How I use iPhoto to publish to Facebook

I have a pretty good routine down now for uploading and sharing my photos and videos on my Mac and in the cloud. Good because I'm able to do it frequently (a few times a week) and don't spend too much time on it (usually about 15 minutes). This system is actually based on a similar method for managing music songs and playlists that I use for iTunes.

I manage them in iPhoto, edit them in iMovie, and share them online via Facebook, Flickr and YouTube and also through devices such as my iPhone, screensavers and digital picture frames. I'm able to upload a lot of content with minimal time.

Here is what I do after returning from a trip or event where I took pictures and video.

First, I organize the photos:

1. Connect USB cable to camera, videocamera, and iPhone. iPhoto automatically launches and goes directly to the Import screen.
2. Click Import in iPhoto to copy photos from camera to computer
3. Hygiene - delete bad photos and duplicate photos in iPhoto
4. Tagging - Add tags to photos in iPhoto
5. Ratings - Rate all photos 3 stars in iPhoto
6. Ratings - Upgrade individual photos to 4 or 5 stars in iPhoto
7. Events - Break into Events if needed and name events in iPhoto
8. Smart Albums - Update MobileMe galleries by dragging and dropping new photos from Smart Albums in iPhoto

Next, I publish them to various physical devices and online:

1. Screensaver on my computer
2. iPhone Photo Albums
3. Digital Picture Frames
4. Facebook Photos - Publish new photos to Facebook from iPhoto, then update permissions from Facebook website
5. Flickr Photos - Publish new photos to Flickr if appropriate
6. iMovie Editing - Edit videos in iMovie if necessary (usually not)
7. Facebook Video - Drag videos to the desktop and then upload individually to Facebook and YouTube

Usually this entire process takes about 15 minutes. If its after a big trip with 1000 photos and a bunch of video then maybe an hour or two.

Do I have to use a Mac?

This is one of those places where the Mac really shines. No one has made it so simple to manage your photos, videos and music and the software is all completely free with every Mac. Everything is integrated and mostly automatic. You plug in the camera and it launches iPhoto and goes right to the Import screen. My screensaver automatically gets the latest pictures and so does my iPhone when it syncs. Everything is automatic. Everything is easy.

Tagging

I'm pretty religious about tagging my photos and videos. I have about 20 tags that I use to keep things straight. Most photos get 2 or 3 tags.

A few tags may eventually be replaced by iPhoto facial recognition - I've played with it a bunch but I haven't integrated it into my process yet. I also need to work geolocation tagging into this process.

The most common tags that I use now are:

• Family Members *
• Josh *
• Baer **
• Family **
• Friends **
• Business
• OtherInbox
• Capital Factory
• Ignite Austin
• Home 
• Holiday
• Travel
• Cars
• Dogs
• Documents (pictures of awards, certificates, etc.)

* could be replaced by facial recognition
** could be replaced by facial recognition if it had groups

I can use the same criteria to do one-off searches and I have found it to be very easy to find specific pictures I'm looking for. Usually I can just narrow it down to 2 or 3 tags and then scan chronologically to find it.

Ratings

iPhoto has a five star rating system. My default rating is 3 stars. After deleting bad photos that are out of focus and duplicate shots, I "select all" and set the ratings to 3 stars. Then I look through them for any that I want to upgrade to 4 stars or 5 stars.

• 5 stars - the very best pictures
• 4 stars - better than average, but not the very best
• 3 stars - default rating for pictures that are worth keeping
• 2 stars - below average, but kept for completeness (usually pictures from an event)
• 1 star - never show in albums, probably some special case, not usually normal pictures

By rating every photo, I can create Smart Albums (below) that contain my "best" pictures from the past few months. Or I can combine with Tags to search for the "best pictures of Cars".

 

 
 

Smart Albums

Smart Albums are like "saved searches." I combine Tagging and Ratings to create Smart Albums that update their content automatically. I then connect these Smart Albums to screensavers, my iPhone, and the albums that I publish to Facebook.

My most frequently used Smart Albums are:

• Kids Best - tagged Kids and rated 5 stars
• Kids Recent - taken in the past 3 months, tagged Kids and rated 3, 4 or 5 stars
• 3 Months Best - taken in the past 3 months and rated 4 or 5 stars
• 3 Months Recent - taken in the past 3 months and rated 3, 4 or 5 stars
• Family Best - tagged Family and rated 4 or 5 stars
• Travel Best - tagged Travel and rated 5 stars
• Amy & Josh - tagged Amy and Josh and rated 5 stars

How do I decide how many stars? Mostly be trial an error. I start with 4 and 5 stars and if that is too many then I just go with 5 stars. If its not enough then I go to 3, 4 and 5 stars.

