Edit Menu

As you would expect, the commands in the Edit menu let you edit various parts of your photo library, such as keywords, photo titles, and the sort order. The standard Cut, Copy, and Paste commands operate on selected text and photos as normal.

Undo

Where would this world be without Undo? In iPhoto, you even have a multiple Undo; using this command (and its keyboard equivalent, ⌘-Z), you can reverse your last series of actions in iPhoto, backing out of your bad decisions with no harm done (Figure B-2). How nice to know that if you go too heavy on the contrast, delete an important photo, or crop out your grandmother’s earlobe, there’s a quick and easy way out.

Note that the Undo command tracks your changes in each window independently. For example, suppose you’re in the main iPhoto window. You enter Edit mode, where you crop a photo and rotate it. Now you double-click the photo so that it opens in its own window. Here, you fix some red-eye and adjust the contrast.

As long as you remain in the new window, you can undo the contrast and red-eye adjustments—but if you return to the main window, you’ll find that the Undo command will take back only your original actions—the cropping and rotating.

So while iPhoto can handle multiple levels of undo, keep in mind that each window maintains its own private stash of Undos.

Just about any action you perform in iPhoto can be reversed with the Undo command. The menu command itself always spells out exactly what it’s going to undo—Undo Add Photo to Album, Undo Cropping, and so on—so that you know which action you’re backing out of. The one un-undoable action to keep in mind is emptying the iPhoto Trash. Once that’s done, your trashed photos are gone for good.

Figure B-2. Just about any action you perform in iPhoto can be reversed ...

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