to perform a very narrow search. Click the magnifying glass or press Return to search. Click a search result to see a map to the location (see Figure 12.6). Use the Zoom slider and Pan arrows to move around the map. To add driving directions to this location, type an address in the Driving Directions From field. Again, Sherlock makes with the autofill, searching the Address Book for possible entries. In fact, you can type the name of someone in your Address Book and press Enter to get driving directions to the selected business. Use this feature to get directions from your home by typing your own name or address, which is sure to autofill. The arrow in the From field shows recently used addresses. While you’re typing, it shows matching ones from your Address Book. Looking for people, rather than businesses? To search for a person, click the white Info button to the right of the yellow one. Now you have fields for last and first names, along with city/state/ZIP.

eBay The eBay channel is not an auction management tool. You can’t place bids or even access your eBay account information. You can, however, search quickly to see whether an item is available.

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Figure 12.7: eBay items matching your query appear above a preview of the selected one.

Type your search criteria in the Item Title field. You can choose a category or region, and/or a price range to narrow your search. We’re sad to say that you can’t search by eBay item number. Click the magnifying glass to search. Search results appear, sorted by the auction’s end time, unless you’ve changed the sort order before conducting the search (see Figure 12.7). You can also sort alphabetically, by price, or by the number of bids by clicking the column headings. Double-click an item to go to its eBay page. If you want to keep track of an item you’ve found, you can use Sherlock’s Track option. Don’t confuse this feature with eBay’s tracking tool. The two don’t communicate with one another. To track an item in Sherlock, select it and click the Track Listing button in the lower-right corner of the window. Click the Track tab to see all items you’ve tracked previously. This listing is updated when you enter the eBay channel.

Flights If you’ve taken an international flight recently, you might have had the chance to entertain yourself by watching the progress of your plane on an LCD monitor at your seat. Sherlock gives you the ground equivalent, with both words and pictures you can use to see where your sister’s flight from Denver is, and whether it will arrive on time (see Figure 12.8). Honestly, that’s about all the Flights channel does, which isn’t incredibly useful to most people. We wanted to warn you before you started trying to plan your vacation with it. If you want to track the status of a particular flight, type its number in the Flight# field and click the magnifying glass. If you know that someone you’re meeting at the San Francisco airport is coming from Kansas City, choose an airline if you know it and type Kansas City in the Departure City field (Sherlock autofills as you type) and type San Francisco in the Arrival field. Sherlock

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displays the airport code in each field. Click the magnifying glass to see a list of flights that will arrive today, sorted by airline name and departure time. You can also sort by arrival time, flight status, or chart. If a flight has a check mark in the Chart field, you can click on the listing to see the flight’s current location. Only en route flights have charts, and not all of those do. By default, Flights searches North American departure and arrival cities and all available airlines. To add international destinations or to change airline country-oforigin choices, click the small Flights Preferences button below the Chart display.

Dictionary Figure 12.8: Use the Chart to see where in the world your flight is (or was, 25 minutes ago).

Self-explanatory, yes, but pretty powerful, too. Type a word in the Word To Define field. If you’ve managed to spell an English word the dictionary doesn’t know, a list of spelling suggestions appears below. Click on one to see its definition to the right. Most defined words include a description of their function, plus synonyms and antonyms. Double-click a word in the Thesaurus pane to see the synonym’s definition. The links in the definition pane lead to entries for other dictionary words.

Translation Translation is another Sherlock channel that’s just plain fun. It can also be useful when you run across websites in languages you don’t understand, but we appreciate the quasi-educational aspects of entering favorite phrases and finding out how they translate into Portuguese.

Doing the Language Limbo Translation, traduzione, traduction, traduzione, vertaling When you paste or type a non-English sentence into the Translation channel and choose To English, the results might amuse you. The grammar might not be perfect, the word order will probably be a little choppy, and meanings won’t quite match up. It reminds us of a game of Gossip, where the first kid’s whispered words get garbled as they’re passed from the second to the third, and so on. By the time the last person has to spill the whispered secret, it bears little resemblance to the original. We thought we’d have a little fun with Translation and run a sentence through several languages, starting and ending with English.

English: I would rather use my Macintosh than eat an apple. German: Ich würde eher meinen Macintosh als essen einen Apfel benutzen. French: Je mangerais plutôt mon Macintosh qu’une pomme utiliser. Portugese: Comeria antes o meu Macintosh que uma maçã utilizar. English: It would before eat my Macintosh that an apple to use. We tried a couple of alternate language chains. Our favorite substitutes a Greek phrase for the Portugese one. When translated to English, the result was: I would eat rather my Macintosh from a apple you use.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife To get started, type an English phrase into the Original Text field. We tried “My dog has fleas.” Choose an English To item from the pop-up menu and click Translate. If you choose a language that uses a non-European character set, Sherlock will display the translation in the correct set. To see what we mean, choose English to Japanese from the menu and then click Translate. As you probably noticed on the pop-up menu, translation can go in both directions. Type or locate a non-English phrase, preferably one whose translation you know. Try Ich bin ein Berliner. On the menu, locate the translation pair that will turn this phrase into English (German to English, in this case). Don’t be surprised if the translation is a little garbled. No automated translation system has the feel for language that a native speaker does.

TIP Another reason to be very specific when searching Apple’s Knowledge Base is that information about all Macs and all OS versions is stored there, much of which doesn’t apply to your relatively new machine.

AppleCare Apple’s extensive Knowledge Base support database includes help documents, read me files, and technical notes. It’s available from Apple’s website or from Sherlock. In the Sherlock channel, there’s only one search field, and you can’t narrow your search as you can on the Web. Still, Sherlock is a good place to start. If you see a search result you like, click to view its preview, or double-click to open the page from the Apple Knowledge Base. The best way to have a successful search is to make your request as specific as possible. Trying “flat panel iMac upgrade” returns a few articles about adding memory to that type of Mac. “iMac,” or even “flat panel iMac,” delivers many more results that you’ll have to wade through to find what you’re looking for.

Customizing Sherlock The 10 Sherlock channels we’ve shown you in this chapter are just the tip of the searching iceberg. To see what we mean, click on the Channels icon on the toolbar to return to the lists of folders and channels. If you read Chapter 11 (if not, shame on you!), this screen should remind you of the Safari Bookmarks library: folders on the left, their contents on the right. The Toolbar folder lists channels that are currently on the toolbar. (We’ll describe customizing the toolbar in just a minute—be patient.) The Channels Menu and Apple Channels folders duplicate the toolbar by default. Now open Other Channels. Here’s a treasure trove of content for every interest (see Figure 12.9). Each channel listed tells you what countries it covers, and offers a brief description. To use a channel, double-click it. We can’t describe all of the channels, but we’ll mention a couple we’ve used during the preparation of this book. VersionTracker searches a popular software update site, where you can look for Mac applications by name or description. The latest updates appear when you open the channel. iCalShare is a guide to shared public iCal calendars. Links take you directly to iCal, where you can add the selected calendar. (See Chapter 7, “iCal,” for the scoop on iCal.) Other great channels include AccuWeather, Google, Shop (an Amazon.com-based shopping service), and WorldNews, which aggregates many news sources.

Customizing the Toolbar and Menus To add a channel to the toolbar, drag it from a folder onto the toolbar itself or onto the Toolbar folder icon in the Channels list. To remove an item from the toolbar, select it in the Toolbar folder

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Figure 12.9: Open Other Channels to see options that aren’t on the toolbar.

and press Delete. If you want to bring a deleted Apple channel back to the toolbar, click the Apple Channels folder and drag the channel you want onto the toolbar or Toolbar folder. To customize the toolbar further, choose View → Customize Toolbar (or Control-click anywhere on the toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar). Drag items in the group below to the toolbar above. Choose an item from the Show menu to change the toolbar display, or click the Use Small Size check box to shrink the toolbar. To remove an item from the toolbar, drag it downward and off the toolbar. Click Done when you’re happy with your changes to the toolbar.

Adding More Channels You’ll find lots more Sherlock channels on the Internet. You can, of course, use Sherlock to search for them. Here are a couple of channel directories: The Watson Project (dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Mac_OS/Internet/Sherlock/Channels) and Sherlock Channels (sherlock.clan-mac.com). To add a channel to Sherlock, click the web link to it. Sherlock opens and warns that the channel you’re adding comes from a third party and that Apple won’t support it. The warning is necessary because developers can easily build Sherlock channels and might not always follow Apple’s guidelines. Installing a third-party channel doesn’t present a risk to your Mac, but if you do experience problems with the channel, you can uninstall it. To learn more about the channel you’re about to add, click the Info button. To add the channel to Sherlock, click Proceed and Sherlock opens the new channel. To save the channel, choose Channels → Add Channel. Choose the folder where you want to store the new channel. To delete a channel, select it in the Channels pane and press Delete.

Chapter 13

Font Book Back before PCs even had fonts, you could download and install them on a Mac and print typeset-quality documents. Mac people know fonts, and graphic pros are used to having access to lots of them. It hasn’t always been easy to manage a large font collection, though. Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) adds a new way to manage your fonts—which, in previous Mac OS versions, were scattered in multiple locations around your hard drive. Besides organizing the storage of all those typefaces, Panther brought us Font Book—an application you’ll use to install and organize fonts for all OS X apps. Font Book is your window to Mac OS X’s prodigious font support. In addition to its own brand of fonts, OS X supports industry standards OpenType and TrueType, along with a breathtaking array of languages and character sets, including Japanese, traditional and simplified Chinese, Russian, Greek, Cherokee, and many more. To top it off, OS X supports Unicode, a worldwide character set that’s supported by most world languages. In this chapter, we’ll show you how fonts work in OS X, how to use Font Book to rationalize your fonts by setting up separate collections, and then how to activate and deactivate them. We’ll show you how to use all those fonts Manage all your fonts with Font Book. with the Font panel, too.

Lasso all your fonts with Font Book

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Font Book quick start FONT SEARCH COLLECTIONS BY OWNER

PREVIEW PANE

FONT PREVIEW

USER-CREATED COLLECTIONS

ZOOM

FONT INFO ADD COLLECTION

ENABLE/DISABLE FONT

ADD FONT

Fantastic Font Book Wrangle your fonts using a simple interface.

Fonts in OS X Mac OS X font files are stored in /Library/Fonts, and/or in your user folder /Users/username/ Library/Fonts. You can take a look at the number and variety of fonts included with Mac OS X there, but the Font Book application exists so that you don’t have to. You will also interact with fonts in the Font panel, found in most of the applications we describe in this book. An OS X native font is stored in a single file with the dfont extension, as opposed to the two-file arrangement used in earlier Mac OS versions and older font formats. OS X supports other font formats, too, including OS 9 suitcases, OpenType, and TrueType fonts. All are stored along with the .dfont files in your Fonts folder. Your user Library folder also includes a FontCollections folder, which stores pointers to groups of fonts provided by OS X, and created by you. Collections, which are described in the next section, are an important organizational tool for anyone who wrangles lots of fonts.

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Font Book Overview With Font Book, you view, organize, and manage fonts in a Finder-like window, where all the rules for working with files and folders apply. Changes you make in Font Book take effect immediately, even for open applications. Open Font Book (it’s in the Applications folder). The left pane displays font collections—groups of fonts organized by ownership and by any criteria you like. The middle column shows font families and fonts (typefaces). Click an expansion triangle to see members of a family. The Preview column is on the right, and it displays a sample of a font when you select one (see Figure 13.1). Font Book gives you the ability to enable or disable fonts on your Mac, so there’s no need to delete the files themselves. You can also install fonts by navigating to them from within Font Book. You can create your own font collections that represent a project, or that are bound together in any other way you like. Figure 13.1: Click on a font or a font family folder to see a preview.

Figure 13.2: Open the All Fonts collection to show ownership of fonts on your Mac.

Collections A font collection is a group of fonts and font families that have something in common. Those included with OS X are defined by typeface variety (fixed width, modern), language (Korean, Japanese), or location and access (user, computer, Classic). The specific collections you see depends on whether you customized OS X at installation time by disabling foreign language support. You can also create custom collections of your own. Click the All Fonts collection to see a list of all font families on your Mac (the total number appears below the Font column). Click the triangle to expand the All Fonts collection. Unlike other collections, which usually organize fonts by type, All Fonts describes where fonts are located, and who can use them. All fonts on your Mac are, as the collection’s name implies, available within one of the sub-collections. If the User collection is dimmed, as in Figure 13.2, there are no fonts in the user’s Fonts folder. Classic Mac OS fonts are available on systems that use the Classic environment and Mac OS 9.2. If you have access to fonts on your local network, a Network item will also appear. Click another collection to see how Mac OS X has organized its fonts. As you will learn when you create your own collection, fonts can be part of more than one collection. To create a collection, click the plus button below the Collections pane and name your collection. Choose another collection and locate a font you want to add to your custom collection. Click the All Fonts collection to see every font currently installed on your Mac. If you know the name of the font you want but can’t locate it, type the name in the search field above the Preview pane. Results appear in the fonts pane. Notice that the font families are expanded to display all matching fonts. You can drag a font or font family onto your collection to add it.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife To disable a font or collection, select it and click the Disable button below the item. Your font file is still stored in the Fonts folder and you can still find it by clicking the All Fonts collection. If you disable a font, you’ll still see it in Font Book (dimmed, with the word Off next to it), but not in the Font panel, or in applications. Making a font accessible to your applications is as simple as selecting it in Font Book and clicking Enable.

Figure 13.3: Optima Bold Italic looks like this when previewed in Font Book.

Previewing Fonts As you noticed if you selected a font family or individual font, Font Book’s right-hand column shows a sample of the font. The Preview pane actually has three views, and you can change the size of the displayed characters. Click the name of a font family. The 26 letters of the alphabet appear in upper- and lowercase, along with the numerals 0 through 9. Click a triangle to open the font family, and choose a bold or italic style. The preview changes accordingly (see Figure 13.3). To change the size of characters in the Preview, use the Size menu in the Preview pane, or the zoom slider next to it. The default Fit option uses the largest size possible while still displaying all of the 62 preview characters. The slider is the best way to zoom way in on a character you want to examine closely. Two other preview modes are available from the Preview menu. To see all characters provided by the font, including punctuation and special symbols, choose Preview → Repertoire, or press „-2. To see how a specific set of characters will look in the selected font, choose Preview → Custom or press „-3. Type some text you want to see in the selected font. You can then use the slider or Size menu to shrink or enlarge what you type.

Installing Fonts There are several ways to install fonts in Font Book. You can drag fonts into the Font pane from the Finder. To create a new collection from a folder, drag the folder containing the fonts into the Collections pane (see Figure 13.4). A collection named for the folder is created. You can also add fonts by copying them into the Fonts folder. From within Font Book, choose File → Add Fonts and navigate to those you want to add. Choose whether to install the fonts for all users, yourself only, or Classic OS. Fonts will be copied into the corresponding folder when you click Open. To remove a font or collection, select it and press Delete. Deleting a collection doesn’t delete the fonts it contains. Figure 13.4: Create a new collection and add fonts by dragging the font folder into Font Book.

Resolving Conflicts You may have noticed bullets next to the names of fonts in Font Book. Those bullets tell you that there are multiple copies of the font installed. You might end up with duplicate fonts when

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TIP You can resize the Font panel just like any other window. If you make it too narrow, the Collections menu disappears. Widen it to bring Collections back.

DOCUMENT COLOR UNDERLINE

COLOR

STRIKETHROUGH

SHADOW OFFSET SHADOW DARKNESS

TEXT SHADOW

SHADOW ANGLE

SHADOW BLUR

Figure 13.5: Make changes to text formatting in the Fonts panel.

installing a large group of new fonts that contains a font you already have on your Mac. Duplicate fonts can cause font problems in one or more applications. Choose Edit → Resolve Duplicates. Font Book disables one copy of the font. Click the expansion triangle to see both the active typeface and the disabled duplicate.

Not a Mythical Beast

Unlike the fabled unicorn, Unicode is real, and useful

You might have noticed the Unicode option in the Character palette of the Font panel. Or maybe you didn’t. Unicode is always there, in Mac OS X 10.3 and later, but you might not know about it until you need to add special characters to a text document. Unicode is an international standard for fonts and characters that provides a single worldwide character set that’s recognized by most languages and fonts. Unicode was developed to resolve heavy-duty conflicts between character sets and standards around the world,

many of which were completely incompatible and impossible for computer makers to support effectively. Unicode makes room for all characters in all languages, providing a unique number for each character that any application or operating system supporting it can translate into an onscreen character. Unicode can then be used to render characters as documents are transferred from your Mac to any other Unicode-capable system in the world. To read Unicode-based foreign documents, or those containing Unicode

dingbat characters including arrows, bullets, and mathematical symbols, both your application and operating system need to support it. With Mac OS X, you’re always halfway there. Many (but not all) of Apple’s own apps support Unicode. If you need to read lots of foreign character-set documents, find out whether your favorite word processor supports it. Hey, you can always use TextEdit. To dig deeper into Unicode, go to www.unicode.org.

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Using Fonts Although all applications on your Mac that support font selection will use the fonts you’ve installed and enabled, those that came with Mac OS X have a special connection. Open an OS X app. We’ll use Mail, but you can use iChat or iPhoto, among others. In Mail, open a new message and type some text. Choose Format → Show Fonts, or press „-T. The Font panel looks something like Font Book. Collections are on the left, with individual fonts in the middle. Instead of a preview on the right, columns for type style and size are displayed. In addition to your Font Book collections, the Font panel has two more collections: Favorites, where you can add fonts you use often, and Recently Used, which is updated automatically when you work in the Font panel. You can add and remove collections with the plus and minus buttons below the Collections menu. The adjacent menu gives you commands to add a preview above the Font panel, and to choose other palettes (which are comin’ right up). The Manage Fonts option is an express train to Font Book. To apply a font, first select text and then locate the font you want to use. Besides style and size choices from their namesake panes, you can use the buttons above the fonts list to customize it. Figure 13.5 shows this toolbar’s options.

