iPhoto does a great job with Christmas cards

Posted by Carel on Dec 15, 2007 in Photo processing | 0 comments

If you haven’t mailed your Christmas cards yet, then you may be too late. You can always send e-cards. This year, like last year, we used Apple’s iPhoto application to create a Christmas card. The process to create a card is quick and easy. The hardest part is coming up with a message, like “Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2008″. Very original — don’t you think? iPhoto is part of Apple’s iLife suite of products and includes: iPhoto, iWeb, iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand. Basically all the software you need to digitize you photos, videos and analogue (tapes) sound.Here are the steps involved in creating a Christmas card with iPhoto:

1. Launch iPhoto on your Mac. I used my MacBook Pro.
2. Click on the ‘Card’ icon at the bottom of the app.
3. Select a theme. Drag-and-drop photos onto the card. Write a message.
4. Click on ‘Buy Card’ and following the buying instructions. We ordered 50 double-sided postcards @ a total cost of $62 (.99c per card + shipping/tax).
5. I picked standard shipping and it took 3 business days to be delivered with Fedex ground.
6. The cards are nicely wrapped and you also get an envelope for each card. They shipped it in a very sturdy box.

Summary: Quick and easy to create a beautiful custom Christmas card. Not too expensive. A similar card at Walmart is .84c per card. Quick delivery. I will use this service again and can highly recommend it.

PCMag recently reviewed iLife ’08 and give it a 4/5.

What service did you use this year?

Photo sharing sites – including Flickr, Picasa and Zooomr

Posted by Carel on Nov 29, 2007 in Photo sharing websites | 0 comments

Well, somewhere along the line I’m sure you would want to share your pictures and videos with your friends and loved ones. These days you have lots of choices. Today I will list a few and over time I will start to rate these sites. I use Apple’s .Mac service. You can quickly and easily share pictures and videos using iWeb/web galleries. Using a Mac it’s easy to set up and share your pictures. Check out this beautiful web gallery.

I also use Google’s Picasa service. Most of these services give you a sizable amount of free storage and then you can buy additional storage.

What service do you use? Please rate it for us in your comment!

Here is a list of the more popular sites: