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Add a photo enhancement tool to iPhoto Apps
It seems there is a hidden feature in iPhoto 1.1.1 called "Enhance" that tries to do some color balancing and white point correction. This feature is disabled by Apple, but can easily be enabled by anyone with the Developer Tools.

Read the rest of the article for the instructions, which were originally posted on this thread on the MacNN forums.

How to add an "Enhance" button to iPhoto
  1. Make a copy of iPhoto
  2. Open the package for the iPhoto copy and navigate to the English.lproj folder (located in Contents/Resources inside the package; replace English with the language of your choice)
  3. Double click ArchiveDocument.nib
  4. Drag the "Previous" and "Next" buttons and their separator bar to the very far right of the window
  5. Click once on the "Red-Eye" and "Black & White" button matrix
  6. Option drag the middle right handle of the matrix to the right until a new button cell is created (it won't snap back then)
  7. Double click on the new empty button cell so that it is selected
  8. Open the info window (command-shift-I)
  9. Set the title of the button to "Enhance" and the icon to "enhance" (without the quotes)
  10. Set the behavior to "momentary change"
  11. In the info window, select Connections from the popup menu
  12. Control-drag from the Enhance button to the ArchiveController (in the ArchiveDocument.nib window) to make a connection between them
  13. In the info window, click on "target" in the Outlets column and then "enhance:" in the Actions column and then click the "Connect" button
  14. Save the ArchiveDocument.nib and laucnh the iPhoto copy
If it doesn't work, trash the copy of iPhoto and continue to use the original.

[Editor's note: I tried this, and it worked exactly as described; I now have an "Enhance" button in iPhoto. The Dev Tools are required and make sure you do your work on a backup copy of the program! And if you're annoyed that Step One required 40mb of drive space, delete the extra languages you don't use to reduce iPhoto from 40mb to 12mb (see this hint for more detailed instructions).]
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Add a photo enhancement tool to iPhoto | 19 comments | Create New Account
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No developer tools
Authored by: dsaponaro on May 15, '02 11:25:00AM

I do not have the developers tools installed. So if someone would be so kind to send along an enhanced version of iphoto it would be greatly appreciated. My email address is dsaponaro@mac.com

Thanks guys,
Dominick



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Caveats
Authored by: twalkabout on May 15, '02 11:36:34AM

This does work great, but here's three quick things that might help:

1) You've really gotta drag the previous and next all the way to the right.

That way when you are option-dragging to make a new cell, there will be room.

2) When you are option-dragging -- a new cell doesn't obviously appear, it's just that that middle right dot doesn't slide back. Then you can double click on the blank right space in the matrix to select that cell.

3) Everytime you switch out of the main window, your Get Info window will switch back to the main matrix, and you have to double click again. I would print out the directions in Macosxhints if you have small monitor, because once I forgot to double click (when I was control-dragging to make the connection -- and I lost the images for red-eye and black and white).

Overall, though, it's worth it, because on the few photos I've tested it on, Enhcance works really well.

I hope that helps some people avoid the frustrations I ran into. Great hint though!

--Tom--



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awesome!
Authored by: silverghost on May 15, '02 01:42:06PM

cool tip i tried it and it works as advertised!



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awesome!
Authored by: THX1965 on May 16, '02 03:01:52PM

Did you tweak the latest version of iPhoto 1.1.1?



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Doesn't work for me...
Authored by: bldantes on May 15, '02 03:26:08PM

When I double-click on the ArchiveDocumemt.nib, I get an alert:

Unable to open palette: ASKpalette

If I click OK, it takes me to a Starting Point dialog - but nothing that looks like what was described.

I do have the DeveloperTools installed (obviously, since IB launched).



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Doesn't work for me...
Authored by: plazman30 on May 15, '02 03:37:50PM

I am guessing that you may need the new December 2001 copy of the Developer tools to make this work. Just a guess, though.



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Doesn't Work
Authored by: jasenko on May 15, '02 05:41:58PM

I downloaded new version of iPhoto yesterday (15/5/2002) and it looks like they removed that option completely. No hidden button there.



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Doesn't Work (but it works)
Authored by: jasenko on May 15, '02 06:47:44PM

Disregard my previous post, I was so fast to change this and didn't even read the post that explains it even better. Button exists and it works as advertised. But playing with this, I wanted to do something else. Is it possible to change the look into aqua. When testing the interface, it is shown in aqua and it looks great. I read that in Jaguar there will be an option to change this but I'm not sure is that possible now



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Amazing
Authored by: dave@mmu on May 16, '02 07:02:48AM

You see, this is why i love mac's. Just the fact we're actually able to do that (which worked for me by the way) is fantastic. M$ would never allow such a user friendly method of changing programs. It's things like that that make me smile when i use my mac.



