Filed under: iLife, Software, Productivity
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
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
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
MacNewsOnline.com said 1:02PM on 11-20-2006
Oh this App looks fantastic! I'll bet Apple will soon build a feature like this into iLife '07. Mark my words!
Reply
Ben H said 12:14PM on 11-20-2006
I think that price is far too high, but the plug in does seem useful. Although iPhoto 6 seems to slow to a crawl at more than 4000 photos. :(
This kind of tagging should be better implemented at the importing stage.
Reply
Jools said 12:26PM on 11-20-2006
You can get this plugin for $12 or €12 using a promotional code at VersionTracker:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/31203
Well worth it for that price!
Reply
David said 12:25PM on 11-20-2006
The price is maybe a little high. I got a licence through the swedish macpro-blog where I got a coupon. http://www.macpro.se/?p=4170 $14.
Anyway, this plugin made me start using iphoto. So I think Apple should by it and include it. I am very happy I got a license. I do recommend it!
/David
Reply
DrWho said 12:59PM on 11-20-2006
I've been a long time user of Keyword Assistant, it works well and the price hits the sweet spot for me! touch
Reply
meetme said 1:20PM on 11-20-2006
a good plugin but the price is far over the top for an iPhoto plugin!
Reply
Scott F said 11:29AM on 11-21-2006
$14.99? Nice round number, eh? Better than $15.00.
Are human beings so stupid that a one penny difference between two prices makes something suddenly attractive?
Reply
Thomas said 1:27PM on 11-20-2006
It is good, the price is maybe a little too high - I'm certainly not gonna buy multiple copies for my other computers - but it is a nice piece of work. I also like how you can nest keywords and as such if you assign the deepest keyword it automatically assigns all the parent keywords at the same time. It's also very good for quickly filtering images - especially for excluding images - something you would normally have to set up a smart album for.
Reply
larsa said 4:40PM on 11-20-2006
I´ve tagged some 2,000 photos with Keyword Manager. It´s fast, smart and well worth the dough. If you need it you can probably afford it.
Reply
egordin said 1:31PM on 11-20-2006
@#1 - My library currently has 12670 photos and it runs just fine. I have to rebuild my thumbnail cache from time to time, but thats pretty much the only complaint I have.
This is a great program and thank you for the coupons! Much appreciated.
Reply
Floggy Bottom said 2:15PM on 11-20-2006
Props for calling out the webby 2.0 bullshit term "tags". It's KEYWORDS, people.
Reply
thomas said 3:32PM on 11-20-2006
actually i think he's poking fun at apple's negligence to implement a tagging funtion to iphoto and instead leaving us with a halfassed "keyword" "feature"
Reply
Vincent Noel said 4:08PM on 11-20-2006
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.
Reply
Henning said 4:46PM on 11-20-2006
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!
Reply
Matthew said 6:45PM on 11-20-2006
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
Reply
Peter said 5:41AM on 11-21-2006
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.
Reply
TJ said 6:51PM on 11-21-2006
How do you use those codes to obtain the discounted price??? I want to buy it!
Reply
TJ said 7:06PM on 11-21-2006
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 :)
Reply
Colin D. Devroe said 12:45AM on 11-22-2006
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.
Reply
Srinivas Kollipara said 8:20AM on 11-22-2006
It's available on MacZot today for $9.50!
Reply