Jan. 21, 2015

Mac Users Group

Organizing Your Photos

When importing or downloading your photos from your camera, iPhone, or iPad, by default, iPhoto will put them into events and organized by date.  So, whether you import one photo or a 100, they will be put into their own events and each will have its own thumbnail.  As you download more photos into your computer, the number of events will increase and subsequently may overwhelm your screen, making  your photos more difficult to find and manage.

Therefor, to control the clutter, review those events and cull the pics you do not want.  If some of your events have photos that could or should be grouped together, it is easy to merge them.  Simply drag the entire event on top of the event you want to merge.  If you only want to merge some of the pics from one event to another,

1. Under Library, click on Events
2. Select the Event you want pics removed from, and all thumbnails will appear from that event.
3. Hold down the Command Key and select the pics you want moved.  A yellow frame will surround the pics.
4. On the left side under Recent, you will find Events listed again along with the names of all your Events.  Drag and drop the highlighted thumbnails to the selected Event.  

Consider the photos in events like they were your negatives.  If you delete them they will go to Trash.  Go to the tool bar found on the top of iPhoto and click on iPhoto.  If there are any photos in the trash, Empty iPhoto Trash will be highlighted.  Click on it.  When you click on empty trash it will ask you if you want to delete them permanently.  If you do, they are gone.  You cannot retrieve them.

Once you’ve organized your events you may want to file them into folders, much like you do in a filing cabinet.  But, you will have to create those folders, and subfolders.  How you organize your photos is purely a personal choice.  I will give you an example of how I organize to give you an idea of how it is done.  I will start with a year….lets say you are organizing some pics you took last year.  And, lets say you took a bunch of pics in Palm Creek of a pickle ball tourney, or softball game.  Or it could be a welcome home party, or of some of your happy hours.  Once again, it depends on your personal preference.  If you don’t have a lot of pics you may want to group them all together in an album called Palm Creek and put the album into a sub folder.  This is how you can to that:

1. In the menu bar click on File; click on New Folder.  On the left side untitled folder will appear under albums.  The box will should have a light blue color and you should be able to rename it 2015.
2. Click on Folder again and another untitled folder will appear under 2015.  Rename it Palm Creek.  Then drag it on top of 2015.  It should now be indented and appear as a subfolder for 2015.  
3. Click on Folder again and rename this one Pickle Ball.  Drag it on top of Palm Creek.  It should be indented and become a sub folder of Palm Creek.  
4. Now open the event that has your 2014 Pickle Ball pics.  Holding down the Command Key, highlight the pics you want in your Album.  You don’t have to choose all of them, only the ones you want to be in your album.  You can aways add more pics to your Album later simply by highlighting them and dragging to the Album. 
5. Let’s say that you want to create more albums for the folder called Palm Creek.  Let’s say that you want an album for softball, golf, or just general pictures of the park.  Create albums for each of them, and drag each of them on top of Palm Creek.  Rename them and then drop and drag the appropriate pics from Events. 

If you want to remove one or more of your pictures from your album, place your mouse on the photo and hit Command plus Delete.  It will only remove the photo from your album, NOT YOUR EVENT.  So, to remove a photo from your library, you must delete it from an event.  If you are practicing and have a bunch of “stuff” listed under Albums, you can delete it all and it will not remove your pics from your Events.

Remember, this is your library.  Organize it the way you want it.  You’re the one who will be looking for the pics.  

Referring back to the Palm Creek example.  How do I share the pics on my laptop?  You can click on the folder Palm Creek and all the photos in all the albums will appear.  If you just want to show your softball pics, click on that album and only those pics will appear.

Remember, your camera assigns a file number and date to each photo as well as metadata.  On the bottom right corner click Info and a box will appear with the camera used, the file size, the format (JPEG), ISO, lens length if an SLR, Aperture, and shutter speed.  Click on “Add a description” and you can type in what this photo is all about, whose in it etc.  And Info is where you can add Faces and Key Words.

You can also change entire events or select pics by highlighting them.  Go to the menu and click on Photos.  Click on Batch Change, click on the arrows in Set to select Title, Date, or Description.  Click on the next set of up/down arrows to select Empty, Text, Filename, or Date/Time.   

This is one way of managing your photos

Another is to assign Key Words.  This can be done to your photos in Events.  I believe Larry has scheduled another session to show you how this is done.

Pictures are wonderful.  Organized pictures are real Happiness!  

Tom Gottfried