Blacking out portions of a photo

Equus

Welcome to the Apple user to user assistance forums

I have several photos that I want to black out portions of......how can I do this using the edit function in iphoto? Or is there a better way?

That is not a feature of iPhoto - you need to use a third party image editor - click here for links to some popular ones.

LN

Have you tried using the Retouch tool in iPhoto. I can make an area "smudged" to the point where is is not recognizable. It may not be what you want but give it a try. You can always revert back to the original if the effect is not what you want.