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Chapter 7 of “Take Control of Your Digital Photos” Available

Last week, we gave you the final key you need to locate images, and now it’s time to use it to open the door onto your ever-expanding photo library and pull specific images out. There are two basic ways of doing this: finding images for one-time use by searching, and creating smart albums that collect images based on criteria you specify.

In Chapter 7, “Organize Photos into (Smart) Albums,” Jeff starts off by showing you how to search — in all four major photo-management apps — for text in keywords, titles, and captions, and then moves on to searching by rating or label, by date, and by metadata assigned automatically by the camera. But since the goal is to help you take control of your photos, not just dip in for a particular image, Jeff extends the discussion with step-by-step instructions on how to bottle a search — even a complex search — into a smart album that automatically updates its contents based on the criteria you set. Since you’re now applying metadata to images at import, and assigning keywords
and ratings later on, it should be easy to create smart albums that collect highly rated photos of particular people, places, or subjects for quick reference and sharing.

As with Chapter 6, “Assign Keywords and Other Data,” 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 in PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket (Kindle) formats once it’s complete.

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