Chapter 9 of “Take Control of Your Digital Photos” Available

Before I tell you about this week’s free chapter of “Take Control of Your Digital Photos” — the last one! — I wanted to share another photography-related deal we’ve just negotiated for TidBITS members. A while back at Macworld Expo, I met with a company that makes unusual photo prints. Called SizzlPix, they’re high-definition photographic prints infused onto an aluminum base in (longest edge) sizes ranging from 18 to 72 inches (46 to 183 cm). The hand-crafted prints are largely free of glare due to the lack of glass, are waterproof (some are installed in showers and even pools), and have an ultra-hard coating that renders them virtually scratch-proof. The visual effect is stunning,
even with photos from relatively low-end cameras, and there’s an unconditional 30-day money-back satisfaction guarantee, so if you aren’t happy, you can return it for replacement or refund. Prices, which are comparable to professional framing, start at $199 and go up with size; TidBITS members can save 20 percent (look on your Member Benefits page for the code to enter when ordering).

Meanwhile, back at “Take Control of Your Digital Photos,” our final chapter is both extremely useful and, frankly, a little frustrating. In response to requests from readers of earlier chapters, Chapter 9, “Move Photos from iPhoto to Aperture or Lightroom,” offers full instructions on how best to migrate from iPhoto to both Aperture and Lightroom.

As you would expect, migrating from iPhoto to Aperture is trivial, since iPhoto and Aperture can share the same library. Where Jeff goes above and beyond is with his instructions for migrating from iPhoto to Lightroom. The steps aren’t difficult, but they are a bit fussy, due to iPhoto’s mediocre export capabilities. Jeff helps you preserve as much information as is possible — titles and keywords are easy, but maintaining ratings and both original and edited images requires some effort. Unfortunately, there is no way to bring albums along (but you’ll be making new smart albums anyway, right?) and most frustrating is that although Lightroom has a feature to “stack” an edited photo on its original to combine them manually, the
auto-stacking option doesn’t seem to work reliably. Jeff talks about all this, and offers readers a few possible solutions for maintaining originals of edited photos.

As with Chapter 8, “Back Up and Archive Your Photos,” Chapter 7, “Organize Photos into (Smart) Albums,” Chapter 6, “Assign Keywords and Other Data,” Chapter 5, “Judge Your Photos,” Chapter 4, “Best Practices for Importing Photos,” “Chapter 3, “Choose a Photo-Management Application,” and Chapter 2, “Shoot Smarter,” this chapter is available for free, but only to TidBITS members; everyone is welcome to read Chapter 1, “A Smart Approach to Photo Management,” to get a sense of what the subsequent chapters cover. The full ebook will be available for purchase by everyone in PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket (Kindle) formats once it’s complete, which should be within a couple of weeks.

Publishing this book in its entirety for TidBITS members as it’s being written is one of the ways we thank TidBITS members for their support. We also hope it encourages those of you who have been reading TidBITS for free for years to help us continue to bring you carefully considered, professionally written and edited articles each week (for more details, see “TidBITS Needs Your Support in 2013: Join Our Membership Program,” 17 December 2012).