iPhoto 4 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide

The Visual Quick Starte Guides are just about the fastest way to get started on using a software package around. As stated from the title, this is a highly illustrated book that uses tons of screen shots to get you started using a software package. In this case the package is iPhoto and it's written by a master writer. Because of the large number of illustrations in the book, it is very fast to go through. (My only problem is when I click on something wrong, my screens don't look like his, and then have to backtrack and find my error.) The easy visual approach works well for me. If you're a beginner to iPhoto, this book will help you get it up and doing what you want in a very short time. The next step is to do more, say up to the intermediate level, and all that takes is that you go further into the book. The other surprising thing about this book is the way it's organized. Most tutorial books are just that. You follow the tutorial through and then go do things. These books are then useless as a reference book. This one is different. Each task, almost each page, is organized with a headline of what you're going to do on that page. Then the index has an entry that points to the right page. For instance if you're going through the book there's a chapter on Sharing Photos. There's a page on Printing Greeting Cards. Learning about sharing photos will send you through the page on Printing Greeting Cards. But if you forget that, going to the index will give you an entry on Printing Greeting Cards that will send you to that page which is complete enough to enable you to get the greeting cards without having to go through the whole chapter. His approach works for me.

Before picking this book up, I'd all but given up on iPhoto. I found it a bit too simple and way to encumbering of my system. But this book really changed my perspective. Well, this book and the fact that I needed a better way to organize my pictures on my Mac than simply having massive folders of pictures. The book is very accessible and although I thought I was familiar with the program, it opened a lot of new doors and taught me a lot I didn't know. It also provided resources for other programs that work well with iPhoto and how to connect iPhoto to Photoshop (or any digital image editor) so I can do more advanced editing outside of iPhoto. I think most important for me was learning that I didn't need to have my photos all in one library - that I could use a separate program like the iPhoto Library Manager to make separate, context specific, libraries. This was amazing, as the more photos in a library, the more encumbering it can be on your system. Without a doubt, I find this to be one of the best and simple books out there covering iPhoto. I highly recommend it!