Keyword Manager for iPhoto

For as long as I can remember, Ken Ferry's Keyword Assistant has been the only iPhoto plugin (at least, AFAIK) for adding some real power and, dare I say, "tagging" to iPhoto's keyword system. Now there's a new kid on the block by the name of Keyword Manager, and it definitely brings some interesting features to the table. Keyword Manager uses two separate windows that both have their own keyboard shortcuts for toggling visibility. The first is a Quick Assigner window (pictured on right) which, as you might guess, allows you to quickly ~~tag~~ add keywords to your photos. It offers keyword completion (via a slick drop down menu) and support for multiple word keywords. The second panel (on left) is a very nice Keyword Manager, allowing you to organize keywords in a hierarchy to help keep your organization in check. Naturally, since both of these panels have their own keyboard shortcuts, you can call them even when in iPhoto's full-screen mode. All this is done with a very nice iPhoto Adjustment Panel-like UI.

Now Keyword Manager is pretty impressive, but I think they're reaching just a little too high by charging $19 for a plugin, especially in light of Keyword Assistant being free. I think $14.99 would hit the sweet spot for a plugin like this, but then again, I admittedly haven't plunged into organizing my increasingly sprawling iPhoto library yet, so YMMV.

[Update: Commenters Jools tipped us off to promotional codes at VersionTracker that drop the price to $12 in the US or €12 in the EU: VT-542U845 (US) and VT-542E845 (EU). No word on how long those codes are good for, but that's a much more reasonable price in my book.]

Keyword Manager is available from Bullstorm, and a demo is available which allows you to assign keywords 75 times before requiring a license.

Thanks Bernt

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Source: http://www.bullstorm.se/KeywordManager.php

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For as long as I can remember, Ken Ferry's Keyword Assistant has been the only iPhoto plugin (at least, AFAIK) for adding some real power...

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Dexter

Perfect implementation and totally worth the price. This actually turns iPhoto into something useful! I would like to see this built into iPhoto '07 and iTunes 8.

November 24 2006 at 7:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I'd wait for January and see if iPhoto gets an update in this area. I'd be surprised if Apple haven't noticed this issue.

P.S. When are we going to be able to login so we don't have to confirm every single comment? Someone said it would be soon about 4 months ago...

November 22 2006 at 8:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Srinivas Kollipara

It's available on MacZot today for $9.50!

November 22 2006 at 8:16 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Colin D. Devroe

I purchased my copy today, and I have to say that with over 20,000 photos in iPhoto, and many times that in the number of keywords - Keyword Manager is absolutely wonderful. I would even go so far as to go out on a limb and say that, with Keyword Manager installed, the keywords in iPhoto are much better than even the current Aperture implementation.

And, unless you've been sleeping under a log, read John Gruber's latest post about valuation and you will see that 19 dollars is not a lot for this plugin - at all. It literally saves me hours upon hours.

I saw the coupon codes, and decided not to use it. These types of solutions really deserve our patronage and kudos.

November 22 2006 at 12:44 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Sorry for the false alarm! I got it...

BOUGHT!

Thank you for the tip on this... I haven't even tried it out yet; I was just recently contemplating trying to organize my photos with better file names and such for better search results :)

November 21 2006 at 6:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

How do you use those codes to obtain the discounted price??? I want to buy it!

November 21 2006 at 6:47 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Peter

It's a shame iPhoto doesn't handle keywords very well, they are stored outside of the relevant image file, which is unwise and contradicts Apples usual sensible approach to metadata and iPhoto also lacks any way of writing to the IPTC comments field. Even some free apps (such as Google's Picasa on the PC) can handle this. So you can more easuily add and manage keywords, then your xml file is corrupted (as iPhoto saves this info on close of the app) and bang. It's gone. Just keep backing up I suppose.

November 21 2006 at 5:40 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

matthew

I believe that this is the first post since Jason Calacanis resigned from AOL. If true, here's a tip of the hat to you, Jason, and best of luck.

(Heard the news on Gillmor Gang.)

Matthew

November 20 2006 at 6:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Henning

I can highly recommend this plug-in, you should definitely check it out. And I have to say: it's worth the price in long-time use!

November 20 2006 at 4:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Vincent Noel

This is maybe a tad bit expensive, but otherwise it's a very very good addition to iPhoto. It has a totally mouse-oriented UI, extremely convenient compared to Keywords Assistant which is entirely keyboard-driven.
It would be even better to be able to drag-n-drop keywords directly on photos instead of the proxy window, but it's already millions times better than the regular keywords management.

November 20 2006 at 3:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply