I've just started using Aperture on my iMac rather than iPhoto because I have been told I have too many photos for iPhoto to work well and I was definitely seeing a slowdown in performance. I really miss the output options in iPhoto though, most especially the ability to make photo books and order prints. Can I do any of that in Aperture?

I really like Aperture, but I have to say that it's pretty crazy slow when I start it up, often taking a few minutes before I can use it on my iMac. That can't be right, even with a lot of photos in the library. Are there any ways to speed Aperture up??

I've been experimenting with different photo management applications on my new iMac system and am impressed with Aperture. Except for one little glitch: sometimes when I plug in my camera it automatically shows up in Apple's Aperture, and other times it doesn't. When it isn't showing up, how can I find my DSLR digital camera in Aperture?

How do I set up another photo album and how would I transfer pictures on my Apple iPhone 3gs to each corresponding albums? Thank you.

I've been a big fan of Time Machine, the backup system on my Mac OS X computer, but sometimes the backup is slow. I use VMware Fusion for some testing and have been recently wondering if that's affecting things adversely?

I've been learning more about Apple iPhoto, partially thanks to your great tutorials on the subject, but am stumped. Instead of wanting to grab images directly off my camera, I find that I need to pull in a folder full of photographs from a friend so I can have them as an event. How do I import photos into iPhoto, Dave? If it makes a difference, I'm running Snow Leopard and have Mac OS X version 10.6.1.

I've been reading all of your earlier articles about how to work with Apple's iPhoto (see iPhoto help) but what I haven't seen is a piece about how to publish photos from iPhoto directly onto Facebook with vast amounts of hassles. Is that doable? If so, how? Thanks, Dave!

I really like how iPhoto works with my Apple MobileMe account on the Web and the gallery it produces is very cool. My friends, in particular, really tell me they think it looks cool and makes it fun for them to see the photos I upload. Problem is, sometimes I want to create password-protected private albums, not just have everything I upload available to the general public at large. How do I do that in iPhoto?

I can see that there's a "Flickr" button on the bottom of the iPhoto pages in Apple's iPhoto program, but I have no idea how to use it. Can you step me through the process so I can learn how to publish my pictures on Flickr since I don't have Mobile Me?

I read through your article on How to create an iPhoto Smart Album and have been finding it pretty slick indeed. Problem is, after I've created a Smart Album I find that the photos aren't always what I want: is there some way to tweak or modify an existing Smart Album in Apple iPhoto without having to recreate it?

I've finally imported a few years worth of photographs into iPhoto and it's very cool - I'm having fun organizing things - but in addition to how it has organized everything, I'd also like to have convenient access to photos by when they were taken. I don't know whether that'd be a new Event or an Album or even a "smart album" (whatever that is), but what's the easiest way to have a subset of my iPhoto photographs show up based on date?

I'm really starting to learn about how to do cool stuff with iPhoto, but Im' still baffled about one thing: if there's a picture in iPhoto that I want to upload to a Web site or use outside of the world of iPhoto, how do I do it? That is, how do I pull a photo out of the iPhoto universe?

I found "Image Capture" (you didn't mention it was an application, so I searched and found it) and tried what you suggested. When I click on download, however, nothing happens. Tried this with just one photo selected, as well as "Select All." Any suggestions?