iLife '04
© 2004 Apple
This is a suite of five applications (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, Garageband and iDVD) designed for Macs running OSX (2.8 or better). iPhoto is a photo organizer/editor that makes it easy to pull pictures from a digital camera, and organize them by date or topic. It is not a powerful image editor (e.g., if you're looking for Photoshop, this isn't the software). It will take out redeye, or let you crop and lighten photos. iTunes is designed to organize your music into different categories, and includes a visualizer that is very "cool" to sit back and watch while you are listening to your music. Of course, iTunes makes it easy to purchase downloaded tunes. iMovie is one of the best programs of this package. Just plug in your digital camera using a firewire plug, and you can view your videotape footage in the iMovie preview window. You then can add special effects, titles, fades or a sound track from iMovie or Garageband. Finished products can be recorded onto CDs or DVDs with a DVD writer equipped computer. The newest member of the group is GarageBand, best described as a virtual mix board, making it possible to combine different tracks of music or recorded sounds into one stream of sound. There are 12 families of instruments, and once a sound is imported, it can be digitally altered, cut or looped, making this an amazingly powerful tool to play with. It is a bit cumbersome to figure out at first. Finally, iDVD lets you create your own DVD, providing you have a DVD burner on your Mac -- a feature that is not yet that common on most Macs. All things considered, this suite is an excellent value.
$49, Macintosh OSX
Teaches: music, creativity, pictures