iPhoto: Reasons To Be Green With Envy. And Not.

Last week we covered the iPhoto Import, Organize and Edit modes, including the lamentable red/eggplant converter in Edit.

Now, let's take a look at the last two modes, both of which are oriented toward a profit center for Apple and Kodak.

The Book mode is where you can assemble the images in an Album into a book which can then be ordered online. I decided to test the Book assembly process by importing from an existing file 11 high resolution TIFF images, resized and color corrected in Photoshop.

Six pre-designed formats are available and they control how the book will look with very little creative leeway for the user. I chose the Classic format and limited to one the photos on a page. Up to four photos can be placed on a page.

Guideline boxes are available for what I thought would be caption copy. But when I opened a page, I discovered the image's name in the box. Selecting and retyping the text to a caption changes the name of the image in the Album and the Photo Library.

There seems to be no provision for headlines plus body copy. Choosing a font for selected copy sets all the copy in the book universally. Clearly, an iPhoto Book is intended to be a photo album and not a coffee table publication.

When the book was finished to my satisfaction, I moved to the Share mode and clicked on "order book."

The first book (with high-res TIFFs) took about nine minutes to assemble. Uploading to the iPhoto site was also leisurely, about nine minutes which I attributed to file size.

An hour later, Latoya from the Apple Store called to tell me iPhoto had rejected my uploaded file and I should resubmit the book. I talked with Apple's tech support (4 folks in the next two hours) and two days later got a judgment that file size was not an issue with iPhoto.

In the meantime, I had submitted a second book, similar in style but using low-resolution QuickTime JPGs from my digital camera file. Uploading was a bit faster. I then called and talked with Latoya to cancel my first book order. She said the book had already been sent to the vendor.

Both books arrived today, eight and nine days from their respective order. They're each beautiful and there's no difference in image quality between the high- and low-res versions. Amazing. The cost for each was $40.08 (including sales tax and shipping).

Next week, we'll examine the other ways of sharing from the iPhoto Share mode.