Chapter 6 of “Take Control of Your Digital Photos” Available

Let me be blunt. The entire point of taking control of your digital photos is to find them after the fact — what’s the point of taking photos if you haven’t the foggiest idea where a particular one might be later? And the key for that is metadata, lovely metadata, that you can use when searching. In a previous chapter of his streamed ebook, “Take Control of Your Digital Photos,” Jeff Carlson shared his best practices for importing photos, one of which was to assign metadata at import, to the extent possible. That’s all well and good, but only so much can be done at import, and for metadata that applies to small batches of photos, or even to an individual image, you have to roll up your sleeves and apply it later on.

In Chapter 6, “Assign Keywords and Other Data,” Jeff explains how to choose good keywords and assign them to batches of photos in the four photo-management apps he covers: Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop Elements, and iPhoto. But he doesn’t stop there, and for each program also provides step-by-step instructions on how to fix incorrect dates and apply geotags from both a geotagged reference photo and a separately recorded tracklog. Finally, he makes the case for why you should forgo one of the seemingly coolest features of modern photo-management programs — facial recognition.

As with Chapter 5, “Judge Your Photos,” Chapter 4, “Best Practices for Importing Photos,” “Chapter 3, “Choose a Photo-Management Application,” and Chapter 2, “Shoot Smarter,” this chapter is available for free, but only to TidBITS members; everyone is welcome to read Chapter 1, “A Smart Approach to Photo Management,” to see where Jeff is headed. The full ebook will be available for purchase by everyone once it’s complete.

Publishing this book in its entirety for TidBITS members as it’s being written is one of the ways we thank TidBITS members for their support. We also hope it encourages those of you who have been reading TidBITS for free for years to help us continue to bring you carefully considered, professionally written and edited articles each week (for more details, see “TidBITS Needs Your Support in 2013: Join Our Membership Program,” 17 December 2012).