Find out how

Importing Video from a Digital Camera

Many digital cameras let you capture video as well as still images. As you’ll see in the Movies section of Find Out How, iMovie can use the digital video that you import quite readily.

To import video from your digital camera, the steps are the same as importing still photos.

1. Connect your camera to your Mac and turn your camera on.
2. iPhoto displays the items that you can import in the viewing pane. Video thumbnails have a small white camera icon in their lower-left corners.
3. Either select the video you want to import and click Import Selected, or click Import All to import everything in the camera.

iPhoto adds the imported items to your iPhoto Library. Videos in the library display the small white camera icon. To find out how to make a movie with iMovie, click here.

Adding Other Photos to iPhoto Library

iPhoto can import photo and image files in a variety of formats, which make it useful for storing and arranging images other than those that come from your digital camera. For example, you can import photos emailed to you from friends and family.

To add any photo or image on your Mac to your iPhoto Library, do the following:

1. Open iPhoto. The viewing pane should display your iPhoto Library.
2. Find the photo you’d like to add to your iPhoto Library. Click and drag that photo into your iPhoto Library window; then release the mouse button. The photo automatically becomes a new Event item.
3. You can do the same with entire folders of photos. Just find the folder full of photos on your Mac, then click and drag that folder into the iPhoto Library pane.

Viewing Photos

When you view the Events in your iPhoto Library, iPhoto uses a thumbnail of one of the photos in the Event to represent all the photos in that Event. To adjust the size of these thumbnails:

1. Open iPhoto, and the Events pane should appear. (If you’re already in iPhoto, click Events at the top of the source list on the left.)
2. To change the size of the thumbnail images, locate the magnifying slider at the bottom right of the iPhoto Window. To make the thumbnails smaller or larger, drag the magnifying slider to the left or right.

Use this same technique to change the size of thumbnail images within each Event, as well.

Splitting Events

iPhoto automatically creates Events when you import pictures, based on when the pictures were taken. (Most digital cameras automatically assign a Date/Time Stamp to photos.) Often, you’ll find that photos within one iPhoto Event actually represent two or more real events. You may want to split a single Event into two or more Events, and rename them.

To split an Event:

1. Open the Event.
2. Select all the Photos that you’d like to be part of the New Event.
3. At the bottom-left of the viewing pane, click the Split button. iPhoto creates a new Untitled Event that contains the pictures you selected, removing them from the original Event.
4. You can now double-click the untitled Event’s title to rename it.

Merging Events

Sometimes, when importing your photos, iPhoto splits them into multiple Events even though they all belong in a single event. For example, iPhoto may place the photos shot during the three days of your tropical vacation into three events. But you can easily merge them into one. Here’s how:

1. Select the two or more Events you’d like to merge.
2. At the bottom-left of the viewing pane, click the Merge button.
3. You can also Merge Events simply by dragging and dropping one Event onto another.