Character Palette

Figure 13.6: Choose a special character and doubleclick to use it in your document.

Most fonts include special characters: bullets, squares, and other symbols. Other fonts are made up entirely of these special-purpose symbols. Use the Character palette to locate and use those symbols in a document. Choose Characters from the pop-up menu at the bottom of the Font panel. It’s also available by choosing Edit → Special Characters in some applications. The View pop-up menu shows different language character sets. You’ll find all the English language options under the default Roman item. The menu on the left organizes special characters by type. Choose a category and double-click a character on the right to add it to your document. With a character selected, click the Character Info triangle to see similar characters (see Figure 13.6). To save a character for later use, select it and then click Add to Favorites. It will appear under the Favorites tab, allowing you to use it without having to take the trip to the Character palette.

Chapter 14

Preview Preview might be the most important application you never intentionally launch. Oh, you’ll use it all right, maybe every single day, but not by digging it out of the Applications folder or clicking on a Dock icon. Instead, if you’re like a lot of Mac users, you’ll find yourself staring at the Preview toolbar when you double-click an image file or download a PDF document from the Internet. The Mac’s imaging engine is based on Adobe’s PDF (Portable Document Format) file format, allowing you to create PDF documents from every application’s Print dialog. As a bonus, Apple includes the PDF-reading Preview app in Mac OS X. Preview is a hyper-fast PDF viewer that not only allows you to view PDF documents, but also—beginning with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)—to speedily search them for any text you might want to find, as well as cut and paste content from a PDF into other documents. Preview is also an image viewer that loads faster than most image-editing applications, and can give you an instant image browser that you can use to page through a fistful of JPEG, GIF, TIFF and other image files. We’ll show you how to use Preview to open and search any PDF document, and also how to use it to view JPEGs, EPS documents, and other formats. You’ll also learn how to navigate multipage docuPreview displays PDFs and image files. ments.

The versatile Preview application opens all sorts of image files and PDF documents

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Turbocharged PDFs Download and read PDFs in one step with Preview.

TOOLBAR

SEARCH

PAGE/IMAGE THUMBNAILS

Preview and PDF Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) is the de facto standard for multipage documents in today’s cross-platform world. Adobe’s own Reader application is the most well-known PDF file viewer, but it can’t hold a candle to Preview when it comes to sheer speed. If you haven’t instructed your Mac to behave otherwise, Preview will open and display PDFs when you double-click on them. You’ll also be whisked into Preview when you download a PDF document from the Web.

Document Viewing To get a closer look at the page you’re viewing, click the Zoom In button on the toolbar, or press „-+. Repeat the zoom command to enlarge the document more. Press „-- (minus sign), or click Zoom Out for the same result. To see the entire page, choose View → Zoom To Fit.

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Rotating and flipping are a couple of other ways to change your view. You might want to change a PDF’s orientation to print a horizontal document, or to see more of a map or other graphic onscreen. Choose View → Rotate Right (or Left) to lay your document on its side. To see a mirror image of the page, choose View → Flip Horizontal. Flip Vertical turns your page on its head. Figure 14.1: Type a number to move to the corresponding page in a PDF document.

Navigating Multipage Documents When a multipage PDF file opens in Preview, you’ll see the first page of the document in the main window, with a drawer to the right containing thumbnails or listings of all the document’s pages. There are several ways to move to a particular page in a document. If the Thumbnail drawer is visible (click the drawer button on the toolbar if it isn’t), click the thumbnail of the page you want. You can also type the page number in the Page field on the toolbar (see Figure 14.1). Press Enter or Return to go there. If you’re browsing rather than looking for a specific page, use the Page Up and Page Down buttons on the toolbar, or the corresponding keys on your keyboard. The Back/Forward buttons on the toolbar work much like a web browser’s. Rather than taking you to the previous page in the document, these buttons return you to the page you visited last (Back), and then to the previous-previous page (Forward). The Back and Forward buttons don’t work when you’re using the page or arrow keys on your keyboard to move through the document. The Go menu contains two more options: First Page and Last Page. The authors of some PDF documents, particularly long text documents, sometimes include section or chapter names in the files. When you open such a PDF in Preview, its chapter names appear in the Thumbnails drawer as text, rather than thumbnails. Figure 14.2 shows section names for Apple’s iDVD Tutorial. Some text chapters have multiple levels, indicated by triangles next to the name. Open the triangle to see the subsection. Click on a section name to move to it. To view thumbnails, rather than text, click the Thumbnail button above the list.

Copying Content from a PDF Figure 14.2: PDF documents with section or chapter headings can display both text and graphical thumbnails.

PDF files are read-only. You can’t edit their contents. In Preview, though, you can copy elements of a PDF to the clipboard for use elsewhere. To copy text, click the Text Tool (see Figure 14.3). Then click and drag over the text you want to copy and use that old familiar copy command. Open an application where you want the text to appear, and paste. The procedure is the same for graphics, except that you’ll use the Select tool (to the right of the Text Tool). The leftmost button, the Scroll Tool, is the default, and has no effect on items you select in the PDF. When you make a selection in Preview with the Select Tool activated, everything you select is treated as an image, whether you select text, graphics, or both. And you can paste the result into an imageediting application.

Searching

Figure 14.3: Click the Text Tool to select and copy text from a PDF.

There are two ways to search a PDF file in Preview. The various Find commands (Edit → Find) are typical of those you’ll find in word processors and other text editors. You can search for a text string, and then the next or previous occurrence. To power search a long document, use the Search command. If the Thumbnail drawer isn’t visible, click the Drawer button on the toolbar. The Search field appears at the top of the drawer. Enter some text. A listing of pages containing matches appears in the drawer, with links to each match below it. The first occurrence is

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife highlighted in the main pane. To move to the next instance of your text, click it in the drawer. Preview takes you to the page.

TIP With multiple images selected, Preview fits its window to the first image in the group. Resize the window to see all the larger images on your list, or select one and choose View → Zoom To Fit.

Figure 14.4: When you select several images in Preview, a thumbnail for each appears.

PDF Preferences There aren’t many preferences in Preview. The few available (choose Preview → Preferences and click the PDF tab) control what you see when a PDF file opens. Use the Scale radio buttons to scale pages to your screen, or to choose a default percentage of the page to see. Antialiasing text and line art makes larger text and images look better, while turning this option off makes small type look its best.

Preview and Image Files Preview can open a wide range of image files, including TIFF, JPEG, GIF, EPS, PostScript, PICT, and any other format the Mac imaging engine can understand. You cannot edit graphics in Preview, but you can zoom, flip, and rotate them, as described in the PDF section of this chapter. You can also open several images at once in Preview. Preview can also convert images from one format to another. All of these features are available in most image-editing programs, but Preview is yours for the low, low price of free, and it’s fast, too. If you haven’t chosen an image-editing application like GraphicConverter or Photoshop to be your default graphic tool, most images will open in Preview when you double-click them. To open several images in Preview, select them all in the Finder (select one and then „-click the rest) and double-click. Alternatively, you can Control-click selected images and choose Preview (or any image-editing application) from the Open With menu. Preview opens, showing thumbnails for each image (see Figure 14.4). You can now move through the images using the navigation tools we described in the PDF section.

Converting and Exporting Images Although Preview is mostly an application for viewing files, you can use it to convert images to other formats. Let’s say someone sends you an image in TIFF format that you would like to put on a web page. Because JPEG is the standard for web images, you’ll need to convert your TIFF. Open it in Preview and choose File → Export. From the list of formats on the pop-up menu, choose JPEG. To fiddle with the quality of the image, click Options

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and use the slider to adjust the file’s quality. Higher quality means larger file sizes. The reverse is true for low-quality files. Note that lower-quality JPEG files might look fine on the Web, but aren’t a good choice if you want to print the image. Stick to TIFF or high-quality JPEG.

PostScript Files You’ve probably heard of PostScript: It’s a computer language that is used to produce high-quality versions of documents, usually for use with laser printers or image setters. When you print a file to a laser printer, Mac OS X converts your document to PostScript and prints it. You can also save documents as PostScript files and send them to colleagues or typesetting services. Unlike most applications, Preview can open and display PostScript files. (Most applications simply send the files to a printer.) When you double-click a PostScript file with the .ps extension, Preview opens it and converts it to a temporary PDF file. You can save the file with Preview, turning the PostScript file into a permanent PDF, with all of that format’s attributes.

Associating with Preview

Figure 14.5: To associate a file type with Preview, select Preview from the Open With menu.

As you may have figured out, our instructions about double-clicking to open files in Preview assume that you haven’t invested heavily in other graphics programs or PDF readers. Because our own hard drives are filled with apps that will open these files, we thought we should take a moment to give you a look behind the scenes of how Mac OS X figures out which program to use when opening Preview-friendly files. To open a specific file in Preview, Controlclick and choose the Open With option. From the submenu, choose Preview. If the first item on the list says Preview (default), files of this type will always open in Preview. If doubleclicking an image or PDF file opens in another application, you can change that behavior by associating all files in that format with Preview instead. Select a file of the format you want to change and press „-I. If the Open With triangle isn’t expanded, click it. Choose Preview from the menu (see Figure 14.5). Then click the Change All button, which is activated when you choose a new application. Click OK when you’re asked if you’re sure you want to apply the change to all documents with the current extension.

Chapter 15

Unix and the Terminal Come with us now into a deep, dark forest. Don’t worry. The animals, especially the panthers and tigers, are friendly, despite appearances to the contrary. There’s nothing (much) to fear. We’re leaving the safety and comfort of folders, icons, and menus for a journey into the world of Unix, the operating system that runs your Mac. Our means of transport to this strange, fascinating world is the Terminal. All computer operating systems with pretty graphical interfaces have less-pretty nuts and bolts underneath— code that actually makes things happen when you click the mouse, drag an object, or use a menu. In the case of Mac OS X, that underlying code—the engine that drives your Mac—is Unix, an industry-standard operating system that also runs supercomputers, scientific workstations and corporate systems, as well as your Mac. Because Unix has been in use for more than 20 years, it’s stable, flexible, and powerful. Like the Mac itself, Unix also has a loyal following among programmers and users, who have found it both a powerful environment for independent software development, and an alternative to the monolith of Windows. Hmm. Sound familiar to any of you die-hard Mac fans? As a practical matter, a Unix engine provides one very big advantage for Mac users: You can raise the hood and tinker with the wires. Your Unix screwdriver, to lean very heavily on the generosity of a metaphor, is the Terminal application. In this chapter, we’ll explain how the Terminal is, in its way, entirely equal to the rest of Mac OS X—how it’s just another way of accessing all the Unix power that OS X is built upon. We’ll show you how to use the Terminal to activate important and powerful Unix commands, how to customize it, how to use its shortcuts, and how it can completely destroy your Mac if you’re not careful—and we’re not kidding about that last one. Terminal, your window on Unix.

Enter the geek zone with Terminal, your window into the depths of Mac OS X

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Window into Unix The Terminal application is as simple an application as you’ll ever use, but what it allows you to do gives you awesome power over OS X.

UNIX SHELL

Unix quick start

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HOSTNAME

COMMAND PROMPT

CURSOR

USERNAME

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Unix Under the Hood

Figure 15.1: The Terminal shows your Mac’s hostname, your current directory, and username.

We start with a little namedropping to help you place Mac OS X in the larger Unix landscape. The Mac OS X version of Unix is called Darwin. Darwin is based on the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) variant (flavor) of Unix. All Unix flavors have some fundamental things in common. (They’re all open, multiuser operating systems, for starters.) Linux is another Unix flavor. Like Darwin, Linux is well-suited to personal computers, and its openness has allowed programmers to write thousands of software programs for it. Different Unix flavors share many structural fundamentals, and even use lots of the same commands. If you know one Unix flavor, chances are that you will be able to find your way around in others. In other words, a Linux geek wouldn’t be totally lost in Mac OS X Darwin, and vice versa. Like Mac OS X, Linux and other flavors of Unix can be used with graphical interfaces. Unlike Mac OS X, menus, icons, and folders aren’t part of Linux, they’re optional add-ons. When you think about working directly with Unix through Terminal and the command line in OS X, remember that although Apple’s graphical interface (called Aqua) is glued to, rather than Velcroed, to the operating system, they’re still separate components. You interact with Darwin on your Mac each time you log in to your computer, copy a file, or change a setting in System Preferences. But this chapter ain’t about using the familiar Aqua interface. It’s about making a more direct connection to Unix via the command line and the Terminal application. Because you’re not buffered from your Mac’s software innards by menus, buttons, and check boxes, you have great power at your fingertips. As you’ll learn, there are many things you can do with Unix that you can’t do in the Mac OS X interface. It’s not that the interface itself can’t do these things, but simply that it is designed to prevent you from accidentally breaking something. To butcher a famous phrase, with great power comes great risk. To work on the command line, you need to launch Terminal, found in /Applications/Utilities. When you launch it, the Terminal shows your hostname (usually your computer name), current directory, and username (see Figure 15.1). Terminal is where you’ll enter commands, and view and edit files in Unix. Following your hostname and a colon is a tilde symbol (~), which indicates that you’re in your home directory. If you’re the only one who uses your Mac and you haven’t set a login password, you might not realize that you log in to Unix each time you start up. Your username in the Terminal window confirms it. If your Mac has users besides yourself, you can switch accounts with Terminal. We’ll show you how later.

The Unix Shell The final two items on the login line are the shell prompt and your cursor. The shell prompt indicates which Unix shell you’re using (bash, by default). That’s confirmed on the Terminal window’s title bar; you see the word bash. Bash is the default Unix shell for Mac OS X. A shell is the command-line environment you use to control Unix. Think of the shell as the Finder of Unix. There are lots of shells available in Mac OS X and in most Unix versions. Like a lot of the Unix programs you’ll learn about in this chapter, there’s no need to install a new shell; just choose it in the Terminal, as we’ll show you. Although shells have much in common, each has commands and options of its own. Most Unix users have a favorite, and many begin their work with a new machine by changing the shell to one they prefer. Like the Finder, shells support scripting, and many Unix geeks pick their shell based on the power of its scripting options. As a new Unix user,

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife you’ll probably do fine with the default bash, which happens to be a pretty decent shell, even for scripters. Other options include sh and tcsh. For your first Unix command, let’s see what shells are available on your Mac. In Terminal, type ls /bin/*sh*

As with all Unix commands, press Return to issue the command. Terminal gives you a list of shell programs in the /bin directory. Let’s decipher the command you typed. ls tells Unix to list the contents of the directory you specify. /bin happens to be the parent directory where shells are stored. Adding /*sh* tells Unix to search for files inside the /bin directory containing the characters. Unless you want to use a particular Unix shell that isn’t available in Mac OS X, the list in your /bin directory probably contains one that will work for you. Type ls again. Be sure to press Return. The contents of your home directory appear in the Terminal. To see the contents of the Picture directory within your home directory, type ls Pictures. Ready for another command? Type cd Pictures

The command prompt changes to show your new location, ~/Pictures. Typing ls now, with no pathname entered, lists the contents of your Pictures directory. Type cd or cd ~ to return to your home directory. Type cd .. to go up one level from the current directory.

Time Out for Syntax Before we plunge further into using the Terminal, here are a few reminders about Unix syntax that will help you type commands correctly. • Unix is case-sensitive. Always type commands in lower-case, and type the names of files and directories as they appear in the Finder or in Terminal window listings. • Spaces are bad, except when they’re necessary. A line you type in the Terminal can contain commands, arguments, and variables, separated by spaces. The Finder supports spaces in filenames, and they will even show up when you list a directory in Unix. To list a directory called My Stuff, type ls Documents/My\ Stuff. The backslash announces the space to come. • Speaking of directories, Mac OS X folders and Unix directories are the same thing. Directories is the accepted term in Unix parlance, so that’s why we use it here. • Multiple commands can be issued in a single line. Separate them by semicolons, as in command-a; command-b; and so on. • You probably know that directories and files in a pathname are separated by slashes. Unix uses relative pathnames. When you launch the Terminal, Unix makes your home directory the active directory. Because Unix understands relative pathnames, you only need to enter the portion of the path that’s deeper in the hierarchy. To view your Pictures directory, you would type ls Pictures. Note that you don’t type a leading slash. To open a directory above your home directory, such as the Applications directory, type ls ../Applications. The two dots and leading slash tell Unix to go up one level. To go up two levels from home, type ls ../../Desktop. Now that you understand Unix pathnames, we’ll reward you with a cool shortcut that will save you some typing. At the dollar sign prompt, type ls and then a space. Don’t press Return. In the Finder, open your home folder and locate a subfolder or a file—the deeper in your hierarchy, the better. Drag the item onto the Terminal window and release the mouse. The pathname to the item

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appears in the Terminal window (see Figure 15.2). Press Return to see its contents. This trick works any time you need to enter a pathname. Just be sure to type the command first. Figure 15.2: This pathname was dragged into the Terminal window. Notice the backslashes that indicate spaces in the Mac OS X names. The backslashes around the ampersand tell Unix that it’s part of the pathname, not a command.

Understanding Commands and Their Parts The simple commands we’ve shown you so far have two parts: the command itself and arguments that specify what the command operates on (the pathname in the case of the directory commands we’ve shown you). Commands can have multiple arguments. Command options, also called flags, control the behavior of the command, typically by adding features to the command. You can use multiple options, and even combine them with many commands. Get your bearings again by typing cd to return to your home directory. Type: ls -l Pictures

The -l option adds more information to the directory display—who owns the files and folders, their size, and modification date (see Figure 15.3). The command ls –sk shows the size of items in the specified directory. The s option tells Unix to display size, and the k option specifies that file size should be displayed in KB. (Using –s alone shows file sizes in blocks.) Like options, you can use multiple arguments, separated by spaces. To apply a command to multiple directories, type the first pathname, then a space, then the second path. Operators are the last command element. They are special characters that direct a command’s output to a file, another command, or elsewhere. Here’s a simple one: ls –l Pictures > mypictures

Figure 15.3: Adding options to a command doesn’t change the command, but adds detail.