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Amazing
Authored by: Anonymous on May 16, '02 10:34:24AM

It is all because of the NeXT tools-- Cocoa kicks major ass over any other GUI development tool on the planet. This works for two reasons.

(1) Interface Builder is not a Code Generator. A NIB file is just a document like any other, only it contains a set of UI elements instead of, say, a spreadsheet. The key part is that a NIB file also contains connections between the interface and the code behind it. There need not be any code to actually make those connections and, as such, you can add new connections and reconfigure old connections without recompiling.

(2) Objective-C makes it all possible. ObjC allows for fully dynamic, at runtime, method dispatch. This is is what allows the no-code connections between interface and code. Can be done in Java, but is ia pain in the ass.

Microsoft doesn't have dev tools nearly this advanced and, hence, it is much harder to do things like this.



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More options are available to you!
Authored by: Satan Baby on May 16, '02 12:22:40PM

Try this trick with some of the other connections that are available. I expanded this button area even further and created an "Inspector" button that shows all the EXIF information from my digital camera. All of this is not an "Easter Egg", but it certainly does show the fun (and power) of programming under Cocoa/OS X. I suspect you'll find a lot of these hidden fuctions in other programs as well, so its worth a look....next up, iTunes.



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More options are available to you!
Authored by: plazman30 on May 16, '02 03:33:48PM

iTunes is carbon. You're not going to be able to do the same thing with iTunes. iPhoto is 100% Cocoa.



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ASKpalette/Developer Tools?
Authored by: Anonymous on May 16, '02 04:12:03PM

I, too, got the "ASKpalette" error. Can anyone confirm that the December 2001 version of the Developer Tools are required to make this modification? Has anyone who has successfully got it up used the Developer Tools that shipped with the 10.1 CD?



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ASKpalette/Developer Tools?
Authored by: ihafro on May 16, '02 08:41:01PM

I wasn't able to get this tip to work with the 'original' dev tools disk. The Dec version seems to be neccessary. That fortunantly isn't a big problem because you can just download them for free from the ADC. Well, I should say, that isn't a big problem, unless you dialup.

-Robyn

---If someone needs a copy of the dev tools disk, I would be more than happy to make a copy and send it to you. fruitfly@mac.com



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Enhance: overrated
Authored by: Anonymous on May 17, '02 12:11:45AM

I tried out the tip, and it was interesting delving into the Cocoa guts of iPhoto. However, after experimenting with my new "Enhance" command on 10 photos or so, I came to my own conclusion that it was probably left out of the final interface for a reason: namely, almost all the photos I tried it on looked worse (to me, anyway) afterwards than they did before. I suppose that's always the gotcha with "automatic enhance" tools.

Not that I don't appreciate the original comment & others' remarks... but I just wanted to balance them with a contrasting opinion. If you don't have the right developer tools to try this hack, IMHO you're not missing THAT much. :-)



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it's great, but...
Authored by: brownpw on May 17, '02 01:42:52AM

This tip was pretty cool ... it worked as promised ... but what about the image that is supposed to represent the enhance button? Shouldn't that be part of the hack, or do you just want users to wonder "what the hack is going on?"

lol -p:



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it's great, but... (& more)
Authored by: Drogoul on May 17, '02 04:49:16AM

The icon "enhance" is available in the Resources folder, along with all the other icons that populate iPhoto. No magic here !

Just wanted to add an advice on a problem I had. I do not develop that much using PB/IB, and it happened that, in the Preferences of Interface Builder, an option called "Lock all connections" is checked by default. If it is so, it prevents you from drawing the new connection from the "Enhance" button. In that case, just uncheck it.

Cheers

Alexis



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it's great, but...
Authored by: chabig on May 22, '02 10:53:39AM

When you enter the name of the icon in the Attributes window, make sure you pay attention to case. Type "enhance" without any capital letters, not "Enhance".

That should do it.



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No
Authored by: saint.duo on Jun 08, '02 11:23:37PM
13. In the info window, click on "target" in the Outlets column and then "enhance:" in the Actions column and then click the "Connect" button


I don't have this. in actions, there is no "enhance:". I'm using iPhoto 1.1.1 and the April Dev tools.

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