iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual

honestpuck writes "The Missing Manual series has been around for quite some time, but I have never felt the need to buy one until I started doing some serious work with iPhoto. iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual was a good volume to assist." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review. iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual author David Pogue, Derrick Story, Joseph Schorr pages 336 publisher O'Reilly/Pogue Press rating 8 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596005067 summary An good guide to iPhoto2 for beginner to intermediate users

One of the things I like about Apple's iApps is that they hide a great deal of complexity behind a simple interface; they do indeed make the complex simple. The drawback to this is that I often find myself ignoring the more powerful aspects of the application and never using it to its full. It was here that the Missing Manual came to my help.

The target audience for this book would probably be a little less technical than myself or the average Slashdot reader, however when I find myself in a field I don't understand well I don't mind a little stuff for the absolute newbie. This book has an entire first section that deals with photography and digital photography in particular that may be a total repeat for some, I found it a welcome reminder of how to get a good photograph along with some extremely useful hints about the new technology and choosing a camera. It covers such topics as composition and lighting for a host of different situations such as landscapes, night, portraits, children and sports.

It then goes on to a section of similar size on the basics that covers getting the photos from your camera to the Mac, organising the photos using albums and keywords and then editing your shots.

A third section covers the various ways of publishing and showing your photos such as printing, CD, and web pages, and a final section with some tricks and tips on things like managing your libraries. There are two appendices: one very useful troubleshooting guide, and a menu-by-menu look at iPhoto 2.

I particularly appreciated the thorough treatment of how to get the most out of iPhoto when printing photo books and creating web pages in the third section; it was here that I really discovered how little I knew from just 'playing' with the application. The book is peppered with useful information and tips that take you beyond the level that most of us discovered when we ran and used the program. The authors have also provided some marvelous explanations of what is going on, the "why" as well as the "what."

The book is well written with a readable, light, almost witty style that somehow deceives the reader as to the depth of the material being covered. It is only when I reflected back on how much the book taught me that I realised how well it had done the job.

O'Reilly have their usual web page for the book with a sample chapter, Table of Contents and Index. Pogue Press have a neat idea - they have a page that features all the software mentioned in the book. A neat idea that I liked a lot.

In conclusion, I would recommend this book to everyone who is serious about digital photography on their Mac. If you have used iPhoto for a long time you may think the book a waste, but I'd be surprised if even long-time users didn't get their money's worth out of this book. I much preferred the style of this volume to IDG's iPhoto 2 for Dummies , the only other real competitor for this volume was iPhoto 2 for Mac OS X: A Visual Quickstart Guide , and that is a shorter volume with less depth and less advice for photography and nothing on the camera technology, though I think Engst's writing seems a bit clearer at times.

I wouldn't buy a "Missing Manual" for every iApp or the operating system, but if you take the slogan for the series seriously, "The book that should have been in the box" (for the box is entirely devoid of books), I think they are a marvelous help for becoming a true 'power user.'

You can purchase iPhoto2: The Missing Manual from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.