The > sign is an operator that redirects the output of the command (the directory listing, in this case) to a file, where mypictures is the name of the file. And because you’re working in your home directory, the new file mypictures is created there. (Type ls, or switch to the Finder and open your home directory to see it.) If you want the file created elsewhere, add the pathname before the filename, using the syntax you’ve already learned. Other operators (see Table 15.1) allow you to send command output to an existing file, or to run commands in the background instead of showing the output onscreen, for example.

Some More Basic Commands

Table 15.1 Here are some examples of common operators.

We could never list all of the commands available in Unix. There are hundreds of them available. Some mirror Finder functions, such as rm (remove file) and mkdir (make directory), whereas others provide advanced search and file Operator Description manipulation features (grep and > Redirect output to a file awk), used by programmers and for working with long documents. >> Append redirected output to an existing file Table 15.2 lists some popular < Direct a file’s contents to a command commands. Want to see a longer | Send one command’s output to a second list? Type ls /bin. Because the command (This character is called a pipe.) /bin directory contains command & Run a command in the background (don’t files, listing its contents lists display its output as it runs) them.

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Table 15.2 Some of these common Unix commands require operators and/or arguments to work.

Command

Description

Man Pages

To learn more about any command, type man rm Remove a file . man, mkdir Create a new directory which is also a Unix comcd Change directories mand, stands for manual pages, which are the cat Display a file or files equivalent of Mac OS X cp Copy a file or directory help for Unix applications mv Move a file or directory and commands. You’ll see date Displays the current date and time a document describing the command and its env Displays information about your Unix environment attributes in detail. Here’s file Displays a file’s type where you get your first who List users currently logged in to this computer taste of Unix file navigaman Display manual pages tion. Unlike a Mac OS X file, where the scrollbars and mouse help you navigate, you need to know a special class of keyboard shortcuts to move through man pages. Start by typing man ps in the Terminal. The ps command is explained in the man pages that open, so we won’t tell you what it does. To scroll one line down the document, use the down arrow. For a full page, use the spacebar. When you’ve finished the document (or gotten bored), type q to return to the command prompt. To learn more about working with man pages, type man man. Your options for working with man page info include printing or converting the pages to HTML. If you have a PostScript laser printer, try this command on a man page you want to print: pwd

Display the present working directory

man –t date | lp

Unix should return a display identifying your default printer, and your man pages are printed. Hey, did you notice that we introduced something new? It’s the character between the command you printed and the print command, lp. The | character (Shift-backslash) is called a pipe. Pipes in a command indicate that you’re sending output to the command that follows—the lp command, which sends output to the printer, in this case.

Unix and Aqua Together After you’ve mucked about in Unix for a while, you might get the feeling that it and Mac OS X are completely separate creatures that don’t really interact with one another. As we pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, the Aqua interface is really a very nice suit of clothes for the Unix components that run things. Some Unix commands work in tandem with the Aqua interface. In the Terminal, ls your home directory. Now type open and the name of a file or directory on the list. Don’t forget the file extension, if any. Your file should open in an OS X application. Directories pop open in the Finder. Cool, huh? Now type open /Library/Logs/software\ update.log. Mac OS X opens your software update log file, probably in the Console application (see Appendix A, p. 239). If you’re still thinking that this way of opening files is pretty useless, try this: open /private/etc/ssh_config

In Unix, settings and configuration information for applications and the system itself are stored on config files like the one that should have opened on your desktop. Those files are also hidden

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from the view in the Finder. ssh_config contains settings for the secure shell (ssh) security system that allows people to open private, secure channels to other computers over the Internet. Although most Unix users must work in command-line-based text editors such as vi or pico, the open command allows you to modify files in TextEdit or your favorite Aqua-based text editor, such as Bare Bones Software’s super-cool TextWrangler. Configuration files are very powerful things, and it’s quite easy to do unintended damage by editing them when you don’t know what you’re doing. Don’t mess with config files unless you’re fully aware of the consequences.

sudo Control We’ve pointed out before that Unix is very powerful because it gives you direct access to everything on your Mac. You can literally destroy your system with the wrong command. That’s part of the reason hackers are so feared. Once someone with malicious intent or too little knowledge gains complete access to a system, it’s easy to bring it down. Unix guards against some unintended consequences by establishing user accounts and privileges to go with them. The access options you set when you create a new user on your Mac are a subset of what Unix offers. To modify files or directories, you need to own or control them. Even Mac OS X administrative users are limited when they work at the command line. Sure, you can do a lot of damage (or get a lot done, depending on your point of view), but ultimate power is reserved for a user account called superuser, and its login name is root. With root access, you can ransack and pillage file directories, destroy configuration files, open up other users’ accounts, and reformat drives…. Oh, the humanity, the carnage! It’s a very good idea to stay away from root! However, sometimes you do need a relatively free hand when writing scripts or editing configuration files, for example, just as you do when installing software in Mac OS X. To give you the access you need without putting your system at risk, Darwin includes a kinder, gentler superuser account that you invoke with the sudo command. When you need to install software, change files you don’t own, or perform other system-wide tasks from the command line, type sudo and the command. In Mac OS X, you use sudo any time you install software that requires your password.

The Power of Unix It’s impossible to fully explain Unix in a single chapter. When we tried, our editors reminded us that paper is expensive, and that we had a few other things to get to. Oh well. Like the Applications folder, Darwin is full of programs and commands you don’t know about until you start digging around. Unlike Applications, getting a list is not as simple as viewing a directory. Mac OS X, like most Unix flavors, comes with a standard set of programs and commands that all Unix people expect to find. There are text editors, file compression programs, a web server, an email client, and a text-based web browser. For programmers and scripters, there are several shells to choose from, and lots of scripting tools. Some of the goodies buried deep inside your Unix directories are packages—not yet installed, but available should you decide to enable them on your system. The package files you might have used to install applications under Aqua are actually Unix packages with an interface on top. In the interest of getting you excited about what Unix can do, here are a few tools and features built into your Mac and accessible via Unix.

Text Editors We won’t kid you—it’s easier to edit text in an Aqua application than it is in Unix. There are times though, such as when you’re working on a script or configuration file, when it’s easier to use a

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INFOBOX Apache Resources The Apache web server is a rich environment, and you’ll find lots of books and sites that delve into its many features and options. There’s Apache documentation on your Mac. Launch a web browser and begin here: B /Library/ Documentation/Services/ apache/index.html.html

OSXFAQ’s convenient listing of Apache-related man pages: B www.osxfaq.com/MAN/ Index/A.ws

PHPMac focuses on both the PHP language that many web developers use to create dynamic websites and its interaction with Apache: B www.phpmac.com

The Apache mothership (that’s what we call it) covers Apache on all platforms, not just on Mac OS X: B httpd.apache.org

Internet Tools Sending mail from the command line is easy and fast. Type mail, then an email address. Type the subject, press Return, and then type the body. When you’re done, type a period on a line with nothing else on it and then press Return again to end the message. There’s lots more you can do with mail, and other Unix email clients such as pine are both speedy and powerful. Other Internet tools include telnet, which lets you connect to a remote computer via the Terminal, assuming you know its address and that that computer has enabled telnet access. When you telnet to another machine, you communicate with it by using the command line, the same way you do with your Mac in Terminal. Many security experts warn against enabling telnet because it’s a quick way for hackers to get complete access to a system. FTP is another dicey application for security-minded folks because it’s used to exchange files over the Internet. However, you can use FTP from the Unix command line.

Apache Web Server Here’s an example of a powerful tool that’s been tamed for use by regular people using an Aqua interface. You probably know that your Mac can be a web server if you enable Personal Web Sharing in the Sharing pane of System Preferences. The simple act of enabling web sharing activates the same Apache web server software that’s used by countless companies and organizations to run their websites. Hidden from you by Aqua is Apache’s support for programs that allow you to connect databases to your site, provide a search feature, accept input via fill-in forms, and much, much, more. Once you learn how, you can use the Apache configuration file to set up secure websites that require passwords, pages that look different depending upon who accesses them, and so on.

Working with the Terminal For Mac users who have used other terminal applications, the Mac OS X Terminal is a distinct improvement. It’s more aware of modern amenities like support for cut and paste, as well as the Delete key. Simple as those features sound, they’re not found in many of what are called terminal emulators. Let’s take a look at the Terminal application itself.

Preferences More than most applications, the Terminal is a blank slate. There aren’t a whole lot of options to fiddle with as you work in Unix. There are some preferences, though, and you can customize your Unix experience with them. Choose Terminal → Preferences. Your default shell, as we showed you earlier, is bash. You can change the shell in Unix, or by clicking the Execute This Command radio button and entering a different path and shell. The shell must be located where you point the Terminal, though. When you change shells via Preferences, open a new window. Terminal types

Chapter 15 Unix and the Terminal Figure 15.4: The Processes area of Window Settings shows current Unix processes, and allows you to add a warning if you try to quit Terminal with processes running.

TIP To change text size in the Terminal, choose Font → Bigger („-+), or Font → Smaller („--).

Figure 15.5: Set text display options in the Buffer section of Window Settings.

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evolved in the mainframe era, when each flavor of giant computing behemoth built its own text terminals. Personal computers could emulate those terminal types so that users could connect to mainframes. The items in the Terminal Type menu represent different emulators. You can use Terminal in any of these modes, even connecting with computers other than your own. You won’t need to mess with the menu or the check box below. Close Preferences and choose Terminal → Window Settings. Choose Processes from the pop-up menu. All applications have one or more processes—programs that run while they’re open. Besides showing a list of currently running Unix processes (you can get the same information with the ps command), this window (see Figure 15.4) is where you tell Terminal how to react when you try to close a window with processes running. You can add commands to the list if you want to be warned about them. Click Add and type the command. Choose Buffer from the pop-up menu. Text leaving the Terminal window as you add new text is buffered, and available by scrolling back to it until your buffer is filled. At 10,000 lines, the buffer is pretty large. You might want to increase its size to capture a particularly large amount of text, say for pasting into a Mac OS X application. You can also set an unlimited buffer or disable it, but neither of those options is recommended unless you have a good reason to use them. Use the Scrollback check boxes to customize that behavior further (see Figure 15.5). In most cases, leaving them checked is best. Use the Display and Color settings if you don’t like some aspect of the Terminal. For example, you can change the look of the cursor, or change the text’s font size or style. Leaving the Character Set menu set to Unicode allows Terminal to display special characters that meet the Unicode standard (see Chapter 13, “Font Book,” p. 203). You probably noticed that the dimensions of the Terminal window appear in the title bar. These dimensions are in horizontal and vertical characters. You can change them from the Window area of the Window Settings dialog (see Figure 15.6), along with the name of the window itself. Last but probably not least, the Keyboard options give you control of what keyboard keys do while you’re in the Terminal. The application is set up to map keyboard commands to those used by Unix. You can change individual commands if you want—some users might change keyboard mapping to match a familiar terminal application on another computer. To change a key’s mapping, select it and click Edit. Available keys appear on the Key menu. You can choose a modifier, such as Shift, „, or Option, and then choose the action pressing the key will cause. To cause the character in the field below the Action pop-up menu to appear in the Terminal, choose Send String To Shell. All of the other possible actions scroll the display.

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Figure 15.6: Customize the look of the Terminal in the Window Settings dialog box.

Terminal and the Keyboard Forgive us for praising Terminal yet again. You see, we remember the bad old days of terminal emulators that ran on the Mac, but didn’t quite grok the Mac keyboard, or at least grok it consistently. Terminal takes full advantage of Mac keyboards that include useful keys such as Control and Escape—essentials in the terminal emulation world. First, as we mentioned earlier, the Delete key works. You can retract all or part of a command by backing over it. You can also use the left and right arrow keys on the command line. To repeat the last command you typed, press the up arrow key. To stop a command in progress, press Control-C. To see how this works, type ping yahoo.com at the command prompt. The lines of output represent your computer “pinging” Yahoo! to see whether its servers are running. Control-C stops the pings. In general, keyboard commands that use the Control key are performing some action in the Unix environment. Commands that use the „ key give instructions to the Terminal application itself. Here are a few more useful Unix keyboard commands: • Control-S. Temporarily stop text as it scrolls on the screen. • Control-Q. Resume paused scrolling. • Control-U. Erase everything you’ve typed at this command prompt.

Fill Up Your Brain Learn more about Unix, on the Mac and in general We told you we would only be able to scratch the surface of Unix. We hope you’re eager to learn more. Here are some resources to help you get started. Mac-Specific Stuff • Mac OS X Hints (www.macosxhints.com). This fabulous site consists of tips and hints submitted by its readers, with commentary by others. It isn’t all Unix, but you’ll find that many of the hinters are fearless in their exploitation of Unix, and ingenious at solving thorny Mac problems. • The Well Discussion Forums (www.well.com). Check out bulletin boards for Macintosh and Unix users. • Apple’s Darwin page (developer.apple.com/darwin). This site is aimed at developers, but there’s lots of info at all levels. • OpenDarwin (www.opendarwin.org). This site is also aimed at Darwin developers.

• The Fink Project (fink.sourceforge.net). They’re porting Unix applications to Darwin. • Unix for Mac OS X Visual QuickStart Guide by Matisse Enzer. (Peachpit Press). This is a great step-by-step guide to Unix on the Mac. Unix Primers Here are some non-Mac Unix resources: • Special Edition Using Unix, 3rd ed. by Peter Kuo. (Que Publishing) • Sams Teach Yourself Unix in 24 Hours, 2nd ed. by Dave Taylor and James C. Armstrong, Jr. (Sams Publishing) • Unix Unleashed, 4th ed. by Andy Johnston and Robin Anderson (Sams Publishing) • Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache in 24 Hours by Julie Meloni (Sams Publishing)

Chapter 16

The Little Guys Deep down in the Applications folder—not on your Dock, and not in the headlines on Apple’s website—are eight little programs that work for you every day. They play your movies, display your text, keep you hooked up to the Internet, and distract you in idle moments. But do you give them any thought? Have you said thanks? With this chapter, we hope to give you at least a little appreciation for these toilers in the vineyard of your Mac. Yes, even Chess works hard for the money. In this chapter, we’ll spend some quality time with:

Most are not glamorous, but the often overlooked tools described here are both useful and fun

• Calculator. Make simple and advanced calculations, and use the conversion features to turn Euros into dollars and liters into quarts. • Chess. If you can’t start a game with friends or family, fire up this attractive chess game and challenge your Mac. • DVD Player. Slide a movie into your Mac’s DVD drive on a long flight and let DVD Player do the rest. • Image Capture. Download images from your digital camera or connect most any scanner to your Mac. • Internet Connect. If you use a modem or an AirPort network, Internet Connect holds all your connection settings. • QuickTime Player. Play downloaded movie clips or those you make yourself, along with streaming audio and video—and still images, too. • Stickies. Cover your screen in yellow (or pink, or green, for that matter) sticky notes. • TextEdit. Is it a word processor for the rest of us? Maybe not, but it’s flexible and full of features. Watch movies with QuickTime Player.

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These are the unsung heroes of OS X—the tools that help you work with multimedia and text created by other apps, and that keep you connected to the Internet.

IMAGE CAPTURE

CALCULATOR

DVD PLAYER

CHESS

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Calculator

Figure 16.1: Choose View → Advanced to see Calculator’s math functions.

Figure 16.2: After you enter the value to be converted in Calculator, choose the currencies to be converted from and to in the Convert dialog box.

It looks deceptively simple. When you open the Calculator, your reward is a pad of numbers, plus a few other keys you would expect to see on a $5 handheld calculator. But wait, there’s more, as the saying goes. Choose View → Advanced. Better? You’ll find a fistful of math functions on the advanced version of the Calculator (see Figure 16.1). But if you were about to put this book down to order a set of steak knives rather than reading on, we beg you to reconsider. Because there’s still more. Use the numeric keypad or number keys on your keyboard to enter numbers into the Calculator. You’ll have to click the memory and advanced math function buttons in the application to use them. To see a running display of numbers and equations you enter, choose View → Show Paper Tape. The Paper Tape window is independent of the Calculator display, so you can drag it to a convenient location on your screen. While you’re using Paper Tape, you can change an individual entry by double-clicking the number or symbol you want to change, and then typing a new one. Click Recalculate Totals to update the calculation. By the way, you can print the tape’s contents (File → Print Paper Tape). Calculator can speak your numbers, too. (We wish more applications offered speech options.) Use the Speech menu to have Calculator speak keys as you type them, and/or calculation totals. Feast your eyes on the lovely Convert menu, home of converters for currency, temperature, length, speed, measurements, and more. If you’re an American who slept through the metric system or a traveler in search of a friendly exchange rate, you’ll get more than addition and subtraction from the Calculator. OK, OK. Let’s see how it all works. To use the conversion tools, type what you want converted into the Calculator and choose Convert → Currency (for example). Choose the currencies to be converted from and to (see Figure 16.2), and then click OK. Your answer appears on the Calculator. The conversion dialog box shows the last time the exchange rate was updated. If you’re connected to the Internet, you can choose Update Currency Exchange Rates from the Convert menu to get the most recent info. The other conversion options work the same way (although there’s no need to update the inputs, of course). For those who spend their days programming computers or doing other science-type stuff, Calculator has seven display formats, which include hexadecimal, binary, and others. Find them on the View → Display Format submenu.

Chess Apple is hardly known as a button-down, humorless monolith. Why is it then, that there’s one and only one game included with Mac OS X? And it’s Chess. Huh? The chess game you will find in the OS X Applications folder is both pretty and smart. You can play against your Mac or against another person, or watch the computer play against itself.

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Figure 16.3: Name your game and your opponent.

Start with the really important stuff: Open Chess Preferences. Choose from four board and piece styles, control the computer’s play on a speed/skill continuum, and activate spoken moves for players and the computer. You can also show moves in the title bar. While we were writing this section, we set Chess to play a game against itself in the background. Other than a slight increase in the volume of the PowerBook G4’s fan, we noticed no deleterious effects from dedicating our system’s resources to chess-playing. If it’s good enough for IBM and Deep Blue, it’s good enough for us. A new game opens when you launch Chess. To begin playing against the computer, drag a playing piece into the square to which you want to move it. If you try to make an illegal move, Chess beeps at you and won’t make the move. When you have moved successfully, your Mac makes a move in response, and so on. To play a game against another person or to have the computer play against itself, choose File → New Game (see Figure 16.3). Choose the game type from the Players menu. The Variant menu lets you choose from four types of games: Regular, Crazyhouse, Suicide, and Losers. Check out Chess Help for explanations of each variant. Click OK to start your game. To stop a game before it’s complete, choose Save or Save As from the File menu. Double-click the file to resume the game. The Moves menu takes some of the pressure out of a tense chess game. Use Show Hint to get yourself out of a tough spot. You can also take a look at the last move. Take Back Move might work best when you’re playing the computer, because your Mac is unlikely to holler “Hey, no fair!” (see Figure 16.4).

DVD Player Figure 16.4: Here we have marble pieces on a wood board, and a spirited game between the Mac and itself.

Figure 16.5: Our movie uses the full screen, with the Controller visible when the mouse is moved.

It says what it does and it does what it says. If your Mac can play DVDs (all current ones, and those with a SuperDrive, Combo drive, or DVD-ROM drive), DVD Player will launch and control movies for you. The Finder handles data DVDs. When you insert a video DVD into your player, DVD Player launches and begins to play it. The Controller, which looks sort of like the remote control for a home DVD player, will appear briefly and then disappear as movie playback gets going. To see the controller again, move the mouse (see Figure 16.5). To get access to DVD Player’s menu bar, move the mouse to the top of the screen. If you switch out of DVD Player („-Tab), the movie continues to play. From the controller, you can fast forward, rewind, skip to the next chapter, or go to the menu. You can also use the left and right arrow keys to move between chapters. For more keyboard shortcuts as well as playback options, have a look at the Controls menu. If your DVD has an onscreen menu, you can click its buttons to choose those items. By default, DVDs play in full-screen mode. You can use the Video menu to confine the video to a window or minimize it. The Controller has two parts: the main controller, with navigation buttons and a time display; and the retractable Control drawer, where you can invoke slow motion, subtitles, and DVD angle, among other things. To hide the drawer when it’s visible, double-click on the divider (see Figure 16.6). DVD Player’s final window is called Info (Window → Show Info), and gives you just that about the movie’s elapsed time, what chapter you’re on, and some DVD settings. It’s a transparent window, and can be moved around by clicking anywhere on it and dragging it to a new location.

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We mentioned earlier that DVD Player opens by default when you insert a movie DVD. If you want to change that for some reason, open the CDs & DVDs item in System Preferences and choose another action from the When You Insert a Video DVD menu. Figure 16.6: Click to hide or show the Controller drawer, along with the rest of the Controller.

TIP You might be wondering how we captured the DVD image (neither Grab or „-Shift-3 will work). We used Ambrosia Software’s excellent Snapz Pro X.

TIP If you choose to browse images before you download them, you can also rotate or delete the duds first.

Image Capture Image Capture’s purpose in life is to help you connect a digital camera or scanner to your Mac. The camera features in Image Capture are available in iPhoto, too, and most people will decide to import photos directly into iPhoto. If you don’t use iPhoto, though, Image Capture will download your photos to a location you choose. You can even share your connected camera on your local network. Scanner support is Image Capture’s greatest benefit to most users. Before OS X and Image Capture, you had to install your scanner vendor’s driver software. Not all vendors made or updated Mac drivers, and there was no way to share a scanner on the network. Image Capture uses the industry-standard TWAIN drivers, so the interface you see is the same, regardless of the scanner you have connected. If you always want to use Image Capture with your camera, your first step should be to tell Image Capture what you want. Choose Image Capture → Preferences. In the Camera tab, choose Image Capture from the When A Camera Is Connected, Open menu. When Image Capture detects a camera, it displays options for downloading the contents. You can download everything in the camera, or use the Download Some option to browse before you download. A menu lets you choose to build a slideshow or web page, crop or fit all downloaded images to a specific size, or preview them after the download. To work with a scanner, connect it to your Mac and launch Image Capture. Image Capture displays the scanner settings. If there’s an image on the scanner plate, Image Capture displays a preview. You can zoom in or out, rotate the image, or choose the folder where scanned files are saved (Pictures is the default). To choose scan settings, click Toggle Scan Setup Drawer (the button in the upper-right corner). You’ll find even more settings when you click the Options button at the bottom of the Image Capture window. To regenerate the scan preview, click Overview (strange but true). Click and drag to select a portion of the image you want to scan, and/or drag the selection rectangle (see Figure 16.7). When you’re happy, click Scan. The image is saved and displayed in Preview. To share your scanner on a network, open Image Capture Preferences to the Sharing tab. Click Share My Devices. (You can enable web sharing, too, but this feature only works with digital cameras.) Your connected scanner appears in the dialog box and you can select it. On another networked Mac, launch Image Capture and open the Sharing tab of Preferences. Choose Look for Shared Devices, close the window, and choose the scanner from the Devices menu.

Internet Connect Figure 16.7: Select the area of the image to scan and then click Scan.

You might have had an Internet connection since the day you hooked up your Mac for the first time, but you’ve never opened Internet Connect. If you connect to the Internet via Ethernet (using a cable modem, DSL connection, or office network), you still don’t need to use it. On the other hand, users of modems, Bluetooth devices, and AirPort should read on and may already have had some contact with Internet Connect.

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife If you have an AirPort-equipped Mac, most of the options you will need to set up your connection to a wireless network are on the AirPort menu, which hangs from the menu bar if you’ve clicked the Show Status In Menu Bar check box in the Network pane of System Preferences. So why bother with Internet Connect? Internet Connect gives you a graphical look at your network’s signal strength (see Figure 16.8). You can also enable the AirPort menu from here. Internet Connect supports PPP-based dial-up connections to the Internet. If you use AOL, however, you don’t need to configure your connection here. You can also set up PPP from the Network pane of System Preferences, so chances are that you will use Internet Connect if you’re having trouble connecting. Besides managing your main Internet connection, you can add more connections. If you use a national Internet provider and you’re traveling with a PowerBook, for example, create a new modem configuration for the city you’re traveling to and log in to your account via a local number. If you use a Bluetooth modem rather than an internal one, click the Bluetooth Modem tab and set up your connection from there. Finally, if you use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to connect to your office from home, you can configure access to it from Internet Connect’s VPN tab. (If VPN isn’t visible on the toolbar, click the arrow on the right to choose it.) You can connect to IPSec and PPTP-based VPNs. Consult your company’s network administrator for help in setting up VPN access.

Figure 16.8: View your AirPort network’s status or change networks in Internet Connect.

QuickTime Player The QuickTime technology built into Mac OS X is both powerful and elegant. It is a true multimedia player, with built-in support for video formats including MPEG-4, Apple’s AAC audio format (along with MP3 and other audio standards), and most major still image formats, including TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and PICT. QuickTime also jumps in to help when you launch a compatible streamed video or audio program from the Internet. QuickTime Player is the component of QuickTime you use to open video, audio, and image files. You can also start playback of streaming programs from the player. When you launch QuickTime Player, you’re asked about upgrading to QuickTime Pro. You’ll want to click Later (because there isn’t a “No” button) unless you plan to make QuickTime content yourself. You don’t need Pro just to view movies. If you’re looking for some movies to play with and you’re an iMovie user (we know you read and memorized Chapter 4), choose File → Open Movie in New Player and navigate to the Movies folder in your user directory. In a folder containing a movie, you’ll find a QuickTime version (with the .mov extension). Open it up and click the Play button (see Figure 16.9). QuickTime Player resizes its window to fit the content. You can speed through the movie by clicking the Back or Forward buttons. Drag the playhead to move to another part of the movie even more quickly. To get information about the movie (file size, duration, and so on), Choose Movie → Get Movie Properties. If the movie has multiple tracks (clips, in iMovie language), you can get information about each one in the Movie Properties dialog. If you need to fiddle with QuickTime preferences, it’s a two-step process. The more important of the two is a stop at the QuickTime tab of System Preferences. Here you specify your Internet connection speed (so that QuickTime can adjust the speed at which it streams content) and set a few other options that affect all QuickTime-related happenings on your Mac. QuickTime Player Preferences handle a limited range of display options, including how QuickTime Player behaves when multiple movies are open, and whether to begin playing movies automatically when the player is launched.

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Stickies

Figure 16.9: QuickTime Player adjusts its window size to your movie. You can change the player size from the Movie menu.

Much of what you need to know about Stickies appears in the three sticky notes you see the first time you launch the program. If you do, you’ll learn that with Stickies, like the famous yellow paper kind, you can “scribble” notes that include both text and graphics. Each note is dated, and you can paste text or images into it from any application, including a web browser. When you paste text into a Sticky, its formatting comes with it. You can edit both the content and the style of the text as you do in any other application. Use the Font menu and the contextual menu (Control-click on the text to open the contextual menu) to make your edits. Stickies can be in any of six colors, but the default is yellow. You can move them anywhere on the screen and resize them. From the Note window, choose Floating Window to keep Stickies on top while you work in other applications. That’s a great way to refer to information while you’re writing in a word processor or other application. The Translucent Window option (see Figure 16.10) gives you a look at what’s underneath the Sticky. You can use these options together or separately, and the choices you make apply to the current Sticky only. A group of Sticky notes can be saved (File → Save All). But to save the content of an individual Sticky, you need to export it. Choose File → Export Text. You can choose between three formats: plain text, RTF, and RTFD. Both RTF and RTFD support text and paragraph formatting, and RTFD supports graphics, too. Plain text supports no formatting or graphics.

TextEdit

Figure 16.10: Stickies sit atop other open windows on your screen. They can even be translucent, as the Sticky is in this image.

It’s not a full-featured word processor, but for many people, TextEdit is enough. If you’ve used older versions or TextEdit’s predecessors, TeachText and SimpleText, you might doubt TextEdit’s prowess. But there’s a lot there for anyone who isn’t required to use a certain word processor by an employer. TextEdit can read plain text, rich text, and even Microsoft Word files. You can even save TextEdit files in Word format. All the basic text editing, font styling, and spell-checking features you would expect are available in TextEdit. You can drag movies and graphics files into your documents, too, and have TextEdit speak selected text, or a whole document. Like full-fledged word processors, TextEdit allows you to create and save styles—collections of formatting options that can be reused in other documents. You can also tinker with line spacing, a pretty rare feature in a free text editor.

Appendix A

The iApps You Don’t Know You Have We know what some of you are thinking. An appendix is entirely useless, and can even cause trouble if not tended to. We don’t think this description applies here, though. We figure you want to know what all that stuff in your Utilities folder (inside the Applications folder) is good for. We suspect that you have already used some of these nifty little gadgets, but have you ever wondered what to do with the rest of them? We count 19 little applications in there (plus Terminal, which has already gotten the treatment in Chapter 15, p. 215). Each of them either helps you set up one of your Mac’s more specialized functions—such as printing or AirPort networking— or performs some other thankless-but-important task. There are also a few other “Geek Alert!” gems hidden away in the Utilities folder that can either give you important insight into the state of your Mac, or totally fubar it. (For those of you not party to the lexicon of either WWII or the early days of personal computing, fubar is an acronym for “fouled up beyond all recognition” except that “fouled” is not the term most often used these days.) We’ll walk you through the whole range of goodies, gadgets, and gizmos, helping you understand what they are, whether you need them, and the skinny on how to use each and every one.

Explore the utilities that add connectivity and power to your Mac

Start in the Utilities folder.

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Activity Monitor What It Is. Lists all processes running on your Mac and includes tools to kill them. Do You Need It? If you have trouble getting an application to quit, or need to troubleshoot your Mac to diagnose performance or memory-usage problems, Activity Monitor can be a big help.

The Skinny

Figure A.1: See a list of processes associated with your user account by selecting My Processes from the Show menu.

Finding a list of the applications running on your Mac is as simple as looking at the Dock, but that’s only part of the story. In Unix, the operating system that actually runs your Mac, including applications and system-level activities, is controlled by one or more processes. Some processes belong to individual users, others belong to the system as a whole. Activity Manager lists all of them, the ones that belong to you, to other users, and those required to run the Mac. There’s also a list of inactive processes. Use the Show menu to see some or all of your processes, or the Filter field to locate specific ones by name (see Figure A.1). You can end a process by selecting it and clicking Quit Process. You might do this if the Force Quit command doesn’t work. You can also get an idea of which processes are hogging your CPU or memory by taking a gander at the Activity Monitor display. To see which process is eating the most memory, click the Real Memory heading to sort processes. (Choose All Processes from the Show pop-up menu to see all activity.) You can also sort by CPU, virtual memory, or threads. Virtual memory is a portion of your hard disk that’s used to provide extra memory to your system. Real memory is the RAM that’s installed in your system, and threads are sections of a process that can be executed simultaneously. In most cases, CPU percentage and real memory usage are the numbers you will care about. Notice, as we mentioned before, that not all processes are applications that you launched. Some processes are system-level functions, like SystemUIServer, cupsd, automount, and a fistful of others. You’ll notice lots of these unfathomable names if you select Administrative Processes from the Show menu. They do things such as manage printing, control the Aqua user interface, keep your web server or shared folder on the network, and lots more. Each one is a Unix function, and would be familiar to an experienced Unix administrator. Most administrative processes don’t eat a great deal of CPU power or memory. Most of the time, you’ll want to inspect or quit processes that run applications you’ve launched, like Mail, Safari, Microsoft Word, the Finder, and so on, rather than the low-level processes that manage Mac OS X’s Unix underpinnings. To dig deeper into a process, select it and click the Inspect button. You’ll see more detailed information about CPU and memory usage, and the Recent Hangs field, which can let you know whether the process is giving your Mac trouble. The Open Files tab shows files being used by the process. This is not a list of documents belonging to an application, but of files that the process is using to do everything from report its actions to the system log to applying plug-ins or modules that add features. Below the list of processes are several tabs, under which you’ll find information about your Mac’s CPU, memory, disk usage and activity, and what’s happening on the network. This data can

Appendix A The iApps You Don’t Know You Have

Figure A.2: Watch your CPU’s activity in a floating window.

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help you troubleshoot, too, and also gives you an idea how much stress is being put on your CPU, and how well the amount of memory installed in your Mac is handling the load. Look at these statistics in Activity Monitor, or make them available in a small Desktop window or on the Dock. To keep constant tabs on your Mac’s CPU (see Figure A.2), choose Monitor → Show CPU Usage. To have the little graph appear on top, regardless of the other applications you’re using, choose Monitor → Floating CPU Window and then pick the vertical or Horizontal option. You can close the larger Activity Monitor window and move the CPU Monitor anywhere you want it to appear. You can also use a Dock icon to show CPU, memory, or disk usage. Choose Monitor → Dock Icon and pick an option. Activity Monitor’s icon reflects your choice and updates constantly. Activity Monitor must be running for floating or Dock monitors to be active. Close the main Activity Monitor window to see only the CPU monitor.

AirPort Admin Utility What It Is. Tool for managing Apple AirPort wireless base stations. Do You Need It? Owners of AirPort base stations can’t get along without AirPort Admin Utility. You can set up the base station with the Admin Utility or with AirPort Setup Assistant, but it is easier to use the utility to change settings later because the Setup Assistant requires you to click through a series of screens to get to individual features you want to work with. You can’t manage other vendors’ wireless routers and access points (base stations) with AirPort Admin Utility.

The Skinny Unlike most wireless access points and routers that use web-based management tools, AirPort base stations rely on standalone applications for configuration and management. Therefore, you either need a Mac and the AirPort Admin Utility to set up an AirPort base station, or Apple’s equivalent Windows application (which you can download at www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportadminutilityforwindows.html). With your Mac connected to a network (wireless or wired) that also includes AirPort base stations, launch AirPort Admin Utility. It finds and lists base stations on the network. Double-click one to configure it.

AirPort Setup Assistant What It Is. The configuration tool for AirPort wireless cards and AirPort base stations walks you through first-time setup. Do You Need It? Anyone who uses an AirPort product (wireless card or base station) can use the Setup Assistant to configure their equipment step-by-step. Though most Mac wireless users probably use an AirPort card, those who chose another brand of adapter can sometimes use AirPort Setup Assistant. If your card contains a Broadcom chip—the one that powers AirPort Extreme—ASA will work for you. Not sure about your card? Fire up AirPort Setup Assistant and see whether it works. If not, you’ll need to use your card vendor’s own software.

The Skinny AirPort Setup Assistant does just about all the work for you. All you need to do to set up an AirPort card for the first time or connect to a new network is open the application and do what you’re told.

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Figure A.3: Choose from available wireless networks in AirPort Setup Assistant.

AirPort Setup Assistant looks for your AirPort card (asks if you want to turn it on, if it’s disabled) and then inquires whether you want to configure your AirPort card or a base station. Next it hunts for a wireless network. If you’re configuring a card, the software doesn’t care whether you’re using an AirPort base station or not, but will connect you to any 802.11b- or 802.11g-based wireless network it finds. (In Apple speak, 802.11b is plain old 11Mbps AirPort, whereas 802.11g corresponds to 54Mbps AirPort Extreme.) If more than one network is available, choose one from the pop-up menu (see Figure A.3). Just as in AirPort Admin Utility, only AirPort base stations are supported. If ASA contacts a network, it will ask you for its password if one is required, or finish making the connection if you don’t need a password. You can use AirPort Setup Assistant any time you need to connect to a new wireless network, but it’s much quicker to add an AirPort menu to the menu bar or use Internet Connect (see Chapter 16, “The Little Guys,” p. 225). In either case, click the Show AirPort Status in the Menubar check box. From now on, you’ll see a menu where you can change networks, disable AirPort, and even get a rough look at the network’s signal strength.

