iPhoto '08 does tagging right

Just got my wife a used iBook, and I'm in the middle of tagging 6000+ photos (in Windows Vista), so it's interesting to note from the posts that tags still don't get written to files in iPhoto. For once I'm glad to be using a M$ product!. It uses a database for searching tags and creating the 'predictive' list of tags, then writes the tag data to the photos in the background. How long for Apple to catch on?

Regarding the UI, it seems that for once Apple is going for an overly complex UI and Microsoft a clean and simple design.

Just trying to be objective about it!

My only beef with the new keyword features in iPhoto '08 is that it no long appears to be possible to reorder the keywords--I'm forced to have them arranged alphabetically.

I'm glad to hear that iPhoto's tagging has been improved. I use Flickr tags all the time and I was growing impatient for iPhoto to catch up. It's time for Apple to take the next step--or maybe someone can implement this via a plugin--but one of the things I do most with tags is identify people in photos. There should be an easy way to do this. Drag a list of names onto photos, type initials? Maybe I'll get my pipedream wish by iPhoto '12 where the program will identify people in my photos and tag them for me.

The search keyword popup looks nice, but if you have too many keywords it disappears off the top of the screen and there doesn't seem to be a scrollbar.

Fortunately typing the keyword into the search box when it's on the 'all' setting works pretty well for most keywords.

I'm loving the keyword aspect of 08. One issue I have found (atleast with the 1280 x 800 of my macbook) is that when you go to search by keyword, if you have too many keywords (which I do, because I tag by person and place) it cuts off some of them in the pop-up box without having a way to mouse through/ scroll through them....leaving half of my keywords...unsearchable.

One feature which I would have liked to of seen, but isn't a deal breaker is better use of meta data. It would be nice if the tags were written to the meta data of the photo so hat if for whatever reason, you iPhoto library goes corrupt, you may still just reimport photos (into iPhoto again, or another app) and it will retain the keywords. just my 2c.

The Keyword Assistant guy said he wasn't planning on upgrading for iPhoto 7 unless he gets some correspondence about it, because the tagging in iPhoto 7, although not as good as KA, is just about good enough... Just so you know...

Although I heard there is an official SDK, so hopefully it's easier to work with, and some good things do come out of it.

Just to let you know, if you hadn't already found out, you have the option of an OR boolean search in keywords. You just hold down "shift" when selecting your next keyword. Just try out all the modifier keys when adding a keyword...they've really got the searches down to a tee here :)

David, many thanks for posting these hot tips. I'm a new user of iPhoto and I'm just learning about tagging in general. I think I need to take out an insurance policy on my arms, hands, and fingers as I have tens of thousands of digital photos and digitized 35mm slides and negs that I need to tag. But the really good news is the ability to select a batch and apply tags to all the photos in that batch. Good work!

Oh please Apple PLEASE I hope you have FINALLY implemented direct IPTC
tagging... I quit using iPhoto because of this glaring omission and I won't
try again until its there...
Rant on: I'm stunned to believe that Apple in their open source mentality
has a music program that tags ID3 data to MP3s but not IPTC data to JPEG
pictures! I'm also shocked that there are no good IPTC image tagging
programs on OS X ~ I've seen scripts that take iPhoto tags and turn them
into IPTC tags... pretty well... but honestly iPhoto should just directly
read them and write them, none of this propietary database BS. Rant off.
Ahem, I hope iPhoto 8.0 includes IPTC functionality!

"Does iPhoto now make metadata part of the image file (i.e., IPTC)?
If not, Apple still fails to tag correctly!"

Sorry for the last post. What I wanted to say is my sentiments exactly! Can anyone determine if the keywords get embedded?