 

 

iMovie Editing

iMovie is a simple video editing application that comes pre-installed on most Macs. It's really easy to make professional looking videos with it. You can easily cut and paste clips together, overlay slides from a presentation, add titles and effects, and more.

It is integrated with iPhoto - so as long as I upload my photos and movies into iPhoto (which is what happens by default when I plug a camera into my Mac) then iMovie can automatically see all of those media assets and I can drag and drop them into movies I'm editing.

Facebook

For photos, I usually let iPhoto organize them into Events and end up wanting to publish Events as Albums on Facebook. After all of the hygiene, tagging, and rating, I'm usually left with exactly the group of photos I might want to share. So I just name the Event the same name I would want the Album to be named in Facebook and then click the Facebook icon in the bottom right of the iPhoto window.

 

 

If you want to share your photos with Everyone or with Just Friends, its easy. You just click go and you're done. I think that somehow it even matches up the facial recognition and will automatically tag photos with your friends.

If you want to share the album privately on Facebook with only certain people, it gets a little tricky. iPhoto only gives you the option to share your album with Everyone, Friends of Friends, or Just Friends. Most of the photos that I share are only shared with certain Facebook Friend Lists and not with Everyone. So I have to publish from iPhoto to Just Friends and then immediately go to the web page and reset the privacy controls from the web after the first photo is uploaded. Even still, I've had a few times where some friends on Facebook have seen pictures (I know because they commented on them) that they weren't supposed to see (fortunately nothing embarrassing, just cute family pictures).

 

 

This only works for uploading photos to your own personal account. Once they are in your account, you can easily post them to a Facebook event. However, if you want to post pictures to a Facebook Page for your company, you need to export the photos to a folder and then use the Facebook photo upload process from the web page.

For videos, it's similar to Facebook pages. You have to upload the video files directly using the Facebook web page. I usually end up dragging and dropping the video from iPhoto onto the desktop so that its easy to find when I'm uploading it to Facebook.

Flickr

I don't really publish many photos to Flickr but it works with iPhoto a lot like Facebook.

YouTube

Publishing movies isn't quite as simple with YouTube. The maximum time is 10 minutes, so long movies require extra editing to chop them up into 10 minute chunks and upload them each separately. This is a big pain in the ass and is making me seriously consider switching the bulk of my video to Vimeo because it has fewer limitations.

iPhone

My iPhone automatically syncs the Smart Albums to my iPhone, so it always has the best and most recent pictures on it. You configure that from within iTunes.

Screensavers

You can choose a Smart Album as a screensaver on a Mac, so I usually have the "3 Months Best" album with the Ken Burns effect on my screen. Its counter-intuitive to me at first, but I find that I prefer seeing the most recent pictures all the time, not the best old ones over and over.

Just go to the Screen Saver in the System Preferences and your iPhoto Albums and Events will appear in the list. Sometimes it takes a minute for them to appear.

 

 

Digital Picture Frames

I have a Philips digital picture frame on my desk. Unfortunately the only way to transfer pictures is by connecting it to a computer via USB or using SD memory cards. This means manually dragging and dropping images from iPhoto to the SD card and physically moving around the cards or cables every time you want to sync them. I'd really like to find a good digital picture frame that would stream the photos off of iPhoto (the problem with Facebook is that the pictures are so low quality).

What about you?

How do you manage your photos? Any tips on how to make my process smoother or more automated? Have you worked facial recognition and geo-location into your process? Please comment.

Comments

[סופרדסק ריהוט משרדי]

I publish from iPhoto to Just Friends, then immediately go on the site and return control of personal information online after the first image is downloaded.

[ToniLevine]

I took 1 st loans when I was 20 and this supported my family a lot. But, I require the credit loan once again.

[Morten Myrstad]

Thanks! This is a really good post about iPhoto and photo management. Do you know how you from iPhoto can export pictures and albums to a Facebook BUSINESS page, which you are an administrator for?

[moncler down]

I gave my site a few examples below.

[Cheap New Era Hats]

thanks nice post,and thanks sharing!!!!

[Uggs Clearance]

Also, you are good squishee. Glad to hear from you, even though you taunt me with free far away tickets. Damn you coasts, east and west. The gulf has feelings too you know!

[Phil Montero]

Hey Joshua,

Thanks so much for sharing your workflow in this post - it's a great help! I am new to the Mac (just switched over about a month ago) and I am about to import all of my photos into iPhoto. I was doing some searches on the web as to the best way to do this (how to organize them, how many photos are too many for one library, etc) and came across your post.

I love your organizational workflow and will modify this and use something similar myself. I have been slacking on keeping friends and family updated with recent photos.

Thanks again!

Phil