If you're not the world's greatest photographer, you've got a friend in iPhoto.

 

WHAT YOU NEED
Mac OS 10.3.4 or later
iPhoto 5 or later ($79, part of iLife, www.apple.com)
A photo that needs a little TLC

 

While iPhoto was once little more than a handy photo library, it has since evolved into a nifty image-editing tool. Here's how to tap iPhoto 5 or later's advanced image-editing tools to make mucked-up photos look better - without that artificial aftertaste that can sour retouched images.<

 

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Step 1: Ease into It

 

If you're completely new to iPhoto, first launch it (/Applications), select File > Add To Library (Command-O), and then navigate to a photo on your Mac. Now select iPhoto > Preferences. In the General pane, set the Double-Click Photo option to Changes To Edit View, and close the dialog. Find the photo you want to fix in iPhoto's Library and double-click it to enter Edit mode. Click the Enhance button: It usually does a good job of adding snap to photos by increasing contrast, saturating color, and removing gray tones. In our case, however, it removed some of the gray and added a bit of contrast, but still left our photo a little flat.

 

The one-click Enhance button can do wonders - but we can do better.

 

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Step 2: Plan B: Enhance Manually

 

To see just what Enhance did, hold down Control to temporarily revert the photo to its original state. If your photo still needs some tuning (as ours does), press Command-Z to undo the enhancement. Now click the Adjust button to open up iPhoto's Advanced Editing Dashboard. Don't see an Adjust button? iPhoto might be too big for your display - access missing tools by clicking the double-right-arrow icon in the lower left.

 

If your Adjust icon is missing, click the double arrow in the lower right to find the command in a menu.<

 

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Step 3: Hello, Histogram

 

The histogram (the red, green, and blue mountain range near the bottom of the Advanced Editing Dashboard) is the CAT scan of digital photography: It provides a graphical view of the image's brightness and color range at the per-pixel level-dark to the left, bright to the right. A general rule of thumb is that the histogram's peaks should be centered or slightly to the right-hand side of the graph. Notice that in the screenshot, our peaks are - like Ted Kennedy - a little left of center.

 

The Advanced Editing Dashboard is your manual interface to the Enhance button's one-click fix.

 

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Step 4: Keep 'Em Saturated

 

Start with the Saturation slider; move it to the right to about 90 percent to enrich the color and remove some gray. Check the histogram again - the mountains have moved even more to the left, and the image is considerably darker.

 

Although 90-percent saturation may seem excessive, don't worry - we'll tone it down later.

 

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Step 5: Expose Yourself

 

For many photos, you can just drag the Exposure slider to the right until the peaks are more centered. Our problem is that we have lower peaks on the right side that we don't want to turn into high cliffs on the edge of the histogram. (Cliffs show that color is being lost to highlights.) Drag the Exposure slider right until it's at about 13 percent.

 

On a less-mucked-up photo, tweaking the Exposure can do the trick.

 

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Step 6: Hijack the Histogram

 

The Levels slider below the histogram lets you manually set the black and white points, simultaneously increasing contrast and smoothing the tonal range. Click and drag to adjust your brightness extremes, and note that a little goes a long way; we only took off a percent or two on each side. Press and hold the Control key to check your changes against the original. The scene should now look cooler and clearer.

 

Like God, you get to define black and white.

 

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Step 7: Sharpen It

 

Muddy images like our sample generally benefit from a little sharpening. Just remember that sharpening should always be the last step of your photo-demucking endeavors, since making further adjustments usually reblurs anything you've previously sharpened. Drag the Sharpness slider right to 50 percent to bring out a little more detail. Drag the Zoom slider (in the lower-right corner) to get a closer look.

 

Careful with the Sharpness slider - using it incorrectly is worse than not using it at all.

 

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Step 8: Exit to Edit

 

When your image looks suitably fabulous, iPhoto provides several ways to leave the Edit interface and return to browsing the Library. Since you set the Double-Click option in step 1, double-clicking your image in Edit mode will save your changes and load iPhoto's Library. Other escapes from Edit: Click another image's thumbnail in the upper pane; click the Previous or Next arrow at the bottom of the window; click Done; or click a different album or slideshow in the Source list.

 

Warning: Leaving Edit mode automatically saves your changes.

 

BONUS TIP: Tool School

Histograms may look complicated, but they're not that hard to read once you're used to them. Dark colors are on the left side, and light colors are on the right. The mountain height shows the number of pixels in the shade of a color. The left Levels slider turns dark colors black, and the right Levels slider turns light colors white. If the sliders meet in the middle, you get monochrome, so go easy.

 

 

 

Don't fear the histogram - master it.