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Customizing iPhoto


There is a hidden feature in iPhoto 1.1.1 called “Enhance” that does a little bit of color balancing and white point correction. There is also a “Crop” feature in the program. I never use “Black and White” but like to correct color and crop photos without launching Photoshop or Graphic Converter. Using Developer Tools, you can add these tools to the edit panel of iPhoto and customize it to your needs.

This comes from the MacNN forums by way of MacOSXHints, but the addition of the crop tool is original to me.

Adding an “Enhance” or “Crop” button to iPhoto:

  1. Make a copy of iPhoto
  2. Open the package for the iPhoto copy and navigate to the English.lproj folder (located in Contents/Resources inside the package)
  3. Double click ArchiveDocument.nib; this will launch Interface Builder. If nothing happens, your developer tools aren’t installed properly, and that needs to be fixed before you continue.
  4. Drag the “Previous” and “Next” buttons and their separator bar to the very far right of the window. I use iPhoto in full screen mode, so although it will appear cramped in Interface Builder it’ll be fine at runtime.
  5. Click once on the “Red-Eye” and “Black & White” button matrix.
  6. Option drag the middle right handle of the matrix to the right until a new button cell is created (it won’t snap back then).
  7. Double click on the new empty button cell so that it is selected.
  8. Open the info window (command-shift-I).
  9. Set the title of the button to “Enhance” (or “Crop”) and the icon to “enhance” (or “crop”). Leave the quotes off when you type these in, naturally.
  10. Set the behavior to “momentary change”
  11. In the info window, select Connections from the popup menu
  12. Control-drag from the Enhance (or Crop) button to the ArchiveController (in the ArchiveDocument.nib window) to make a connection between them.
  13. In the info window, click on “target” in the Outlets column and then “enhance:” (or “crop:”) in the Actions column and then click the “Connect” button
  14. Save the ArchiveDocument.nib and launch the iPhoto copy. If it doesn’t work, trash the copy of iPhoto and continue to use the original.

There are some other commands that don’t have buttons attached to them that you can enable in a similar way. It’s no substitute for a proper image editing program, but there’s a lot that you can do in iPhoto before firing up one of the bigger guns. I altered my “Black and White” button to “Crop” and added “Enhance” as the new one. Different combinations may be suitable to your needs, but remember to work on a copy.

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.