Audio MIDI Setup What It Is. Configuration tool for adding MIDI and other audio devices to your Mac. Do You Need It? Some GarageBand users and others who connect MIDI keyboards or other audio devices to their Mac may not need to open Audio MIDI Setup unless there’s trouble. Most will use it to verify that the Mac sees a connected device or to tweak settings. Audio MIDI Setup will communicate with MIDI keyboards and drum sets, as well as audio interfaces. No MIDI or audio device? No need for Audio MIDI Setup.

The Skinny Thinking positive is always a good strategy—at least in the beginning. If you’re working with GarageBand or some other app that accepts MIDI input, try connecting your keyboard or other device and opening your music software. If you can see and work with MIDI, you’re done. If your software doesn’t recognize a connected MIDI device, open Audio MIDI Setup and click the MIDI Devices tab. Here you can verify that the Mac sees the device, or click Rescan MIDI to look for it. You can also test your MIDI configuration or click Add Device to create a configuration for the connected instrument. If you’re using a PCI card or an external interface box to connect audio devices to your Mac, you can choose them in the Audio Devices tab of Audio MIDI Setup (see Figure A.4). Before you do, be sure to install any software provided with the device and then relaunch Audio MIDI Setup. Choose your device as the Mac’s default input, and/or set its audio properties. If you’re using an external audio device for output, there are settings for that, too, including speaker test and setup.

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Figure A.4: Configure an external audio device in Audio MIDI Setup.

Bluetooth File Exchange/Serial Utility/Setup Assistant What It Is. Tools for communicating with Bluetooth-equipped devices, including computers, PDAs, cellular phones, keyboards, and mouse devices. File Exchange helps you transfer files to computers and PDAs. Serial Utility creates new Bluetooth connections. Setup Assistant gets your Bluetooth-equipped Mac ready to talk to Bluetooth devices. Do You Need It? All current PowerBooks have built-in Bluetooth support, and other Macs can be equipped with a USB Bluetooth adapter. To use Bluetooth, you need both a Mac with Bluetooth and access to another Bluetooth device, such as a computer or PDA. Some cellular phones, keyboards, and mouse devices also support Bluetooth. You can configure your Bluetooth connection with Setup Assistant, Serial Utility, and File Exchange, or you can find the same options in the Bluetooth pane of System Preferences, organized a bit differently. You won’t use any of these tools unless you have a Bluetooth device to talk to, of course.

The Skinny Like AirPort Setup Assistant, Bluetooth Setup Assistant walks you through making a connection, step-by-step. It’s a great way to get started with Bluetooth, locating and connecting to a wireless device for the first time. But once you’re a Bluetooth pro, you will probably just jet over to System Preferences and click on the device you want to use in the Bluetooth pane’s Devices tab. Then you can transfer files, sync your contacts with iSync or Address Book (see Chapters 8 and 9, respectively), or whatever you plan to do with the connected devices. File Exchange is a speedy way to quickly share files with another computer or a PDA. Once your wireless device is known to the Mac, open Bluetooth File Exchange and either configure it for file transfer from the other device or initiate a transfer from your Mac. With Bluetooth Serial Utility, you

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife can create ports for multiple Bluetooth devices and configure authentication and encryption settings for security. To learn more about Bluetooth on your Mac, go to www.apple.com/bluetooth.

ColorSync Utility What It Is. Configuration tool used to establish consistent color profiles for devices, including monitors, scanners, and printers. Do You Need It? Anyone who uses the Mac for color graphics work, especially with multiple input and output devices connected, should use ColorSync and the ColorSync Utility to make sure that colors are consistent across all the devices they use. Many Mac users need never worry about ColorSync because their only color device is an external monitor or built-in LCD display, and because precise color fidelity just isn’t that big a deal. If you’re having problems with color, feel free to use ColorSync. Otherwise, you don’t need it.

The Skinny

Figure A.5: Choose a profile and view its attributes in ColorSync Utility.

Mac OS X includes ColorSync profiles for lots of devices, naturally including Apple monitors and LCD displays. There are also lots of printer, scanner, and third-party monitor profiles. Software you install when you add a color-using peripheral often includes ColorSync profiles. ColorSync Utility’s job is to set up and customize color profiles for each color-using device you use. From there, you can use the color management software that manages the device to activate its ColorSync profile. For monitors, that’s the Displays pane in System Preferences. You apply color settings for printers in the Print dialog box. To see a list of profiles organized by type and ownership, click the Profiles button in ColorSync Utility. Any profiles you have created yourself appear in the User folder. Other folders contain vendors’ profiles, as well as those that came with Mac OS X (the ones listed under Computer). Figure A.5 shows a batch of Epson profiles, and the specific attributes of Epson ColorMatch RGB. To look at available profiles another way, click the Devices tab. Profiles associated with printers, scanners, cameras, and proofers appear on the list, and you can change profiles by selecting the current device and choosing Other from the Current Profile pop-up menu. If you don’t see any devices for the type of device you use, look for one on the disc that came with the device, or go to the vendor’s website. Then you can install and use a profile. Click the Default Profiles tab to see them. All installed ColorSync profiles are available from the three pop-up menus. The defaults are used when no other profile has been specified in System Preferences or in your peripheral’s software. Like ColorSync profiles, Color Matching Methods (CMMs) can be installed in your system. Unless you’ve done that, the CMMs tab shows only Automatic and Apple CMMs. If you’re having trouble with installed profiles, click Profile First Aid and then click Verify to check whether your profiles are in working order. If ColorSync Utility turns up troubled profiles, click the Repair button.

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Console What It Is. Displays a variety of system logs kept by Mac OS X. Do You Need It? Console is most useful for troubleshooting installations or activity on your Mac. If an application is crashing or a software installation has failed, Console may hold the key. If you run a web server or allow others to access your Mac from the outside world, Console gives you a real-time look at what’s happening on your system.

The Skinny

TIP If you have a favorite log, you can choose it as a default when Console opens. Choose File → Open Quickly, and then choose the log folder and the specific log you want.

Figure A.6: Install.log shows what you have installed, where it was installed, and how long installation took.

Console gives you a live look at all the logs that Mac OS X creates as you work on your Mac. You can also save Console’s log output for further study, to mail to a system administrator, or as input for log analysis software. When you open Console for the first time, you will probably see a single pane containing the Console log, where you’ll see activities related to errors deep down within the innards of your Mac and the Unix kernel. These may not be fatal errors, and you don’t need to worry about them unless you’re having other problems with your Mac. To see more logs, click the Logs button and then click an individual log. The System log, like the Console log, displays what’s going on under your Mac’s hood, but you’ll see a lot of activity that doesn’t indicate a problem. This includes startup of network services, waking from sleep, and so on. The System log is a great window on what your Mac has been up to today, and is useful in narrowing down problems you might be having. The two Library items are folders of logs, accessible with a click of the triangle. The ~ symbol indicates that these logs belong to the current user—you. The other logs belong to the Mac as a whole. Library logs are specific to a few applications and devices you use with your Mac, both from Apple and other vendors. In /Library/Logs, for example, you’ll find Software Update.log, which tells you what Software Update has installed recently. /var/log contains a wide range of logs. You’ll find everything from a log for your firewall (ipfw) to web sharing (httpd), fax, and install, which collects information about everything that is installed

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MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife on your Mac (see Figure A.6). You might notice that there are several copies of some logs (httpd, httpd.1.gz, httpd.2.gz, for example). When a log file becomes large, Mac OS X clears it, saves it to a .gz file and begins again. To clear the currently displayed log, click the Clear button in the Console window’s toolbar. To control how often logs are updated, choose options in Console → Preferences. You can mark a particular item in a log as it scrolls by clicking the Mark button or choosing Edit → Insert Marker. Console inserts a date and time stamp on a new line in the log. To save a copy of any log, select it and choose File → Save A Copy As. Name the new log file. You can now open it in a text editor, or use log analyzer software to dissect it.

DigitalColor Meter What It Is. Shows a color value for selected pixels. Do You Need It? Graphics professionals who need to match a color on their screen to an industry-standard color definition can use DigitalColor Meter to do it, one pixel at a time. If you’re not printing high-quality color versions of something you’re designing on your Mac, you won’t need the meter.

The Skinny Figure A.7: Choose a color you want to match and then copy the displayed color values.

DigitalColor Meter is both simple and geeky. Using it is as easy as opening the application and moving your cursor over a pixel whose color you want to identify (see Figure A.7). The color meter tells you the pixel’s color value based on RGB or CIE color identifiers. You can use this information to determine whether what you see on screen matches what you hope to see when you print a high-quality version of whatever you’re pointing to. Web developers can use true color values to ensure that the colors they use to code their pages are web-safe, and will appear consistently across different browsers and computers. With DigitalColor Meter open, continue moving the cursor around an image to determine its real color values and make changes in your image-editing program if necessary. Using the meter’s preferences, you can float its window above others, and change the magnification and the color of the aperture. You can copy the color values you’ve found (choose Color → Copy Color As Text or Copy Color As Image).

Directory Access What It Is. Utility for setting up access to directory services from your Mac. Do You Need It? Most Directory Access users work in corporate environments in which far-flung directories provide information about people, servers, and other resources around the company and around the world. Even if you do work in such a place, you might want to let your network administrator plumb the depths of Directory Access to get you access to remote resources. Unless you need to connect to a specific directory service supported by Directory Access, you don’t need it.

The Skinny If you need it, you need it; if you don’t, you never will. Directory Access really depends on whether you need to connect to the remote services it supports. Assuming you do, the first thing to do is to

Appendix A The iApps You Don’t Know You Have

Figure A.8: Choose the services you need by clicking check boxes in Directory Access.

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click the lock in the lower-left corner of the Directory Access window. Now you’ll need to enter an administrator password. The Services tab shows both installed and available plug-ins (see Figure A.8). The checked ones (the default, based on your network settings) are active, as we’re sure you’ve figured out. Some services can be configured further, but others are simply active or not. Click a service to select it. If the Configure button becomes active, you have further options to explore. AppleTalk, Rendezvous, and NetInfo are all Mac-specific services. You are likely to use SMB and Active Directory if you work in a Windows-centric world. The rest of the default services are industry standards that help you find servers (SLP), directories of people and addresses (LDAP), and Unix services (BSD Flat File and NIS). Even if you do configure your own darn directory services, chances are that your network administrator will have something to say about the Authentication and Contacts settings (conveniently located under tabs of the same name). These settings control the way users establish their identity when accessing services, and where to look for name and address information on LDAP and Active Directory servers.

Disk Utility What It Is. Repair, verify, and format your disks, and burn disk images to CD or DVD. Do You Need It? Disk Utility is your friend. Most people will get jiggy with Disk Utility at some point. If you add new drives to your Mac or completely erase (format) them, you will use it, as will anyone who’s having trouble with a drive. You can also partition drives and burn CDs or DVDs. The Repair Permissions feature is one of your most important troubleshooting tools.

The Skinny It’s just one of those little ironies of computer life that the very things you do to make your system run better are the things against which the most precautions are required. It’s very important that your data be backed up before you begin messing around in Disk Utility. We’ll wait while you take care of the backup, okay? When you launch Disk Utility, you’ll see a list of the disk drives (and mounted DVDs or CDs) connected to your Mac. For Figure A.9, we’ve taken a picture of a Mac with three disk drives and one CD inserted. If a disk image is mounted, you can also work with it, as you’ll learn presently. The First Aid tab is where you can verify that a selected disk is in good working order (no hardware or software glitches) or repair it, along with repairing broken disk permissions. You can also verify the integrity of CDs and DVDs, although you can’t repair them because they are write-protected. To verify an item, select it in the left pane and then click Verify Disk. You can’t verify the startup disk because it has open files. To verify a startup disk, boot your Mac from the Mac OS X CD and launch Disk Utility before verifying or repairing the startup disk. If verification turns up a problem, you’ll see errors in the Disk Utility display. At that point, you can click Repair Disk to fix the problems. If errors persist, you might have a damaged disk. Some disks can be repaired successfully by tools such as Alsoft’s DiskWarrior (www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior) or Norton Utilities (www.symantec

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Figure A.9: All mounted volumes appear on the left. Select one to verify or repair its permissions.

Figure A.10: Verifying permissions for your startup disk displays a list of files with broken permissions. From here, you can repair your disk.

.com/nu/nu_mac). You might also want to consult a disk recovery service such as DriveSavers (www.drivesavers.com). The Unix operating system gives different permissions to different classes of files. Those permissions prevent you from breaking things you shouldn’t and keep your Mac and its software secure. Occasionally, the permissions get messed up (a technical term), which can cause crashes or severe system slowdowns as your Mac tries to figure out what’s wrong. Permissions can also become damaged when you install new software. It’s a good idea to fix them periodically, especially after you’ve installed something new. Start by selecting your startup disk. Click Verify Permissions to see whether anything’s wrong. Figure A.10 shows permissions for our trusty PowerBook G4, which hasn’t been giving us any trouble. Imagine what we would see in the event of real problems. When the verification is complete (it might take several minutes), click Repair Disk Permissions to give your Mac a little tune-up. If you’re pretty sure that permissions are damaged, feel free to skip the verification step. Erase is the next Disk Utility tab, and here you can start from scratch with a disk, deleting everything on it. Obviously, you need to be sure this is what you want to do. You won’t be able to erase your startup disk unless you’ve launched Disk Utility from a CD. You might want to erase a disk if you want to do a complete Mac OS X system installation, or if you want to partition it into multiple volumes. When you erase, Disk Utility formats your newly scrubbed drive using one of four volume formats. You probably want to stick with Mac OS X Extended (Journaled). Speaking of partitioning, you can use the Partition tab to turn one drive into two volumes. (To see the Partition tab, you must select the disk drive, not a volume within the drive.) There’s not much reason for most people to partition drives, although some folks use a partition to store files they want to share with others via File Sharing, leaving another partition private. Partitioning a drive will erase it completely. In the Partition tab, choose a number of partitions from the Volume Scheme pop-up menu. Disk Utility displays the number of equally sized partitions you’ve selected. To make one larger or smaller, drag the divider between them. To choose each partition’s name and format, select the partition. You can also enter the partition’s size in GB, which adjusts the size of others to divide the available space on your disk. RAID is a means of creating redundant and reliable disk storage on your computer. It’s used mostly by server administrators and graphics or digital video pros who need very reliable disk access and high performance. For more general information about RAID technologies, go to Apple’s Xserve Server RAID overview (www.apple.com/support/xserve/raid).

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Last on our tour of Disk Utility tabs is Restore, which helps you restore the contents of a disk drive from disk images. You can restore using an existing disk image, or create disk images that can be used to copy data to a CD or DVD. Network administrators can use the Restore feature to make disk images containing the standard office software. You can burn any disk image (one you’ve created or one that’s stored on your Mac) to a CD or DVD from within Disk Utility. With the image mounted on the Desktop (double-click a .dmg file), select it in Disk Utility and click Burn. Disk Utility asks for a blank disc and burns your image to it.

TIP Hard-core screenshot takers will find that Grab is pretty limited, and will probably opt for the excellent Snapz Pro from Ambrosia Software (www.ambrosiasw .com/utilities/snapzprox).

Grab What It Is. Capture an image of all or part of your screen to an image file. Do You Need It? If you write Mac books or articles, documentation, or training materials, you capture screen images every day. Although most folks don’t spend quite so much time taking screenshots, having Grab around makes it easy to take and save a quick picture.

The Skinny Grab can take a picture of the whole screen, a window, or a selection. You can activate a capture from the menu bar or with keyboard shortcuts. To capture a selected section of the screen, choose Capture → Selection or press „-Shift-A. Grab gives you a rectangular selection cursor. Drag to create the selection. When you release the button, Grab takes the picture and displays it. Now you can save the image (File → Save). When you choose Capture → Window („-Shift-W), Grab gives you a floating window where you activate the capture. Click Choose Window and then click the window you want to capture. Grab takes the picture. Grab gives you a timer you can use to capture a screen after a 10-second delay. This way, you can pull menus or simulate some sort of action after the timer is activated. To use it, choose Capture → Timed Screen („-Shift-Z). The floating window appears with a Start Timer button. When you’re ready, click the button and take up to 10 seconds to set up your screen. Grab then takes the picture. Grab can include the cursor in the image. You can choose your own pointer from a collection of nine, or choose not to show it at all. Choose Grab → Preferences and click a pointer to choose it. The empty box on the top row eliminates the cursor from the image.

Keychain Access What It Is. Manage and control access to keychains containing your passwords. Do You Need It? Entries in Keychain Access are created each time you add a password to your keychain. You won’t need to open Keychain Access unless you want to alter an entry, look up a password, or lock down your keychain so that someone who has physical access to your Mac can’t use your keychain.

The Skinny You probably didn’t realize that all the items in your keychain are available in a single window. Open Keychain Access to see keychain items, each with an icon telling you what sort of password the entry represents (see Figure A.11). You can also see details about the entry, such as the URL for Internet passwords, or the applications that use a local one. You can add or edit comments

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Figure A.11: Keychain Access lists local and Internet keychain items with their attributes.

about the item, or view its password. On the right is a pane that lists your Mac’s keychains. By default, there are two: your user keychain, and one for the system. You can create and manage more if you like. To retrieve a selected keychain item’s password, either click the Show Password check box to see the password, or click the Copy Password to Clipboard to do just that, after which you can paste it into the application that requests it. Keychain Access asks for your keychain password and displays it below the check box, or copies it. With an item selected, click the Access Control tab. You’ll see a list of applications that can use the item. You can add or remove applications or click Allow All Applications To Access This Item, if you like. On a global level, you can use Keychain Access to keep folks who wander by your Mac from being able to connect to your password-protected stuff. Select a keychain from the list and choose File → Lock Keychain or press „-L. Repeat the command to unlock your keychain.

