Skip to Content

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.


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...
 

Add a Comment

*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

21 Comments

Filter by:
Greg Woods

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!

August 16 2007 at 3:00 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Claire

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.

August 14 2007 at 6:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ryan

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.

August 14 2007 at 1:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dave Findlay

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.

August 14 2007 at 11:21 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dary Barclay

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.

August 13 2007 at 10:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ciaocibai

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.

August 13 2007 at 10:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bistromaths

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 :)

August 09 2007 at 11:57 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tod

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!

August 09 2007 at 1:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
SS4Rob

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!

August 08 2007 at 7:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris Bell

"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?

August 08 2007 at 6:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.