Apple creative digital iLife'09

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Introduction

In the park of software solutions offered by Apple a prominent place is occupied by the iLife suite, consisting of five applications that want to try to meet the needs of the wider public in the areas of digital creativity. Drawing a parallel, if iWork is the proposal "serious" software solutions for the general public, certainly embodies the iLife declination more frivolous.

The iLife suite has been proposed by Apple as of 2003 are 6 versions that have gradually succeeded to date, almost every year and almost all presented at the various editions of Macworld in January. Except iLife'08 that, to the detriment of the name, was launched at a special summer event, in August 2007.

Like iWork, iLife is also marketed in a standalone package. Unlike other "stakanovista", however, iLife is bundled with Mac OS X when buying a new Mac system The package is therefore maintained in the market for those who wish to update the suite of programs than the previous version.

iLife'09, presented at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco in the early days of January, consists of a digital album, a multitrack recorder, editor of a website, an editor for video editing and DVD authoring platform , known respectively by the names of iPhoto, GarageBand, iWeb, iMovie and iDVD.

The new edition is not to the touch, however, all programs in the suite: the most important updates are the responsibility of iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand, and iWeb is covered only a small, albeit important, and iDVD integration remains unchanged from Previous version contained in iLife'08.

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iPhoto: Faces

iPhoto is a digital photo album that Apple includes in the iLife suite. With the new edition included in iLife'09, iPhoto has been enhanced with new features, especially in relation to the operations of the cataloging of photographs and for the possibilities of sharing through web services such as Facebook and Flickr. There are a number of small improvements in addition to tools and features already present in previous editions.

Faces

We start therefore with an overview on the new "Faces": this is an automated system that allows you to catalog the photos in our library on the basis of the subjects they present. Faces is based on a set of algorithms so-called "face recognition" that enable iPhoto to automatically recognize the presence of faces in our photos.

Once the photos were important within the iPhoto library, the program will analyze them using these algorithms. Once identified a face, the program will affix a small box which links to a label. This operation is done completely in the background, so as not to disrupt the activities of the user.

The user is left only the task to insert the name of individuals recognized by iPhoto: at this point, once "tagged" a photograph, the program will begin to offer more pics whose faces could be found to correspond to those listed. Conversely, if we were to see a picture not yet indexed, but in which there is already a face card, the program will suggest the name of the face in this picture.

In the case where the program was not able to detect the presence of a face in a photograph, you let the user the ability to manually draw the boxes of demarcation and assign the name.

By clicking the "Faces" in the menu on the left, you go to a sort of cork bulletin board on which are affixed to the representations of each face, framed Polaroid effect, each with their name. Click on one of these "digital polaroid "access to all of the photos. For each tagged individual is also possible to insert a series of additional information such as email address, ID and so on Facebook.

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iPhoto: Places

The second innovation introduced in the field of mechanisms for cataloging covers "Places". As the name suggests, allows Places to rearrange the photos in our library as the place at which they were taken. The new feature is based on technologies of geotagging, relying on information that is included in the EXIF data of photos from the latest cameras equipped with GPS module. In this way the allocation of the photos to their place where were shot is completely automatic.

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If you have a camera with no GPS module and not supporting, therefore, the geotagging feature, you can manually cataloging of photographs, links to each place. To do this you simply click on a picture and fill in appropriate fields that the program offers: we see a map on which to affix a "pin" to indicate the location where the photo was taken.

The graphical representation of the method of cataloging "Places" shows a map comes directly from the archives of Tele Atlas, which are also used for the services Google Maps and Google Earth. The map that appears will contain a number of placeholders, which correspond to the places where they were shot our photos. Increasing the detail resolution of the map, of course, we can see more clearly the places where the photos were made.

Interestingly, the presence of a navigation system organized in a hierarchy as happens, for example, for the system folders or to your music in iTunes: iPhoto to show a list of countries, from which it may fall to levels of detail via more accurate.

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iPhoto: Sharing and small news

As we mentioned in opening the new iPhoto is also an emphasis on the possibilities of sharing photos. In that regard have been entered three commands that allow you to optimize and send easily and quickly your photos to a service such as MobileMate, Flickr and Facebook.

Upload commands to send the photos to the services mentioned above also includes a conversion mechanism, so that the events or albums in iPhoto are converted into their counterpart in Flickr and Facebook. Together with the photographs are made available any information associated with them so that, for example, in Facebook, the photos we have shared that contains references to profiles of any players in it. Using the tools of sharing, in addition, the content will be synchronized: if you decide to delete a photo or an album on iPhoto, they will be automatically deleted even from your Flickr or Facebook.

As said in opening the new iPhoto is also introducing a series of small innovations in the context of features already present in previous versions of the program. There are, for example, some interesting additions in functionality and image editing with the addition of controls that allow you to adjust the sharpness of the images, shadows and high lights. The controls for adjusting the saturation has also been accompanied that allows you to change the colors of an image without making unnatural tones.

The Faces and Places feature, described in the preceding pages, should be to enrich the possibilities for realization of the so-called "Smart Albums". This is an album that is being done automatically by the program simply by setting a series of search filters. With the new iPhoto will become possible to establish these filters by using a person's name or the name of a place.

Among the news is not essential but is entertaining the possibility of creating a travel diary, thanks to a new layout of this album in the program. Through Places, the program will create an album containing the maps of the places we have visited, allowing you to create a collection (possibly Printable) of impact.

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GarageBand:

The iLife package provides a dedicated solution for enthusiasts who want musicians to have a small solution for home recording hobby without having to access the programs much more complex and more blazon as Cubase, Logic, Pro-Tools etc. on. This is Garage Band, which since the 04ha with iLife suffered many changes, all aimed at providing a better experience of use to you.

The most eye-introduced with this edition of GarageBand regards lessons, an interesting resource that Apple makes available for guitarists and pianists / keyboardists grass, a plane of the other "committed" to the recent success of games like Guitar Hero and Rockband.

The use of classes is achieved through a reorganization of the user interface, which shows a large window in which you play the movie of the same lesson. Below the video is represented a piano keyboard or guitar which are highlighted on the keys of the instrument it is necessary so that there is a proposal to play the melody in the movie. In this way, ' "pupil" has the opportunity to review the exercises and playing with an effective visual support. The user can also decide the speed of the metronome and use the built-in program in order to prepare an appropriate plan of study.

GarageBand offers two types of lessons, ones designed for beginners and the lessons of the artists. The first explains the basics about the instrument you are studying (the construction and technical terminology associated with it) and are the first steps (and set theory) in order to play in a short time something done. The lessons of the artists are movies in which some of the most famous star of the musical landscape teach to play some of their most celebrated pieces, with the addition of small anecdotes about the writing and the birth of the piece.

GarageBand includes 16 free lessons for beginners (8 lessons in guitar and piano so many), while the lessons of the artists can be purchased directly from the program at a price of 4.95 euros comes to around 338 Indian rupees.

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GarageBand: jam session and ringtones

Although GarageBand is primarily designed to provide a tool for home recording that is available to everyone, the user can choose to use different profiles. In particular it indicates the presence of the "ringtones" that allows you to create custom ringtones is starting from the loop library included in the program, either directly from recordings made by the user. The ringtone will then be sent to iTunes and you can use them for your iPhone. There is no possibility of using ringtones to other phones.

Among the other profiles to use the program there is also the way Magic GarageBand, which prepares a sort of "jam session" in which you can directly play improvising on the basis that the program makes available, replacing any of instruments represented. In this case the user may simply decide to entertain for a few minutes, or to use the concepts learned through the lessons. Magic GarageBand mode allows you to record their improvisations, so you can keep a track of their performance.

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iWeb

The iWeb application was introduced in the suite of iLife'06, just before the explosion of the phenomenon "Web 2.0" in a sort of transition period during which the blog, come out from a niche preparing to become a media phenomenon that we know today.

iWeb has been proposed as a tool for all those who wanted to create a personal website or a blog, but have proven knowledge of web programming needed to accomplish the work. The purpose of iWeb is therefore to provide a web page editor for WYSIWYG type based on a philosophy similar to that adopted for application development of the iWork package.

The graphics we're opening the program very closely recalls precisely the application of iWork Pages: will be able to choose one of the many models on the basis of which will be developed on the site. In this regard iWeb provides templates for creating blogs, personal pages, photo albums and galleries and so on. For each model are then proposed several options for layout, however, completely customizable depending on the needs of each user.

The creation and editing of pages is fairly intuitive: the elements such as photos, movies, or music substrates are placed directly on the page to be amended by simple operations of "drag & drop." Again we have full control of the parameters of the elements that enter into our pages, thanks to the instrument inspector who, as we have seen during the review of iWork, you can define text formatting, tables, styles, size and orientation of pictures and so on

"Media Browser" which allows you to import the media and made in the libraries of the other iLife applications. In the left column is a tree graph that allows you to monitor the structure of the site to which you are working.

The new iWeb is enriched with new options for publishing, making it much more flexible so than it was before. Besides the obvious possibility of publishing the site on a space MobileMate, you have 4 different types of protocol able to choose from (which we see in the picture), with the program that will make all the operations necessary to ensure that the site is properly consulted.

Among the options of publishing was the ability to publish only the updates of the site (and not having to carry so all upload of the site if you have made only small changes) and the ability to automate the updating of the profile of Facebook friends to notify the successful publication of an update.

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iMovie

The version of iMovie included in iLife'09 continues on the path of the revolution made by the previous version, which Apple has to introduce a point of departure from the approach that had characterized this application until its version iMovie HD 6.

For those who are accustomed to the traditional "with the timeline" of non-linear editor, the first approach with iMovie could leave a little 'confused. The timeline, it disappears and the area of work is organized in a rather original.

At the bottom is where we would expect to find the traditional timeline, are placed all the clips "master" who indenderemo put in our movie. In this area we can select the parts of the clips you want to spend the inclusion in the movie, just with a click operation and drag the thumbnail of the clip. Dragging the mouse on each clip, it is possible to have a preview of it, so as to be always under control all the content that we are handling.

