Brief Hands-On Report--Serious Editing in iPhoto 5

According to the author, J. Kevin Wolfe, Serious Editing in iPhoto 5 is the first comprehensive manual dedicated entirely to use of the powerful editing functions added in iPhoto 5. iPhoto 5 itself is lean on instruction, so this step-by-step manual fills the gap with over 2 dozen fixes for common issues and over 2 dozen effects that can be accomplished with iPhoto and what's already on every Mac.

We downloaded a for-review copy and looked through it. Serious Editing in iPhoto 5 is very impressive and comprehensive.

The Fixes include: how to correct lighting temperature including fluorescent lighting, using iPhoto's Retouch tool to remove dirt from scans/eliminate wrinkles/etc, filtering images for better tone and less noise in black and white conversions, correcting serious exposure problems, minimizing the harsh look of on-camera flash, removing stubborn redeye, reducing color artifacts, restoring old color prints, improving phone cam photos.

The Effects include: solarization, posterization, thermograms, negatives, silhouettes, toning black and white, monotoning, extreme sepia, newsphotos, selective blur, double exposures, image masks, soft focus, warping, mirror images, collages.

We had no idea that iPhoto could be used for so many fixes and effects. Our hat is off to J. Kevin Wolfe for putting together this excellent ebook.

The eBook is very easy to use. It is a pdf file that's hyperindexed for fast access to the how-to the user needs at that moment and hyperlinked to dedicated websites for up-to-the-minute information. Serious Editing in iPhoto 5 is $24.95 and it includes lifetime upgrades as more is added, as iPhoto improves and as Mac OS X is upgraded. Serious Editing in iPhoto 5 can be purchased from this Web page. Secure purchases can be made with major credit cards through PayPal. [Bill Fox]