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Festive finesse

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Why you can trust SCMP

We are approaching the time of year when those with Macs will be taxing their machines to the limit.

Seasonal gatherings and new digital toys mean hundreds of photos and dozens of videos will be edited, numerous holiday CDs burned and annual newsletters created, and myriad customised holiday communications and gifts fabricated. Phew! Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to it.

Apple has anticipated, or perhaps created, some of this need by designing a slew of applications for making these seasonal projects easy: iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD and GarageBand. These gems are close to perfection for their simplicity and all-round utility, but they can always be improved. The Mac shareware developers of the world have recognised this and created an array of improvement apps that make these Apple gems more impressive.

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Let's start with iPhoto. Its biggest flaw is it can't recognise multiple libraries.

This can be fixed with the free iPhoto Librarian www.scruffyware.com/products/iPhotoLibrarian.html). This application allows you to break up your massive iPhoto collection into numerous little ones. The result is a much-faster-running iPhoto and the ability to store your space-intensive libraries on external drives.
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I also like to place comments on photos that I distribute to show off my sense of humour or insight. Frankly, it's probably my worst habit. The tool I use is Comic Life (US$24.95; plasq.com/comiclife), which lets you make cartoons or comic strips from your iPhoto library using assorted voice balloons.
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