The selections we have chosen can now be moved to the upper part of the program in an area which, although organized differently, has the same function in the timeline. E 'in this area that has control of all operations of insertion or replacement of video clips.

Management "drag & drop" of the video clip has been improved and made more complete in this new version of iMovie. Apple has chosen a solution similar to that implemented in the suite Professional Series Final Cut: dragging a clip into the project, a context menu through which we can select the most appropriate action to be taken. We will have the possibility to insert the clip, replace them with those present, or decide to use only the audio of a clip.

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iMovie: editor of precision and stabilization video

For operations of trimming iMovie provides a new tool for assembling with higher precision. With this tool will be able to decide at what point exactly join the two clips on which we are working on. To access the editor of precision is sufficient to perform a double click in the empty space between two clips in a row. The precision editor also offers the opportunity to work independently on the audio track, so that the user may have the most complete freedom of action on this issue.

Certainly very valuable and useful new feature is the stabilization of the shooting introduced in the new iMovie. This is a process of development which allows to stabilize shooting in special conditions or by hand is not particularly strong. The principle on which this function is the same behind the functionality of straightening of the image: in this case each frame of the movie is aligned properly and zoomed to trim the side obliques.

The process will, in this case, to analyze each frame and in line among them, in order to obtain frame and ideal in a movie with no changes in angle of field. As you can imagine such a process requires a computing power than substantial and for this reason, stabilization operations require a time longer or shorter depending on the length of the clip, the intensity of any vibration and the complexity of that.

For each clip may take a number of adjustments, just like an ordinary photograph. The operations are possible thanks to a handy panel, which allows you to adjust parameters such as brightness, contrast, saturation, white point, exposure and make adjustments on the levels.

iMovie also twenty transition animations such as fade and tendon, some of which even three-dimensional, for any effects of transition between one scene and one of our movie.

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Conclusion:-

The feature "Faces" and "Places" introduced in iPhoto are a pretty funny that while not essential may prove quite useful for those who wish to have a photo archive always perfectly in order and making it possible to find a clear picture in seconds . The possibility of combining these systems with the cataloging smart albums can also quickly and easily create a theme album.

It must be said that to make the best "Places" is almost essential to have a camera with geotagging functionality, on pain of having to absorb the improbable work of manual cataloging of all the photographs. Regarding Faces, we record some imprecision in the face recognition algorithms, with the program that sometimes (especially with low contrast images) does not detect the presence of faces in photos suggests associations or incorrect.

The new features fall into the sharing of functionality as needed, but still returning profits to the fans of social networking. We have appreciated the integration of new tools for photo retouching, allowing you can fix a photo in few simple steps, especially for those who do not have a tool like Photoshop or Gimp.

It seemed interesting to turn the "educational" introduced by GarageBand with the debut of the lesson: Do not rule out future developments in this direction, depending on the response of public record that Apple with this version of GarageBand. The new interface dedicated to guitar players turned out to be extremely intuitive to use, it is not, however, a real novelty, since even with previous versions it was possible to obtain the same result using the traditional program. And 'welcome the choice taken by the development team because, by implementing the new interface has streamlined some operations by making use of much more immediate, especially for hobbies, allowing even a budding directors to achieve quality of movies good level.

Quite positive impressions gained on iWeb, whose approach is very similar to the iWork suite of applications. Compared to the previous version will appreciate the increased possibilities in the publication, especially the technical side with the introduction of a different FTP protocols, but could scare users to beginners. Also interesting is the possibility to insert, automatically, the widget into their pages. However difficult to estimate what the real interest in an application of this kind, when almost all blogging services exist on the network make available tools to support your custom pages.

iMovie is the program most notably in the suite. As we have already had occasion to notice during the review, users accustomed to traditional non-linear editors can be quite bewildered with iMovie, even if we felt it was really the minimum period of learning required to be in terms of using the program efficiently. The impression is that of a much more "friendly" especially for those who are rarely to have to do with video editing, perhaps to arrange a time to the fateful "film" of the holidays.

ILife'09 the suite is marketed at a price of 79 Euro9 (i.e. 5407.65734 Indian Rupees) including VAT and is supplied free with all Macintosh systems sold following his presentation. It 'important to pay particular attention to the minimum system requirements that ensure the functioning of the new iLife'09: Apple requires a Mac with an Intel or PowerPC G5 or PowerPC G4 at least 867MHz, at least 512MB of memory, 4GB of disk space and compulsorily 10.5.6 Mac OS X or later. The requirements, however, become even more important for the complete operation of iMovie, which requires an Intel or a Power Mac G5 with at least 2GHz processor or an iMac G5 with a processor of at least 1.9 GHz

As we have said many times, the novelty introduced with iLife'09 features are not essential, it is fun and functionality all in all with some interest, but probably not likely to make essential purchases of the update package for those who are in possession of the previous edition. Those who are interested, however, must pay attention to system requirements, of which we spoke above. The purchase is recommended to those who already possess a system capable of the full suite those who have a Mac a little 'dated could not exploit the full functionality of the program and even run into some performance problems.