How To… get the most from your iSight
- Article 55 of 89
- MacFormat, September 2007
It might seem like your iSight webcam is just for videoconferencing, but there’s a whole lot more you can do with it
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Webcams are nothing new: they’ve been around since 1991 when some Cambridge University scientists made one so they could tell without moving if their faraway coffee pot still had coffee in it. So it’s no surprise that when Steve Jobs announced Apple’s own webcam, the iSight, back in 2003, no one was that excited.
But then Apple started building iSights into Macs, rather than making them optional add-ons, and things started to change. Soon, almost everyone with a new Mac had an iSight; Then Apple updated some of its software, such as iChat, to take advantage of the iSight; and other developers started to follow Apple’s suit by updating and developing their own applications to use the now-ubiquitous webcam.
Now there’s a whole range of iSight applications and simply letting someone else see you over the Internet is the least of their capabilities.
iChat therefore I am
iChat AV, as it’s now called, is the obvious first use for the iSight. It lets you communicate with any other iChat user or someone with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) over the web, either by typing instant messages, talking or using webcams. It’s not alone either: there are other instant messaging applications that can use the iSight for video conferencing, including Yahoo Messenger, ohphoneX, AIM, ProteusX, iSpQ, Skype, Fire, and Adium.
iChat AV does have one other advantage compared with other applications in that it comes with OS X. That means developers have been happily creating add-ons to customise your iChat experience.
For example, iChat is one of the few instant messaging systems that can have multiple users in the same conference, thanks to the miracle that is picture-in-picture. But it requires a fast Mac to do this. PowerBoost (http://www.ecamm.com/mac/powerboost/), an $8 application from prolific iSight add-on developer ecamm network, gets round this problem and allows slower Macs to have multi-party video conferences. Also from ecamm is Conference Recorder 2, which allows you record your iChat AV video conferences as QuickTime movies (there’s a similar piece of software from ecamm called Call Recorder that works with Skype), just in case you want to preserve them for posterity.
Those aren’t very fun though, and most iChat, iSight add-ons are fun. ChatFX ($20, http://www.scriptsoftware.com/chatfx/) lets you add special effects to your iSight video within iChat. There’s a big range to choose from too: bluescreen (which lets you show any movie, tv, video, or animation in the background of a video chat), twirl, comic book, alien and many more are included and you can also create effects as well.
Another of ecamm’s programs is iGlasses ($8, http://www.ecamm.com/mac/iglasses/), which allows you to tweak the iSight’s brightness, contrast and other settings. If you have an external iSight and feel like positioning it differently, you can use iGlasses to flip or rotate the image so it’s the right way up. If you’re planning on having some of your video conferences in the dark, you can really crank up the settings to give your iSight night vision! Or if you’ve been spending too much time at home with your Mac and your iSight and you’re feeling a bit pasty, you can get iGlasses to give you a tan (see box 1).
The one disadvantage to iChat is that it requires a user account – an AIM account, a Jabber account or a .Mac account, whichever you prefer (and if that’s not what any of your friends prefer, consider the lack of MSN, etc support the other big disadvantage). If you’re in a hurry for a chat and haven’t taken the time to set up an account – or you find you’re having problems getting everyone’s software to work together – all is not lost, however. A quick way to chat with your webcam equipped friends that you can try is iVideoChat (www.ivideochat.com), which works with any webcam, including the iSight, on just about any computing platform via a web browser.
More than chat
But as we mentioned, there’s more to the iSight now than just video conferencing. Looking for an icon for your Address Book image – or for iChat AV for that matter? You can use your iSight to take a picture directly within both programs. In iChat, simply go to the “Change my picture” menu item then click “Take video snapshot” to change your buddy icon. And in Address Book, pick “Choose Custom Image” to take a new picture of yourself.
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