Possibly restore older iPhoto themes in iPhoto '08

Upon trying to create a book in iPhoto '08, I noticed a lot of the old themes were not available. Browsing around, I found the theme folder for iPhoto in the top-level Library folder, in Application Support » iPhoto » Themes. Inside that folder were many themes not available through iPhoto itself, but that were available in older versions. As one example, BabyBoy-Hardcover.IPBookTheme isn't available in the list of book themes pop-up menu, but it is in that folder. I can't guarantee how safe/legal the following process is, but I was able to enable the old themes by editing a parameter in that theme's Contents/Resources folder. I opened Contents » Resources » Implementation.plist in a text editor (or Property List Editor) and changed the Hidden parameter from yes to no. After saving my changes and restarting iPhoto, the old theme was available in iPhoto. [robg adds: I used BBEdit and ran a multi-file search to find the hidden th...

Enable Spotlight indexing in iPhoto 6

For those of you still stuck with iPhoto 6, I discovered how to enable Spotlight to properly index iPhotos -- including keywords, titles and other details. I am not sure if this applies to every iPhoto 6 user, but in my iPhoto 6 application, Apple forgot to tell Spotlight what to look for. Follow these steps to fix this: Open /Applications, Control-click on iPhoto, and select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. In the new window that opens, locate the Contents/Info.plist file. Open TextEdit, and drag the Info.plist file onto the TextEdit icon in the Dock to open it. Please make a copy of the file before editing, just in case! At the end of the file, just before </dict></plist>, insert the following code: <key>UTExportedTypeDeclarations<...

iPhoto2Gmail updated to version 1.0

While most people are probably satisfied to send their photos from iPhoto through their Gmail accounts using Mail, some people would rather have a more direct option. For example, sending large files through Mail seems to be no problem for me, yet from the same network with exactly the same settings, my wife's Mail chokes and spits and frequently fails when she tries to send a bunch (or even a few) pictures from iPhoto. Tired of playing with her SMTP settings and getting everything working for one message, just to have it fail on the next one, I finally went in search of a more direct approach. My wife and I are both "switchers," and back in Windows we were used to Picasa, which has the ability to send photos via a Gmail account built-in. Makes sense, since Google owns Picasa, but that's exactly what I was looking hoping to get iPhoto to do. In my searches I came across an iPhoto plugin called iPhoto2Gmail. When I tried it last week, it hung my iPhoto instance every time I tried it and I had to force quit iPhoto. I gave up on iPhoto2Gmail, but couldn't find anything else. In desperation, I went back to have another look at iPhoto2Gmail and discovered that it had been updated to version 1.0. Crossing my fingers, I gave it a try, and... it works great! Though I don't need it on my machine, I really like the direct simplicity of sending my photos from right inside iPhoto, and I think I'll continue to use iPhoto2Gmail. If you've been struggling with sending photos through a Gmail account, this might be a useful option for you.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Mac Automation: Burn a backup disc of recent iPhotos

digg_url = 'http://www.tuaw.com/2008/06/17/mac-automation-burn-a-backup-disc-of-recent-iphotos/'; Time Machine is great way to backup your entire Mac, but what if you want to make a single backup of your recently imported photos in iPhoto? Well, Automator for Leopard is here to help with this task. In this how-to, I will show you how to find photos taken in the last 2 months and burn the resulting photos to a disc for safe keeping. Continue reading to learn how to create this Automator workflow.Continue reading Mac Automation: Burn a backup disc of recent iPhotosRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Aperture plug-in developer releases beta iPhoto plug-ins

Professional Aperture plug-in developer Ubermind has released four new beta plug-ins for iPhoto that allow you to build galleries and upload photos.

Ask TUAW: iChat problems, keyboard control, SRS iWOW bugs, iPhoto desktops, and more

In this exciting round of Ask TUAW we'll be looking at questions about using the keyboard to control dialog boxes, getting iTunes to play when a Mac wakes from sleep, using selective iPhoto sources for an automatically changing desktop, port forwarding for iChat, using one Mac to control another Mac running Front Row, and more.As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!Continue reading Ask TUAW: iChat problems, keyboard control, SRS iWOW bugs, iPhoto desktops, and moreRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments