how to add a text to a photo in iphoto?

You don't. You need an external editor for that:

In order of price here are some suggestions:

Seashore (free)

The Gimp (free)

Graphic Coverter ($45 approx)

Acorn ($50 approx)

Pixelmator ($50 approx)

Photoshop Elements ($75 approx)

There are many, many other options. Search on MacUpdate. You can set Photoshop (or any image editor) as an external editor in iPhoto. (Preferences -> General -> Edit Photo: Choose from the Drop Down Menu.) This way, when you double click a pic to edit in iPhoto it will open automatically in Photoshop or your Image Editor, and when you save it it's sent back to iPhoto automatically. This is the only way that edits made in another application will be displayed in iPhoto.

One of the Free Photo Editing packages that was overlooked was Picassa. You can add text, rotate and scale, also change fonts. Pretty good and simple for free.

Apple Preview also will add text to a photo - export the photo and add the test with Preview and then import the modified photo to iPhoto

LN

Great Tip. I teach a small Mac classs out in a rural area and someone asked me how to do it with just the programs that come with a Mac. She said someone at the Genius Bar told her she would have to buy Aperture or a third party program. I told her I was sure she could do it without a third party program but then couldn't find a way.

I use Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom so I realized I never actually tried. I couldn't imaging how Apple could have left out a simple edit feature like graphic annotation.

Then you showed me the feature included in Preview ... I had always considered Preview as a passive application so I am once again surprised. I have used it to change file types with "Save As" but didn't think of it as an editor. Now that I'm dinking with it, it's got some decent editing features for what I thought was just a viewer ... Even color adjust.

Thanks again!

I can open a picture in Preview (4.2), but when I click Tools > the text tool option is greyed out and I can't select it. Is this what I need to add some text to a picture? And how do I get it selected? Thanks, Jeff

You have to use the Tools ➙ Annotate ➙ Text menu option.. Then create a text box and add the text to it and save. This could be done from inside iPhoto by making Preview the external editor of choice.

OT

In Preview, when I choose Tools > Annotate there are 4 options (add oval, add rectangle, add note, add link) but they are all greyed out so I can't select any. I don't see Text as an option. Many thanks for your help!

I think the text annotaiton is relatively new. It may not have been available in 4.x.x. I know I started teaching folkls about it in 5.x but I discovered it by accident so I don't know how long it has been able to annotate text. I do recall some students with Leopard not being able to annotate text. So We got them onto Picassa.

dennislogue is correct. I'm using Preview 6 that came with Mt. Lion.

With your version I think you select add note. Not sure what you have to do to get that menu to be ac tive.

If you can't figure it out your best bet is to use one of the image editors TD mentioned or Pages if you have iWork on your Mac.

I use an editing app for my iPad or iPhone (lots out there) to edit and put text on photos then save and it goes into my photo stream. Even some camera apps for the iPhone you can do most of the editing with text inside the app.

How does a complete idiot , computer wise, write titles on my 'event pics' after a holiday. I read about preview but cannot 'export' pics to preview.

Have a cheapie cybershot which does not have fineviewer or similar.

I transfer from the camera to iPhoto, put them into batches per trip, name the event but cannot title each pic.

Keywords don't travel with the pics when emailed either.

I have Preview on my Mac dock and iphoto.

Export to the desktop, open thephoto in preview and use the anotate tool to ad text, save and import into iPHoto

LN

Setup Preview as your external editor in iPhoto's Advnaced preference pane.

Then set it back to iPhoto. Now you can Command (right) - click on a photo and select Edit in External Editor go get Preview as your editor:

I can not figure out why Apple hasn't added Annotation to iPhoto yet??? Perhaps they don't want to compete with "Aperture"??? But at this point I think it's rather cumbersome to have to work in two Apple applications (Preview and iPhoto) to annotate, keyword and edit a photo. My suggestions to most of my students is to go get Picassa for free. It will set keywords and annotate and when it's done (if you work out of your "Pictures" folder) iPhoto will even pick all that up when you import pictures into iPhoto at a later date.

Another issue with Preview is the version of Mac O/S you are working with. I believe you need at least Lion (10.7) to be able to run the version of Preview that supports annotation. But as I said, it's kind of a kludge to have to open in Preview to Annotate and then open in iPhoto to add keywords, faces, photo adjustments and rename.

Until Apple adds these very simple features to iPhoto, I would suggest the free "Picassa" program from Google. Just make sure you keep all your photos in your "Pictures" folder or in sub floders under the "Pictures" folder. Then when Apple wakes up, you will just be able to import everything with edits into iPhoto when it finally gets those very basic annotation features.

I know that soultion probably offends the "Apple Purists" but Apple isn't perfect and productivity, ease of use or workflow are sometimes more important than "Brand Loyalty".

Use what ever you want - no one here cares

You can not use Picasa on photos in the iPhoto library - you can use Preview or other photo editors but not picasa

as to leaving photos in the pictures folder - bad idea - either you use a refercened library with is strongly NOT recommended - it creates major problems - importing them to iPhoto and leaving a copy in the pictures folder wastes space (using double the space for no benefit) and changes made top the photos in the pictures folder are not reflected in iPhoto.

Since you speak of students I assume you are a teacher - it would be really good to learn how things work before you tell your students what to do - this probably offends the "teacher purists" but giving our invlaid and incorrect information out of ignorance certainly is not perfect and blindly following incompent teachers causes lots of problems. Until our teaches learn to do very simple steps like learn what they are doing I suggest not listening to them

LN