iLife '11 — the all new iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand

Apple recently announced their latest upgrade to the iLife suite during the “Back to the Mac” event in October. iLife ’11 includes new releases of iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand. Apple did a great job in adding more advanced features while maintaining their trademark simplicity. The upgrade is priced at only $49 USD and is definitely worth the price.

The incredible new iPhoto has added support for Facebook/Flickr and sharing photos through email. The changes to the full-screen mode allow you to utilize every pixel of your display to its fullest. Apple has also improved the slideshows feature with new transitions and themes. Their book/card-printing service has been updated and now allows for more customization of photo albums and holiday cards. iPhoto continues to keep its “Faces” and “Places” features, as well as its great image retouching tools.

The album view in iPhoto's full-screen mode looks amazing.

iPhoto's face recognition automatically recognizes faces in your photos and allows you to tag then.

The biggest change in the suite is in iMovie. Apple has added a “movie trailers” feature that makes producing short teasers for your films a breeze. Choose a series of clips you would like to use, fill in the credits, and choose a theme and iMovie will automatically stitch together a professional-grade trailer for you next movie.

Apple has also included more advanced audio editing tools in iMovie ’11. Audio clips are now color-coded and provide options for adding fades and filters. Another new feature is what Apple calls “one-step effects”. With the dozens of new effects, such as “instant replay” and color correction, your iMovie project will definitely stand out from other home videos.

iMovie ’11 has also included more exporting options, including iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, QuickTime movies, and more. You can also publish your videos directly to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, and even CNN’s iReport. You can also create a video podcast and send it directly to Podcast Producer.

iMovie '11 give you more control over your audio.

Making professional trailers has never been easier.

Making great music in GarageBand has never been simpler. The iLife ’11 upgrade introduced Flex Time, a function that fixes timing issues when something sounds a little off.  Flex Time allows you to manually move, stretch, or shorten individual notes without changing the rest of your recording.GarageBand ’11 adds more guitar amps the Apple’s library and allows you to reproduce the sound of foot pedals with new stompbox effects. Apple also included many new instrument lessons with the update.

Flex Time makes it easy to fix timing errors in your music. 

Apple's instrument lessons make learning the piano or guitar fun.

More lessons can be downloaded or purchased from the Lesson Store.

iLife ’11 allows you to do more with your photos, video, and music than ever before. In iPhoto, you can enjoy your photos in the new full-screen modes. You can turn your home videos into professional films with the latest iMovie and create the perfect soundtrack within GarageBand. iLife ’11 is included with every new Mac, but every existing user should consider the upgrade. If you enjoyed this post, please check out MacDesign, a blog centered around graphic design and video production on the Mac platform.

MacDesign

I'm thrilled to write about the announcement of MacDesign, a new blog focused on graphic design and video production on the Mac. MacDesign will feature daily tips, reviews, and tutorials on applications that will speed up your workflow and give you great results. The MacDesign forums offer a place for professionals and newbies alike to share their own tips and ask questions of others.

Be sure to check out the latest MacDesign article on VoltaicHD, a video converter/manager for Mac.

Cinch for Mac

Cinch, developed by Irradiated Software, is an elegant, mouse-driven solution to window management. Inspired by Microsoft's Windows Explorer, Cinch is based off the idea of "hot-zones". Once you drag a window into one of the zones (either left, right, menubar), an outline of your resized window will appear on the screen. Just drop the window into the hot-zone and the application window will be resized. Cinching to the right or left side of the screen will resize the window to exactly half the screen's resolution. The top hot-zone resizes to will the entire screen. Dragging a window away from its cinched position will restore the window to its original size.

Drag a window to a "hot-zone" to see a preview of the resize.

Cinch automatically resizes your window to the desired length (determined by "hot-zone").

You can download the free version (occasional pop-up), or purchase a license for yourself over at the Irradiated Software store. I will be posting a video review of Cinch on my YouTube channel, which can be found here.