NetInfo Manager What It Is. A Finder interface to NetInfo, the central database of user accounts, groups, passwords, printers, and other configuration settings. Do You Need It? First and foremost, NetInfo Manager is very powerful, and you can do serious damage to your system if you don’t know what you’re doing. And NetInfo is not something that most people need to use. Over time, Apple has brought NetInfo features into the Finder itself, with simpler, safer interfaces. Some shareware developers, too, have put friendlier faces on some parts of the database, making it unnecessary for you to use NetInfo Manager. Most people don’t need to use NetInfo Manager, and those who want to should spend lots of time reading Apple’s Knowledge Base articles on the subject at www.apple.com/support.

The Skinny Time for another warning: NetInfo Manager is powerful because it gives you access to the database that controls user accounts, passwords, and a wide array of configuration options. Don’t make changes in NetInfo Manager unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. It’s also worth saying that the breadth of NetInfo makes it impossible for us to thoroughly describe how the Manager works or what you can do with it. We’ll give you a brief tour, with a practical example of how you might use NetInfo Manager. With the warnings out of the way, open NetInfo Manager, click the lock in the lower-left corner, and enter an administrative password. Click the / (forward slash) in the left column. The items you

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see in the middle are directories of NetInfo items. Scroll down if necessary and click Users. A list appears on the right, including lots of unfamiliar names. These are Unix user accounts your system uses to provide access to all kinds of local and network services. Look for your username and click on it. The lower pane now shows properties and values for the selected items. Scroll down the list and click a picture in the Property column. Notice the pathname in the Value(s) field. It leads to the user picture— dog.tif, shown in Figure A.12. Double-click the Value field to select its contents. Now click again so that the insertion cursor appears in the field. Select “Dog.tif” and type Jaguar.tif. Quit NetInfo and agree to save, and to update NetInfo when asked. Restart your Mac. Notice that your startup icon has changed, based on what you typed in NetInfo Manager. Our example was very simple, quite harmless to your system, and one that could have been accomplished more easily with System Preferences. As you explore NetInfo, you’ll find that you can do a lot more. For example, you can create user groups and add users to them, or even create a new user based on one that already exists. In those cases, you will add, rather than simply edit, properties and values in NetInfo Manager. Figure A.12: Like the Finder, NetInfo Manager displays the contents of the NetInfo database as folders and subfolders, with properties and values you edit.

Network Utility What It Is. A collection of tools for monitoring Internet devices and network activity. Do You Need It? Many Unix users and others experienced with TCP/IP, the networking language of the Internet, expect to have easy access to tools such as ping and traceroute. You’ve always been able to activate these tools on the command line, but Network Utility puts the most common ones together and makes them easy for anyone to use. You might use Network Utility if you’re curious about someone trying to access your Mac over the Internet (hacker or not), or if you’re trying to find out why you can’t connect to a website or other host. Those who use it will use it a lot. Those who aren’t curious about other computers on the Net might never use Network Utility.

The Skinny We’ll show you a few of Network Utility’s most useful tools. Feel free to explore the rest on your own. You’ll need to be connected to the Internet to use Network Utility. First, click the Ping tab. Type apple.com in the Network Address to Ping field and click the Ping button. Apple.com is called a domain—more than just Apple Computer’s website, its domain name identifies Apple on the Internet for purposes of mail, file transfer, and everything else. Your Mac “pings” Apple Computer, sending packets out and awaiting a response. Packets received indicate not only that the computer you’re connecting to is online, but also that the two of you can communicate. Unsuccessful pinging of multiple sites is your first indication that something’s wrong with your network connection. If you ping one site successfully and fail to receive packets from another site, the problem is with your target. Click the Lookup tab and type apple.com in the Lookup field. Choose Internet Address from the pop-up menu and click Lookup. The mixture of gobbledygook and useful stuff that comes back

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Figure A.13: Look at a domain’s Whois record to see who owns it and where it’s hosted.

tells you about Apple’s domain. The first line of the Answer Section lists Apple’s IP address, 17.254.3.183. If you had entered those numbers in the Lookup or Ping fields, you would have received the same apple.com information you see before you because every domain name corresponds with an IP address. If you know an IP address but not its domain name, type the numerical address in the Lookup field and select Host Name for Address from the popup menu. When you click Lookup, your answer includes the hostname associated with the address. Click the Whois tab and type a domain name. You can choose a Whois server from the list below. The Whois service retrieves information about the owner of a domain name. The owner provides this information when registering for the domain name. Different domain registration authorities use different Whois servers, so it’s worth trying another one if your first attempt fails. Internic.net and Networksolutions.com contain registration info for a large number of domains, and they are your best starting places. Figure A.13 shows the Whois record for Macaddict.com.

ODBC Administrator What It Is. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is an industry-standard means of connecting a computer with databases, usually large corporate or government ones. You set up connections between your Mac and databases using ODBC Administrator. Do You Need It? If your job includes connecting to an ODBC-compliant database, and if you configure your own Mac’s connection to corporate resources, you’ll use ODBC Administrator. If either of these is not true for you, there’s no reason to touch it. If you’re not sure you understand the majority of this paragraph, ODBC Administrator is definitely not for you.

The Skinny Most ODBC databases live on large company servers. You may use a Mac application such as FileMaker Pro to connect to a remote corporate database, but you’ll need a driver for the database, and ODBC Administrator to connect and manage everything. First, install the ODBC-compliant application you intend to use, and then install the driver for the remote database. Next, you’ll need to know where on the network to find the databases you have access to. Your system administrator or whoever manages the database should be able to tell you where to look. You can use ODBC Administrator to create connections to multiple databases, and to activate the database drivers you’ve installed.

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Printer Setup Utility What It Is. Tell your Mac what it needs to know to connect to and use printers. Do You Need It? Anyone with a printer connected to her Mac, or with access to one on a local network, will use Printer Setup Utility at some point.

The Skinny

Figure A.14: Choose a printer from those available on the network to add it to your printer list.

There are two ways to work with Printer Setup Utility: open the application from the Finder, or choose Edit Printer List from the Printer pop-up menu in the Print dialog box. Either way, the window is empty until you activate the first printer with the Add button. Next you need to choose a type of printer connection from the pop-up menu. If your printer is connected to your Mac via USB, choose USB or an option that matches your brand of printer. Network printers fall into one of several categories: If all the computers on your network are Macs, a printer on the network might use AppleTalk, Rendezvous, or IP Printing. On networks of Macs and PCs, it might be IP Printing, Open Directory, or Windows Printing. If you know your printer’s name, but not which connection method it uses, try several. Available printers for each option appear in the window below the pop-up menu (see Figure A.14). Be sure to wait a few seconds after choosing a new method while the network looks for your printer. If you still can’t locate it, ask your friendly system administrator to help. You might see a selection pop-up menu when you choose a printer, from which you can select the make and model. With the menu set to Auto Select, Printer Setup Utility will do its best to configure your printer on its own. Double-click your chosen printer to add it to your printer list. If you add multiple printers, you can choose one to be used automatically when you print a document by selecting it and clicking the Make Default button. The default printer is bold on your printer list. All printers you add to the list appear in the Print dialog pop-up menu unless you uncheck the In Menu check box in Printer Setup Utility. You can remove printers, get info about them, or apply a ColorSync profile, using the buttons on the Printer Setup Utility toolbar. If you have problems connecting to or printing to a printer on the list, double-click its name to reestablish the connection. To create a desktop icon you can use to print documents by dragging them onto the icon, select a printer from the list and choose Printers → Create Desktop Printer.

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System Profiler What It Is. Generates a complete report about your Mac’s hardware and software. Do You Need It? If anyone’s ever asked you what CPU, how much memory, or what kind of CDRW drive your Mac contains, you could have used System Profiler to look it up. Even if such topics don’t come up in idle conversation, a tech support person at Apple or another company, or your company’s system administrator, might want the answer to these and other questions about your Mac’s configuration and software in the process of helping you troubleshoot problems or upgrade software.

The Skinny To learn about a component of your Mac, click it in the left column of System Profiler, which gathers up-to-date information and displays it before your eyes. You can find out all about your Mac’s hardware—how much, how many, and how fast—and get a list of applications stored on your Mac, even if they aren’t in the Applications folder. Click on an item in the upper pane to see more info about it below. The Network item shows all available network connections (including Ethernet, AirPort, and modems), and the Logs item gives you access to the Console Log and System Logs (both of which you’ll also find in Console). You see a standard report by default. Choose View → Short Report to see less detail, or View → Extended Report to see the whole enchilada. Note that not all listings change when you alter your view. To save your report to a file for printing or emailing to someone who’s helping you troubleshoot, choose File → Export. Choose Rich Text to preserve formatting, or choose Plain Text for just that. You can also save the report (File → Save As) in a format that System Profiler can read, so that when your saved file is opened elsewhere, it will appear in System Profiler.

index Symbols & (ampersand), 219 < operator, 219

Add Sender to Address Book command (Message menu), 177 Add Text command (Project menu), 112

> operator, 219

Add to Library command (File menu), 13

>> operator, 219

Address Book, 161, 163

| operator, 219

addresses, printing, 168

Numbers

connections to other apps/places, 167 contacts, 164-166 directories, 167-168

8mm tapes, converting for iMovie, 90

email, 166-167 groups, 165-166

A AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), 11, 23-24 accounts (iChat AV)

labels, printing, 168 addresses email, saving, 177 entering into Address Book, 164-165

AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), 126

finding, 166

logging in, 126

importing into Address Book, 164-166

.Mac service, 126 Mail, 172-174 multiple accounts, 127 Rendezvous messaging, 135

printing from Address Book, 168 addressing email, 174-175 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), 11, 23-24

actions (iChat), 130

ADVC300PRO, 90

Activity Monitor, 234-235

AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format), 11

Activity viewer (Safari), 188 Add Buddies command (Buddy menu), 127

AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), 126

Add Fonts command (File menu), 206

AirPort Setup Assistant, 235-236

AirPort Admin Utility, 235

250

Aladdin Stuffit Standard Edition

Aladdin Stuffit Standard Edition, 178

As Unread command (Mark menu), 176

albums

aspect ratio, 69

arranging photos in, 65 creating, 63 date-based albums, 64 display views, 65 options, 65 rearranging, 65 sample project, 82-84 smart albums, 64 alerts (iChat), 130 All Fonts collection, 205 Alsoft DiskWarrior, 241 ampersand (&), 219 analog conversion, 90 analog pass-through, 90

Blair Loop Project, 51 Block Pop-Up Windows command (Safari), 186

associating file types with Preview, 213

blocking pop-up ads, 186

Attach File command (Edit menu), 132

Bluetooth File Exchange/Serial Utility/Setup Assistant, 237-238

attachments (email), 178

bookmarks, syncing, 153-154

Bluetooth, 157

audio. See sound

iSync compatibility list, 155

Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF), 11

.Mac, 156-157

Audio MIDI Setup, 236 audio/video chat (iChat AV) audio, 132 iSight or DV cameras, 132-134 USB webcams, 133 video setup, 134-135 AutoFill feature (Safari), 190-191

Macs to cell phones, 156-157 Macs to iPods, 155-157 Macs to Palm PDAs, 155-157 Macs to Pocket PC devices, 156 multiple Macs, 155 preferences, 155 project example, 158

announcing calendars, 149

bookmarks (Safari), 188-190

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), 126

brightness settings (digital photos), 70

B

Apache web server, 222 appearance options (Safari), 187

browsers, Safari, 183-185 Activity viewer, 188

Apple Loops, converting non-GarageBand loops to, 51

B&W tool (iPhoto), 70

Apple Lossless Encoder, 11

bash shell, 217

Apple’s calendar library, 149

batch changes (iPhoto), 61-62

Apple’s Darwin page, 224 AppleCare, 200

Batch Changes command (Photos menu), 61

AppleScript, iTunes, 25

Beat Ruler (GarageBand), 34

History menu, 188

applying fonts, 208

BetaMonkey, 51

Aqua, 220-221

BetterHTMLExport, 71

links, opening in new windows, 188

Archive command (File menu), 118

BirthdayCal, 146

archiving DVDs, 118

Bitshift Audio, 51

arranging photo albums, 65

BKMS plug-ins, 95

artwork, iTunes song artwork, 24-25

black clips, 92

As Flagged command (Mark menu), 176

BandMate Loops, 51

black-and-white, converting photos to, 70

add-ons, 190 AutoFill feature, 190-191 bookmarks, 188-190 cookies, 191 Google searches, 190

pop-up ads, blocking, 186 preferences, 186-187 Safari window, 186 security, 191 SnapBack feature, 188 URLs, 187-188 browsing playlists, 17

clips

scheduling parties with, 150-151

buddies (iChat AV) actions and alerts, 130

shared calendar sites, 149

adding, 127 buddy groups, 128 buddy icons, 130 Buddies menu commands, Add Buddies, 127

subscribing to, 148 synchronizing, 149 syncing, 153-154 iSync compatibility list, 155

buddy groups (iChat), 128 burning

.Mac, 156-157

CDs, 19-21, 78-79

Macs to cell phones, 156-157

DVDs, 78-79, 119 buttons, iDVD, 116

Macs to iPods, 155-157

buying digital photo prints, 73-74

Macs to Palm PDAs, 155-157

C Calculator, 225-227 Calendar menu commands Find Shared Calendars, 148 Refresh, 148 calendars, 139 BirthdayCal, 146 copying events, 145

251

cd command (Unix), 218-220 CDDB tags, 18-19 CDs burning, 19-21, 78-79 CD case labels, printing, 21 copyrights, 97 importing music from, 11-13 photos, exporting to iPhoto, 59 tracks, exporting to iMovie, 97 cell phones, syncing Macs to, 156-157 channels (Sherlock) adding, 201 Dictionary, 199

Macs to Pocket PC devices, 156

eBay, 197-198

multiple Macs, 155

Internet, 195

preferences, 155

Moviefone, 197

project example, 158

Picture Topic or Description, 195

Flights, 198-199

to-do lists, 145

Stock, 196

Zapptek, 146

Switchboard, 197

cameras

Translation, 199-200

digital

Channels setting (AAC encoder), 24 Image Capture, 225, 229

character palette, 208

custom viewing, 142-145

photos, exporting photos to iPhoto, 58-59

chat status, customizing appearance of, 129

deleting events, 145

point-and-shoot, 66

chat. See iChat AV

editing, 143-144

professional, 66

Chess, 225-228

exporting, 147

creating, 143

prosumer, 66

Clear command (Edit menu), 92

iCal FTP, 146

digital video cameras, 88-89

importing information into, 142

iSight cameras, 132-134

Clear History command (History menu), 188

printing, 146

Canopus ADVC300PRO, 90

publishing, 148-149

card readers, exporting photos to iPhoto, 59

black clips, 92

searching, 147 shared calendars, 147

cards (Address Book), 164-166

cropping, 92

announcing, 149

cases, iPods, 27

defined, 89

publishing calendars, 148-149

cat command (Unix), 220

direct trimming, 92-93

clips (movie) Clips pane, 91

252

clips

importing, 89

conflicts, fonts, 206

moving to Timeline, 93 splitting, 92

connecting digital video cameras, 88-89

titles, 96

Console, 239-240

copyrights, music, 97

transitions, 93-95

Constrain options (iPhoto), 69

cp command (Unix), 220

trimming, 91-92

contact sheets, 72

Crop command (Edit menu), 92

video effects, 94-95

contacts

crop markers (iMovie), 91

Collage, 25 collections (fonts), 205-206 color ColorSync Utility, 238 DigitalColor Meter, 240 ColorSync Utility, 238 commands (Unix)

entering into Address Book, 164-165 finding, 166 importing into Address Book, 164-166 syncing, 153-154 iSync compatibility list, 155

cat, 220

.Mac, 156-157

cd, 218-220 cp, 220

Macs to cell phones, 156-157

date, 220

Macs to iPods, 155-157

env, 220

Macs to Palm PDAs, 155-157

file, 220 keyboard commands, 224 ls, 218 mail, 222 man, 220 mkdir, 220 mv, 220 operators, 219

copying calendar events, 145 PDF content, 211

Crop tool (iPhoto), 69 cropping digital photos, 69 movie clips, 92 Custom command (Preview menu), 206 customizing iChat AV, 128-130 Sherlock, 200-201 cycle regions (GarageBand), 41

