Filed under: iLife, Software, Features, Productivity
iPhoto '08 does tagging right
I've been waiting (impatiently) for a tagging UI like this to come to iPhoto for some time now, and I'm generally happy to say that iPhoto '08 finally does tagging well (for the sake of this post, however, I'll be using the terms 'tags' and 'keywords' interchangeably, since iPhoto refuses to adopt the web 2.0 terminology). If you display keywords beneath your photos (View > Keywords or shift-command-K), you can simply click below your photo in that field (even if it doesn't have any keywords yet) and begin typing. iPhoto will attempt to auto-fill from your keyword library, or it will add new keywords you create on the fly. For keyword ninjas this still might not replace powerful plug-ins like Keyword Manager, but it's definitely a step in the right direction for the general iPhoto user. Since it's barely been 24 hours, Keyword Manager understandably hasn't updated yet, but I don't find myself gasping for breath without it. Thanks to this improvement and others which I'll explore, iPhoto has gained respectable features that finally allow users to manage their library with the power of tags. Read on to see what else is new with iPhoto's keyword features.
Another great improvement is iPhoto's new keyword management window (Window > Show Keywords or command-K). This window allows you to select one photo or a group of them, then apply keywords simply by clicking them here. As you can see, the Quick Group section at the top allows you to drag your most-used keywords (or simply the keywords-of-the-moment) up there to assign keyboard shortcuts to them.
For a nice touch, the shortcut system used for these keywords is simply based on their first letter, allowing for one-key application of the keywords while browsing your library. Excellent. If you place two keywords up there that begin with the same letter, another will be assigned instead.
Last but not least to iPhoto's welcome enhancements to keywords is its search feature. To the left of the search box in iPhoto now is a popup menu allowing you to specify searching by keywords, ratings, dates or simply everything. Chosing to search by keywords presents this sexy translucent popup with all your keywords. Clicking one immediately adds it to the search query, and clicking another adds to the search. Despite the fact that you can't actually type keywords into the box by hand in this search mode, I think this is a great UI that definitely speeds up searching. The only other drawback I see for now is that it appears you can't do an 'or' search. However, holding option when clicking a keyword will exclude it from a search, so instead of 'Family and outdoors,' like I have in the screenshot, holding option when clicking the outdoors keyword built the search as 'Family and not outdoors.' Awesome.
[Update: Commenter bistromaths pointed out that you actually can create an OR boolean keyword search by hold shift instead of option when selecting more than one keywords. This works well, though I am beginning to wish Apple would provide some kind of a little popup or other UI to tell users about these handy features.]
That's about everything I've found so far with iPhoto's new keyword abilities. Did I miss something? You know what to do.
[Update: Commenter bistromaths pointed out that you actually can create an OR boolean keyword search by hold shift instead of option when selecting more than one keywords. This works well, though I am beginning to wish Apple would provide some kind of a little popup or other UI to tell users about these handy features.]
That's about everything I've found so far with iPhoto's new keyword abilities. Did I miss something? You know what to do.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
akatsuki said 2:16PM on 8-08-2007
I really miss iView Media Pro's tagging system which let you put people, locations, and other things in a logical, consistent manner. If you have ever used facebook, you can see how useful it is to have people tagged, and the location feature was great as well, as it allowed you to group photos hierarchally according to location, therefore you could find all the photos in Japan, or narrow it down to Tokyo easily.
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Galley said 3:58PM on 8-08-2007
I'm disappointed that Apple didn't implement Keyword Manager into iPhoto '08.
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autoy said 2:39PM on 8-08-2007
That's good and all but the big quiestion is: does iPhoto still make duplicates when rotating a pic? Has iPhoto learned any Aperture tricks?
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jpb said 9:06PM on 8-08-2007
Does iPhoto use EXIF for tagging now?
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David Chartier said 2:47PM on 8-08-2007
#2: I'm not positive just yet, but I *think* it's learned some of Aperture's tricks. When I rotated the image I didn't see anythign new in the Modified part of the library, but when I applied adjustments, it created a new copy of the image.
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Barry Ward said 2:59PM on 8-08-2007
This all sounds a lot better than the previous version, although I am new to iLife 06 only a few weeks back and think that version is great. What I did find lacking in 06 was any decent photo effects. How has the effects been improved, that's what I'd like to know. Sounds good so far though.
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BulkHedd said 3:58PM on 8-08-2007
I currently have Keyword Assistant installed on my machine. When I do the upgrade to iLife '08 will this cause a problem? Should I remove it first?
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Graham Hall said 4:00PM on 8-08-2007
Looks good. With the exception of iMovie, I'm really impressed with Apple's latest software offerings.
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consumer_q said 5:40PM on 8-08-2007
Does iPhoto now make metadata part of the image file (i.e., IPTC)?
If not, Apple still fails to tag correctly! ;)
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n8gray said 3:48PM on 8-09-2007
#8: I agree with you about IPTC metadata. FWIW you can use my ScriptExport plugin to push the iPhoto metadata into the file in a relatively painless manner. (I haven't updated the plugin to iLife '08 since I don't have a copy yet, so no guarantees that it'll continue to work...)
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Chris said 6:37PM on 8-08-2007
Does iPhoto now make metadata part of the image file (i.e., IPTC)?
If not, Apple still fails to tag correctly!
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Chris said 6:37PM on 8-08-2007
"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?
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SS4Rob said 7:06PM on 8-08-2007
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!
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Tod said 1:18AM on 8-09-2007
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!
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bistromaths said 11:59AM on 8-09-2007
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 :)
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ciaocibai said 10:37PM on 8-13-2007
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.
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Dary Barclay said 10:56PM on 8-13-2007
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.
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Dave Findlay said 11:29AM on 8-14-2007
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.
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Ryan said 1:04PM on 8-14-2007
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.
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Claire said 6:33PM on 8-14-2007
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.
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