Apple iPhoto

For digital photo management, I use Apple iPhoto. I really like this program, and I find new ways to use it all of the time.

With my last couple of trips, I took my laptop so that I could take essentially an unlimited number of photos every day, using my Canon Elph. Every night, I moved my photos to the laptop, and cleared the memory in my camera. I label the photos with the location, and maybe Day 1, Day 2, etc. When I get home, I move them all into my iMac and into iPhoto.

iPhoto comes with a new Mac, but it's part of the iLife Suite of products. iLife is a suite that includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Garage Band, and iTunes.

For gifts, I use iPhoto to edit and print various photos, then frame them and give them away. I can do all sorts of editing. I own Photoshop, but I have found that iPhoto works great for basic editing work. I publish a lot of photos on my .Mac site. If you want to take a look, please visit here: homepage.mac.com/dfahey This works great for sharing my vacation with family and friends, or posting old family photographs.

I've also created slideshow DVDs, which is a great way to quickly share vacation photos, laying down music from iTunes, and creating a fun "video" of the photos.

Right now, I'm working on picture books, so that I can easily open a book to explain where I've been and where I visited. The books have a great them, called vacation, that will automatically choose different angles, sizes, and page layouts that make it quite easy to do. Once I have created these books in iPhoto, I can order them now, and later -- for great gifts!

iPhoto is only available on the Mac right now. If you have Windows, you might want to check out my Picasa 2 post.