D

Macs to Pocket PC devices, 156

DAC-100, 90

multiple Macs, 155

Darwin Unix, 217

preferences, 155

data discs, burning, 21

project example, 158

databases, ODBC Administrator, 246

contrast settings (digital photos), 70

Datavideo DAC-100, 90

Control menu commands, Show Loop Browser, 36

date command (Unix), 220

options, 219 ps, 220

control points (GarageBand), 45

dates, digital photos, 61

pwd, 220

converting

deleting

date-based albums, 64

rm, 220

digital photos, 70

calendar events, 145

sudo, 221

image files, 212

tracks (GarageBand), 48

syntax, 218-219

non-GarageBand loops to Apple Loops, 51

Demo Songs folder (GarageBand), 34

VHS or 8mm tapes for iMovie, 90

desktop patterns, creating, 77

table of, 219-220 who, 220 comments, digital photos, 61 compressing movies, 102

cookies, 191

dfont extension, 204 dictionaries, searching with Sherlock, 199

DxpPlay

253

importing from hard drives, 59

DriveSavers, 242

Image Capture, 225, 229

importing into iMovie, 100-101

photos, exporting to iPhoto, 58-59

keywords, 62

Drooling Cat Software BetterHTMLExport, 71

.Mac slides, 77

drop zones, 113-114

point-and-shoot, 66

.Mac web pages, 76-77

DropStuff, 178

professional, 66

network photo sharing, 81

DV (digital video) cameras, 132-134

prosumer, 66

ordering prints, 73-74

digital photos, 55

Photo Info window, 62

digital cameras

connecting, 88-89 iMovie-compatible cameras, 88

adding to DVDs, 113-114

printing, 72-73

DVD Player, 225, 228-229

albums

red eye, removing, 70

DVD Studio Pro, 115

arranging photos in, 65

retouching, 70

DVD+R, 117

creating, 63

rotating, 68

DVD-R, 117

date-based albums, 64

screensavers, 77

DVDs

display views, 65

slideshows, 60-61, 74-75

burning, 78-79

options, 65

titles, 62

creating with iDVD, 107-109

rearranging, 65

zooming in/out, 68

sample project, 82-84

digital video cameras, 88-89

smart albums, 64

DigitalColor Meter, 240

aspect ratio, 69

direct imports (Address Book), 165

batch changes, 61-62

direct trimming, movie clips, 92-93

brightness/contrast, 70

directories

comments, 61

Address Book, 167-168

converting to black-and-white, 70

Directory Access, 240-241

additional movies, 113-114 archiving, 118 burning, 119 dance party DVD project, 120-121 drop zones, 113-114 DVD+R, 117 DVD-R, 117

converting to sepia, 70

Directory Access, 240-241

creation dates/times, 61

disabling fonts, 206

cropping, 69

disk drives. See drives

hardware/software requirements, 110

desktop patterns, 77

Disk Utility, 241-243

maps, 115

Edit window toolbar, 68

DiskWarrior, 241

motion, 114

emailing, 75

Doug’s AppleScripts, 26

photos, 113-114

enhancing, 69

Draft mailbox, 179

projects, 110-111

exporting, 79-80

dragging files, into iTunes, 13

slideshows, 114

filenames, 61

drivers, Macam driver, 133

submenus, 115

film rolls, 64-65

drives

text editing, 112-113

encoding, 118-119

image formats, 58

Disk Utility, 241-243

themes, 111-117

importing from card readers, 59

erasing, 242

transitions, 114

importing from CDs, 59

partitioning, 242

importing from digital cameras, 58-59

photos, exporting to iPhoto, 59 restoring, 243

playing, 228-229 DxpPlay, 25

254

eBay

E

undoing mistakes, 68

encoding DVDs, 118-119

Zoom tool, 68

Enhance tool (iPhoto), 69

eBay, searching with Sherlock, 197-198

film rolls, 65

enhancing digital photos, 69

iChat text chat, 131

env command (Unix), 220

ed text editor, 222

iMovie sound tracks, 98-99

erasing disks, 242

Edit menu commands

real instrument tracks, 41

events (calendar)

Attach File, 132

software instrument tracks, 41

copying, 145

Clear, 92

text, iDVD, 112-113

creating, 143

Crop, 92

effects (GarageBand), 46-47

custom viewing, 142-145

Resolve Duplicates, 207

emacs text editor, 222

deleting, 145

Show Browser, 17

email, 169, 171

editing, 143-144

Special Characters, 208

Address Book, 166-167

exporting, 147

Edit window toolbar (iPhoto)

addresses, saving, 177

importing, 142

B&W tool, 70

addressing, 174-175

printing, 146

Brightness/Contrast sliders, 70

attachments, 178

Constrain options, 69

filtering, 181

Crop tool, 69

fonts, 175

Export command (File menu), 79-80, 147, 212

Enhance tool, 69

Mail accounts, 172-174

exporting

Red Eye tool, 70

mailboxes, 178-180

calendars, 147

Retouch tool, 70

Message pane, 177

digital photos, 79-80

Rotate tool, 68

moving between, 177

GarageBand music, 48-49

Sepia tool, 70

reading, 176

image files, 212

Zoom tool, 68

replying to, 177-178

movies to tape or iDVD, 103

rich text format, 175

photos to iMovie, 100-101

calendars, 143-144

rules, 180-181

playlists, 16

digital photos

sending from Address Book, 167

sound to iMovie, 96-97

editing

B&W tool, 70

searching, 147

web pages, 80

Brightness/Contrast sliders, 70

signatures, 176 spam, 181

extracting iMovie audio tracks, 99-100

Constrain options, 69

spell-checking, 176

eZedia plug-ins, 96

Crop tool, 69

status, 176-177

Edit window toolbar, 68 Enhance tool, 69

toolbar, 177 emailing

preferences, 67

digital photos, 75

Red Eye tool, 70

movies, 103

Retouch tool, 70

emoticons, iChat text chat, 131

Rotate tool, 68

encoded sound quality, optimizing, 23-24

Sepia tool, 70

F file command (Unix), 220 File menu commands Add Fonts, 206 Add to Library, 13

GarageBand

Archive, 118

movies, Sherlock, 197

Export, 79-80, 147, 212

music files, 13

Import, 142

music tracks, 17

games, Chess, 225-228

New Album From Selection, 63

stocks, Sherlock, 196

GarageBand, 33

255

G

New Chat, 131

Fink Project, 224

Beat Ruler, 34

New Film Roll From Selection, 65

First Aid (Disk Utility), 241

deleting tracks from, 48

New Playlist, 15

flags (Unix), 219

Demo Songs folder, 34

New Smart Album, 64

exporting music from, 48-50

Page Setup, 73

flights, searching with Sherlock, 198-199

Print, 21, 72, 146

flipping PDF files, 211

filenames, digital photos, 61

folders, Music, 19

files

Font Book, 203-204

karaoke project, 52-53 keyboard shortcuts, 35-36 loops

AAC, 11

applying fonts, 208

converting to Apple Loop format, 51

AIFF, 11

character palette, 208

defined, 36

associating with Preview, 213

collections, 205-206

finding, 36

attaching to email, 178

disabling fonts, 206

online resources, 51

dragging into iTunes, 13

installing fonts, 206

playing, 36-37

finding, iTunes, 13

previewing fonts, 206

image files, 212-213

resolving conflicts, 206

MacAddict Guide to Making Music with GarageBand, 31

MP3, 11

Unicode, 207

mixing

PDF files, 210-212

Font dialog box, 175

effects, 46-47

sending during chat, 132

fonts, 203. See also Font Book

master tracks, 47-48

applying, 208

mixing controls, 44-45

film rolls, 64-65

character palette, 208

song volume, 47-48

Film Rolls command (View menu), 65

collections, 205-206

timing and velocity, 46

dfont extension, 204

volume curves, 45

films, searching with Sherlock, 197

disabling, 206

online resources, 51

Filter Frequencies Below 10 Hz setting (MP3 encoder), 24

email, 175

projects, starting, 36

installing, 206

real instrument tracks

filtering email, 181

previewing, 206

defined, 36

Find Shared Calendars command (Calendar menu), 148

resolving conflicts, 206

editing, 41

Unicode, 207

recording, 38-40

WAV, 11

finding. See also searching calendar events, 147

Formac Studio TVR, 90

software instrument tracks

contacts, 166

Format menu commands, Show Fonts, 208

cycle regions, 41

GarageBand loops, 36

Fractogroovalicious, 25

images, Sherlock, 195

editing, 41

FTP, 222

recording, 37-38

Internet sites Sherlock, 195

defined, 36

256

GarageBand

system requirements, 34

custom viewing, 142-145

files, sending, 132

Timeline, 34, 41-42

deleting events, 145

images, sending, 132

Track Editor, 43-44

editing, 143-144

logging in, 126

Track Info window, 35

exporting, 147

GarageDoor, 51

iCal FTP, 146

parties, planning with iChat, 136-137

GeeThree Slick Plug-ins, 95-96

importing information into, 142

Rendezvous messaging, 135

general preferences (Safari), 186-187

printing, 146

text chat, 130-131

Get New Mail command (Mailboxes menu), 176

searching, 147

Google searches, 190 Grab, 243 GraphicConverter, 71 graphics. See images greeting cards, printing, 72

publishing, 148-149 shared calendars, 147 announcing, 149 publishing, 148-149 scheduling parties with, 150-151

Griffin Technology iMic, 39

shared calendar sites, 149

group chats (iChat), 131

subscribing to, 148

groups, Address Book, 165-166

H hard drives. See drives Help menu commands, Keyboard Shortcuts, 35 History menu (Safari), 188 History menu commands Clear History, 188 Set Page for SnapBack, 188 HomePage, posting movies, 103 HotSync manager, 157 hyperlinks, opening in new windows, 188

BirthdayCal, 146

icons, iChat buddy icons, 130 ID3 tags, 18-19 iDVD, 107, 109 adding additional movies to, 113-114 adding photos to, 113-114 archiving, 118 burning, 119

to-do lists, 145

dance party DVD project, 120-121

Zapptek, 146 iCal Exchange, 149 iCal FTP, 146 iCal World, 149 iCalDates, 149 iCalShare, 149 iChat AV, 123, 125 accounts, 126-127 audio/video chat audio, 132 iSight or DV cameras, 132-134 USB webcams, 133 buddies

iCal calendars, 139

iCompositions, 51

synchronizing, 149

video setup, 134-135

I

iChat menu commands, Preferences, 127

actions and alerts, 130 adding, 127 buddy groups, 128 icons, 130

copying events, 145

chat project, 136

creating, 143

customizing, 128-130

drop zones, 113-114 DVD+R, 117 DVD-R, 117 encoding, 118-119 exporting movies to, 103 hardware/software requirements, 110 maps, 115 motion, 114 projects, 110-111 slideshows, 79, 114 submenus, 115 text editing, 112-113 themes, 111-112 audio, 116 buttons, 116 customizing, 115-116 menu backgrounds, 116 saving, 117 transitions, 114

instant messaging

If Then Software ShareAlike, 71

iTunes song artwork, 24-25

narration, 97-98

Image Capture, 225, 229

searching with Sherlock, 195

sound effects, 97

image files, 212-213

sending during chat, 132

Timeline viewer, 96

ImageIP plug-ins, 96

still images, 100-102

images digital photos, 55 albums, 63-65, 82-84 aspect ratio, 69

still images, 100-102

IMAP accounts, 173-174

Import command (File menu), 142

iMic, 39

importing

iMovie, 85 clips

addresses into Address Book, 164-166

batch changes, 61-62

black clips, 92

bookmarks, 190

brightness/contrast, 70

Clips pane, 91

comments, 61

cropping, 92

contacts into Address Book, 165-166

converting, 70

defined, 89

creation dates/times, 61

direct trimming, 92-93

cropping, 69

importing, 89

desktop patterns, 77

moving to Timeline, 93

Edit window toolbar, 68

splitting, 92

emailing, 75

trimming, 91-92

enhancing, 69

257

data into iCal, 142 digital photos, 58-59 movie clips, 89 music from CD, 11-13 music into GarageBand, 49-50 photos into iMovie, 100-101 sound into iMovie, 96-97

exporting, 79-80

converting VHS or 8mm tapes for, 90

filenames, 61

digital video cameras, 88-89

In mailbox, 179

film rolls, 64-65

movies

InMotion portable speakers, 26

video, 89

installing

image formats, 58

compressing, 102

importing, 58-59

emailing, 103

Apple Loop SDK, 36

keywords, 62

exporting to tape or iDVD, 103

fonts, 205

.Mac web pages, 76-77

party video project, 104-105

HotSync manager, 157

network photo sharing, 81

plug-ins, 95-96

iMovie plug-ins, 94

posting with HomePage, 103

iTunes plug-ins, 25

.Mac slides, 77

ordering prints, 73-74 Photo Info window, 62

titles, 96

printing, 72-73

transitions, 93-95

red eye, removing, 70 retouching, 70 rotating, 68 screensavers, 77 slideshows, 60-61, 74-75 titles, 62 zooming in/out, 68

video effects, 94-95 projects, 88 sound

GarageBand loops, 36 iDVD theme packs, 117

Webcam software, 133 instant messaging (iChat AV), 123, 125 accounts, 126-127 audio/video chat audio, 132

editing, 98-99 extracting, 99-100

iSight or DV cameras, 132-134

importing, 96-97

USB webcams, 133

mixing, 99

video setup, 134-135

258

instant messaging

buddies

iPhoto, 55

Edit window toolbar

actions and alerts, 130

CDs, burning, 78-79

B&W tool, 70

adding, 127

digital photos

buddy groups, 128

albums, 63-65

Brightness/Contrast sliders, 70

buddy icons, 130

aspect ratio, 69

Constrain options, 69

chat project, 136

batch changes, 61-62

Crop tool, 69

customizing

brightness/contrast, 70

Enhance tool, 69

buddy actions and alerts, 130

comments, 61

Red Eye tool, 70

converting, 70

Retouch tool, 70

buddy icons, 130

creation dates/times, 61

Rotate tool, 68

chat status, 129

cropping, 69

Sepia tool, 70

text, 128-129

desktop patterns, 77

Zoom tool, 68

files, sending, 132

Edit window toolbar, 68

third-party tools, 71

images, sending, 132

emailing, 75

web pages, exporting, 80

logging in, 126

enhancing, 69

iPhoto Diet, 71

parties, planning with iChat, 136-137

exporting, 79-80

iPhoto menu commands, Preferences, 65

Rendezvous messaging, 135 text chat, 130-131 instrument tracks real instrument tracks defined, 36 editing, 41 recording, 38-40 software instrument tracks

filenames, 61 film rolls, 64-65 image formats, 58 importing, 58-59 keywords, 62 .Mac slides, 77 .Mac web pages, 76-77 network photo sharing, 81

iPod cases and skins, 27 InMotion portable speakers, 26 iTrip, 26 NoviPod, 26 syncing Macs to, 155-157 iSight camera, 132-134 iSync, 153-154

cycle regions, 41

ordering prints, 73-74

compatibility list, 155

editing, 41

Photo Info window, 62

HotSync manager, 157

recording, 37-38

printing, 72-73

.Mac, 156-157

instruments, software instrument tracks, 36

red eye, removing, 70

preferences, 155

retouching, 70

project example, 158

Internet, searching with Sherlock, 195

rotating, 68

syncing Macs to cell phones, 156-157

Internet Connect, 225, 229-230 Internet connections, Internet Connect, 225, 229-230 Internet Radio, 13-14 Internet tools (Unix), 222 IOXpert USB still camera driver, 58

sample project, 82-84 screensavers, 77 slideshows, 60-61, 74-75 titles, 62 zooming in/out, 68 DVDs, 78-79

syncing Macs to iPods, 155-157 syncing Macs to Palm PDAs, 155-157 syncing Macs to Pocket PC devices, 156 syncing multiple Macs, 155

Mail

iTrip, 26

Keyword Assistant, 71

iTunes, 7

keywords (iPhoto), 62

AppleScript, 25

Keywords dialog box, 62

CDs, burning, 19-21

L

exporting to iMovie, 96 music adding to Library, 10-13 CDDB/ID3 tags, 18-19 encoded sound quality, 23-24 formats, 11 playing, 10 sharing, 25-27 Music folder, 19

labels

iChat accounts, 126 iMovie, 105 iSync, 156-157 iTunes, 12

printing, 168

slides, 77 web pages, 76-77

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), 167

Mac OS X Hints, 224

LED spectrum analyzers, 25

Macam driver, 133

Lemkesoft GraphicConverter, 71

MacBand, 51

Library (iTunes), adding music to, 10

MacIdol, 51

music store, 12 navigation, 9

finding and importing files, 13

playlists, 15-17

importing from CD, 11-13

sample music mix project, 28-29

Library Manager, 71

song artwork, 24-25

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), 167

Visualizer, 25

.Mac, 75

CD case labels, printing, 21

dragging/double-clicking files, 13

sound effects, 21-22

M calendars, publishing, 148

copyrights, 97 Internet Radio, 13-14

259

links, opening in new windows, 188

MacJams, 51 MacJukebox, 51 MacMusic, 51 Macscripter, 26 Mail, 169, 171 accounts, 172-174 Address Book, 166-167 email addresses, saving, 177

lists, to-do lists, 145

addressing, 174-175

logins, iChat, 126

attachments, 178

logs, Console, 239-240

filtering, 181

junk mail, filtering, 181

Looperman, 51

fonts, 175

Junk mailbox, 179

loops (GarageBand)

moving between, 177

J-K

karaoke project (GarageBand), 52-53

converting to Apple Loop format, 51

reading, 176 replying to, 177-178

defined, 36

rich text format, 175

Ken Burns Effect, 101

finding, 36

keyboard shortcuts, GarageBand, 35-36

online resources, 51

sending from Address Book, 167

playing, 36-37

signatures, 176

Keyboard Shortcuts command (Help), 35 Keychain Access, 243-244

Loops.net, 51

spam, 181

ls command (Unix), 218

spell-checking, 176 status, 176-177 threads, 176-177

260

Mail

splitting, 92

mailboxes, 178-180

rules, 180-181

Message pane, 177

signatures, 176

rules, 180-181

spam, 181

compressing, 102

toolbar, 177

spell-checking, 176

trimming, 91-92

mail command (Unix), 222

status, 176-177

converting VHS or 8mm tapes to, 90

mailboxes, 178-180

threads, 176-177

creating with iDVD, 109

Mailboxes menu commands, Get New Mail, 176

toolbar, 177

Mailing Labels command (Style menu), 168

Messages menu commands, Reply All, 178

additional movies, 113-114 archiving, 118

messaging. See instant messaging

burning, 119

man command (Unix), 220

middleman imports (Address Book), 165

dance party DVD project, 120-121

man pages, 220

MIDI, Audio MIDI Setup, 236

drop zones, 113-114

map (iDVD), 115

MIDI keyboards, 39

DVD+R, 117

Mark menu commands

Miser, Brad, 16

DVD-R, 117

As Flagged, 176

Missing Sync, 156

encoding, 118-119

As Unread, 176

mixing iMovie sound tracks, 99

hardware/software requirements, 110

mailing labels, printing, 168

MarkSpace Software, Missing Sync, 156

mixing tracks (GarageBand)

master tracks (GarageBand), 47-48

master tracks, 47-48

memory, 234

mixing controls, 44-45

Message menu commands, Add Sender to Address Book, 177

song volume, 47-48

Message pane (Mail), 177 messages, email messages addresses, saving, 177

effects, 46-47

timing and velocity, 46 volume curves, 45 mkdir command (Unix), 220

addressing, 174-175

monitoring processes with Activity Monitor, 234-235

attachments, 178

motion, adding to DVDs, 114

filtering, 181

movies, 85

fonts, 175

clips

Mail accounts, 172-173

black clips, 92

mailboxes, 178-180

Clips pane, 91

Message pane, 177

cropping, 92

moving between, 177

defined, 89

reading, 176

direct trimming, 92-93

replying to, 177-178

importing, 89

rich text format, 175

moving to Timeline, 93

maps, 115 motion, 114 photos, 113-114 projects, 110-111 saving, 117 slideshows, 114 submenus, 115 text editing, 112-113 themes, 111-112, 115-116 transitions, 114 digital video cameras, 88-89 DVD Player, 225 emailing, 103 exporting to tape or iDVD, 103 iMovie projects, 88 party video project, 104-105 plug-ins, 95-96 posting with HomePage, 103

party video project

QuickTime Player, 225, 230

Music folder, 19

searching with Sherlock, 197

playing, 10, 21-22

sound

playlists, 15-17

ODBC Administrator, 246 OpenDarwin, 224

extracting, 99-100

recording with GarageBand. See GarageBand

importing, 96-97

sample music mix project, 28-29

mixing, 99

sharing, 25-27

editing, 98-99

261

O operators, 219 optimizing encoded sound quality, 23-24

narration, 97-98

Music folder, 19

options (Unix), 219

sound effects, 97

music store (iTunes), 12

ordering digital photo prints, 73-74

Timeline viewer, 96

mv command (Unix), 220

organizing

still images, 100-102

bookmarks, 189-190

titles, 96

N

transitions, 93-95 video effects, 94-95 moving between email messages, 177 movie clips to Timeline, 93 MP3 (Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3), 11 MP3 CDs, burning, 21 MP3 encoder, 23-24 multi-CD projects, burning, 21 multi-page PDF documents, viewing, 211 multiple accounts (iChat), 127 multiple Macs, syncing, 155 music, 7 adding to iTunes Library, 10-13 CDDB/ID3 tags, 18-19 CDs, burning, 19-21 encoded sound quality, 23-24 formats, 11 Internet Radio, 13-14 iTunes music store, 12 iTunes navigation, 9 iTunes song artwork, 24-25

N-Up option (iPhoto), 72

Mail rules, 181 organizing digital photos albums

narration (iMovie), 97-98

arranging photos in, 65

navigating email, 177

creating, 63

NetInfo Manager, 244-245

date-based albums, 64

Network Utility, 245-246

display views, 65

networks

options, 65

Network Utility, 245-246

rearranging, 65

photo sharing, 81

sample project, 82-84

New Album From Selection command (File menu), 63 New Chat command (File menu), 131

smart albums, 64 film rolls, 64-65 OSXFAQ, 222 Out mailbox, 179

New Film Roll From Selection command (File menu), 65 New Playlist command (File menu), 15

P

New Smart Album command (File menu), 64

Page Setup command (File menu), 73

New Track command (Track menu), 37

Palm PDAs, syncing Macs to, 155-157

Norton Utilities, 241

Paper Tape window (Calculator), 227

NoviPod, 26

partitioning disks, 242 Party Shuffle playlists, 16 party video project, 104-105

262

passwords

passwords, Keychain Access, 243-244

Preferences command (iChat menu), 127

PDF files, 210-211 performance, optimizing, 23-24

Preferences command (iPhoto menu), 65

permissions, verifying, 242

Preview, 209

projects (iDVD) adding additional movies to, 113-114 adding photos to, 113-114 archiving, 118

phone books, searching with Sherlock, 197

associating files types with, 213

burning, 119

image files, 212-213

Photo Info window (iPhoto), 62

PDF files, 210-212

dance party DVD project, 120-121

photos. See digital photos Photos menu commands Batch Changes, 61

Preview menu commands

drop zones, 113-114

Custom, 206

encoding, 118-119

Repertoire, 206

maps, 115

Revert to Original, 68

previewing fonts, 206

motion, 114

Show Info, 62

Print command (File menu), 21, 72, 146

slideshows, 114

PHPMac, 222

Print dialog box, 21

starting in iMovie, 110-111

pico text editor, 222

Printer Setup Utility, 247

submenus, 115

pipe operator, 219

printers, Printer Setup Utility, 247

text editing, 112-113

players

printing

themes, 111-112

Show Keywords, 62

starting in iDVD, 111

DVD Player, 225, 228-229

address information, 168

audio, 116

QuickTime Player, 225, 230

calendars, 146

buttons, 116

CD case labels, 21

customizing, 115-116

GarageBand loops, 36-37

digital photos, 72-73

menu backgrounds, 116

music, 10, 21-24

labels, 168

saving, 117

playing

slideshows, 74 playlists, 15-17 plug-ins, iMovie plug-ins, 95-96 Pocket PC devices, syncing Macs to, 156 point-and-shoot digital cameras, 66 POP accounts, 174 pop-up ads, blocking, 186 Portraits & Prints, 71 posting movies with HomePage, 103 PostScript files, 213 preferences iSync, 155 PDF files, 212 Safari, 186-187 Terminal, 222-223

processes, monitoring with Activity Monitor, 234-235 professional digital cameras, 66 Project menu commands, Add Text, 112 projects dance party DVD, 120-121 GarageBand, starting, 36

transitions, 114 prosumer digital cameras, 66 protocols, LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), 167 ps command (Unix), 220 publishing calendars, 148-149 pwd command (Unix), 220

iChat, 136 iMovie, 88

Q-R

karaoke project (GarageBand), 52-53

QuickTime, exporting images to, 80

music mix iTunes project, 28-29

QuickTime movies, playing, 230

party video, 104-105

QuickTime Player, 225, 230

syncing, 158

shared calendars

rotating

263

ratings (music), 16-17

digital photos, 68

scripted imports (Address Book), 165

reading email, 176-177

PDF files, 211

Scrubber bar (iMovie), 91

radio, Internet Radio, 13-14

real instrument tracks (GarageBand)

rules (Mail), 180-181

searching

defined, 36

Address Book contacts, 166

editing, 41

calendars, 147

S

recording, 38-40 real memory, 234 rearranging photo albums, 65

dictionaries, Sherlock, 199 eBay, Sherlock, 197-198

Safari, 183-185

flights, Sherlock, 198-199

Activity viewer, 188

Internet, Sherlock, 195

add-ons, 190

movies, Sherlock, 197

AutoFill feature, 190-191

PDF files, 211

bookmarks, 188-190

phone books, Sherlock, 197

cookies, 191

pictures, Sherlock, 195

recording studio. See GarageBand

Google searches, 190

playlists, 17

Red Eye tool (iPhoto), 70

History menu, 188

red eye, removing, 70

links, opening in new windows, 188

recording narration, 97-98 real instrument tracks, 38-40 software instrument tracks, 37-38

redirection operators, 219 Refresh command (Calendar menu), 148

pop-up ads, blocking, 186 preferences, 186-187

stocks, Sherlock, 196 security, Safari, 191 sed text editor, 222 sending email from Address Book, 167

Rendezvous messaging (iChat), 135

Safari window, 186

Repertoire command (Preview menu), 206

security, 191 SnapBack feature, 188

Sent mailbox, 179

Reply All command (Messages menu), 178

URLs, 187-188

Sepia tool (iPhoto), 70

Safari Aquifier, 190

replying to email, 177-178

sepia, converting photos to, 70

Safari Bookmark Extractor, 190

Resolve Duplicates command (Edit menu), 207

servers

Safari Enhancer, 190

Apache web server, 222

Safari Extender, 190

WebDAV servers, calendars, publishing, 148-149

resolving conflicts, fonts, 206 restoring drives, 243 Retouch tool (iPhoto), 70 retouching digital photos, 70 Revert to Original command (Photos menu), 68 rich text format, 175 rm command (Unix), 220 Rotate tool (iPhoto), 68

Safari Menu, 190

instant messages. See instant messaging

Safari menu commands, Block Pop-Up Windows, 186

Set Chat Background command (View menu), 129

Sample Rate setting (AAC encoder), 24

Set Page for SnapBack command (History menu), 188

samplers (iPhoto), 72

ShareAlike, 71

saving

shared calendars, 147

email addresses, 177

announcing, 149

iDVD themes, 117

publishing, 148-149

screen captures, 243

scheduling parties with, 150-151

screensavers, creating, 77

shared calendar sites, 149 subscribing to, 148

264

sharing

sharing calendars, 147-149

iDVD slideshows, 79

importing from CDs, 97

photos, 74

importing from iTunes, 96

music, 25-27

smart albums, 64

mixing, 99

photos, 81

narration, 97-98

shell (Unix), 217-218

Smart Encoding Adjustments setting (MP3 encoder), 24

Sherlock, 193-194

smart playlists, 15-16

Timeline viewer, 96

AppleCare, 200

software

sound effects, 97 recording with GarageBand. See GarageBand

customizing, 200-201

BKMS plug-ins, 95

dictionary searches, 199

Canopus ADVC300PRO, 90

spam, 181

eBay searches, 197-198

Datavideo DAC-100, 90

flight searches, 198-199

DiskWarrior, 241

speakers, InMotion portable speakers, 26

Internet searches, 195

DriveSavers, 242

movie searches, 197

eZedia plug-ins, 96

phone book searches, 197

Formac Studio TVR, 90

picture searches, 195

GeeThree Slick Plug-ins, 95-96

stock searches, 196

ImageIP plug-ins, 96

translation, 199-200

Norton Utilities, 241

Show Browser command (Edit menu), 17

Safari Aquifier, 190

Show Fonts command (Format menu), 208

Safari Enhancer, 190

Show Info command (Photos menu), 62

Safari Menu, 190

Show Keywords command (Photos menu), 62 Show Loop Browser command (Control menu), 36 Show Master Track command (Track menu), 47

Safari Bookmark Extractor, 190 Safari Extender, 190 Stupendous Software, 96

Special Characters command (Edit menu), 208 spell checking email, 176 iChat text chat, 131 Spelling dialog box, 176 splitting movie clips, 92 starting GarageBand projects, 36 status chat status, customizing appearance of, 129 email, 176-177

v, 115

Stereo Bit Rate setting (AAC encoder), 24

Virtix plug-ins, 95-96

Stereo Mode (MP3 encoder), 24

software instrument tracks (GarageBand) cycle regions, 41

Stickies, 225, 231 still images, 100-102

Show Titles command (View menu), 62

defined, 36

stocks, searching with Sherlock, 196

editing, 41

Studio TVR, 90

signatures (email), 176

recording, 37-38

Stuffit Standard Edition, 178

skins (iPod), 27

sound

Stupendous Software effects, 96

Slick Plug-ins, 95-96

Audio MIDI Setup, 236

slides, .Mac slides, 77

copyrights, 97

Style menu commands, Mailing Labels, 168

Slideshow Settings dialog box, 74

iDVD, 116

submenus, adding to DVDs, 115

slideshows, 60-61

iMovie sound tracks

adding to DVDs, 114

editing, 98-99

creating, 74-75

extracting, 99-100

Titles command

subscribing to shared calendars, 148

system logs, Console, 239-240

man pages, 220

System Profiler, 248

preferences, 222-223

sudo command (Unix), 221

superusers, 221

superusers, 221

T

surfing the Web, 187-188. See also Safari surfing the Web with Safari, 183-185

tabbed browsing (Safari), 187 tags (iTunes), 18-19

Activity viewer, 188

telnet, 222

add-ons, 190

Terminal, 215-216

AutoFill feature, 190-191

Apache web server, 222

bookmarks, 188-190

Aqua, 220-221

cookies, 191

commands

Google searches, 190

cat, 220

History menu, 188

cd, 218-220

links, opening in new windows, 188

cp, 220

pop-up ads, blocking, 186 preferences, 186-187 Safari window, 186

date, 220 env, 220 file, 220

security, 191

keyboard commands, 224

SnapBack feature, 188

ls, 218

URLs, 187-188

mail, 222

Switchboard (Sherlock), 197

man, 220

synchronization. See syncing

mkdir, 220

syncing, 153-154

mv, 220

bookmarks, 190

operators, 219

calendars, 149

options, 219

HotSync manager, 157

ps, 220

iSync compatibility list, 155

pwd, 220

.Mac, 156-157

rm, 220

Macs to cell phones, 156-157

sudo, 221

Macs to iPods, 155-157

syntax, 218-219

Macs to Palm PDAs, 155-157

table of, 219-220

Macs to Pocket PC devices, 156

who, 220

multiple Macs, 155

Darwin Unix, 217

preferences, 155

Internet tools, 222

project example, 158

265

text editors, 221 Unix resources, 224 Unix shell, 217-218 text editing, iDVD, 112-113 fonts, 203 applying, 208 character palette, 208 collections, 205-206 dfont extension, 204 disabling, 206 installing, 206 previewing, 206 resolving conflicts, 206 Unicode, 207 iChat, customizing, 128-129 text chat (iChat), 130-131 text editors (Unix), 221 TextEdit, 225, 231 themes (iDVD), 111-112 audio, 116 buttons, 116 customizing, 115-116 menu backgrounds, 116 saving, 117 threads, message, 176-177, 234 time-shifting, 17 Timeline, moving movie clips to, 93 Timeline (GarageBand), 34, 41-42 TimeStretch Visualizer, 25 timing (GarageBand), 46 titles, digital photos, 62 titles (iMovie), 96 Titles command (View menu), 61

266

to-do lists

to-do lists, 145

mixing controls, 44-45

env, 220

toolbars

song volume, 47-48

file, 220

iPhoto Editing, 68

timing and velocity, 46

keyboard commands, 224

Mail, 177

volume curves, 45

ls, 218

Sherlock toolbars, customizing, 200-201

real instrument tracks

tools BetterHTMLExport, 71 BirthdayCal, 146

mail, 222

defined, 36

man, 220

editing, 41

mkdir, 220

recording, 38-40

mv, 220

software instrument tracks

operators, 219

GraphicConverter, 71

cycle regions, 41

options, 219

iCal FTP, 146

defined, 36

ps, 220

iPhoto, 68-70

editing, 41

pwd, 220

recording, 37-38

rm, 220

iPhoto Diet, 71 Keyword Assistant, 71

Timeline tools, 41-42

sudo, 221

Library Manager, 71

Track Editor, 43-44

syntax, 218-219

Portraits & Prints, 71

Track Info window, 35

table of, 219-220

ShareAlike, 71 Zapptek, 146 Track Editor (GarageBand), 43-44

who, 220

transitions adding to DVDs, 114

Darwin, 217

iMovie, 93-95

Internet tools, 222

Track Info window (GarageBand), 35

translation, Sherlock, 199-200

man pages, 220

Track menu commands

Trash mailbox, 179

shell, 217-218

trimming movie clips, 91-92

superusers, 221

New Track, 37 Show Master Track, 47

Terminal, 215-216, 222-223

tracks (GarageBand)

U

deleting, 48 exporting, 48-49 importing, 49-50

Unicode, 207

loops, 37

universal access preferences (Safari), 187

converting to Apple Loop format, 51

Unix

defined, 36

Apache web server, 222

finding, 36

Aqua, 220-221

online resources, 51

commands

playing, 36-37

cat, 220 cd, 218-220

mixing effects, 46-47

cp, 220

master tracks, 47-48

date, 220

text editors, 221 Unix resources, 224 USB webcams, iChat, 133 Use Variable Bit Rate Encoding setting (MP3 encoder), 24 users, superuser, 221 utilities. See also Terminal Activity Monitor, 234-235 AirPort Admin Utility, 235 AirPort Setup Assistant, 235-236 Audio MIDI Setup, 236 Bluetooth File Exchange/Serial Utility/Setup Assistant, 237-238

zooming in/out

ColorSync Utility, 238

Virtix plug-ins, 95-96

Zapptek, 146

Console, 239-240

virtual memory, 234

Zoom tool (iPhoto), 68

DigitalColor Meter, 240

Vizualizer, 25

zooming in/out

Directory Access, 240-241

volume, GarageBand

Disk Utility, 241-243

song volume, 47-48

Grab, 243

volume curves, 45

Keychain Access, 243-244 NetInfo Manager, 244-245

W-Z

Network Utility, 245-246 ODBC Administrator, 246 Printer Setup Utility, 247 System Profiler, 248

WAV (Waveform Audio File), 11 web browsers, Safari, 183-185 Activity viewer, 188 add-ons, 190

V

AutoFill feature, 190-191 bookmarks, 188-190

vCards, 164-165

cookies, 191

velocity (GarageBand), 46

Google searches, 190

verifying permissions, 242

History menu, 188

VHS tapes, converting for iMovie, 90

links, opening in new windows, 188

vi text editor, 222

pop-up ads, blocking, 186

video cameras, 88-89

preferences, 186-187

video effects (iMovie), 94-95

Safari window, 186

video tapes, exporting movies to, 103

security, 191

video. See movies

URLs, 187-188

View menu commands

SnapBack feature, 188 web pages

Film Rolls, 65

exporting, 80

Set Chat Background, 129

.Mac web pages, 76-77

Show Titles, 62 Titles, 61 viewing calendars, 142-145

web servers, Apache web server, 222 websites, posting movies to, 103

film rolls, 65

WebDAV servers, publishing calendars, 148-149

image files, 212

Well Discussion Forums, 224

PDF files, 210-211

who command (Unix), 220 windows, Safari window, 186

iPhoto, 68 PDF files, 210

267