How do you have things organized in iPhoto?

First post on this forum. Hope you guys can help me.

One of my new years resolutions is to get things "organized." I'm doing well so far but whenever I give myself a new project sometimes it drives me crazy cause I take it too far. Organizing my photos in iPhoto is one that is driving me crazy. I've had a digital camera since 2003 and I've always just made a folder with the date and event description and that's all I've done for the past five years. So doing things in iPhoto is quite different.

I've been importing my photos to events, keywording them, then weeding out the not so great photos. That part is going ok, though I'm still trying to fine tune my keyword scheme.

What I want to hear from you guys is exactly how you have things organized in iPhoto. How do you have your albums setup? How about keywords?

When it comes to keywording your photos, how in detail do you go? Do you only keyword for the main focus of the photo? For example, if you have a photo of a few friends, but if you look in the background you can see another friend, do you keyword it for the background friend too? How much of a person has to be in a photo for you to put their name on it-- full face? Front only?

As I mentioned, all my events are organized and only contain good snapshots. Other people I've talked to have a ton of albums and I'm still trying to find out uses for me for albums. The only smart album I have is one for syncing to my iPod-- it only contains 5 star pictures of my daughter (which is also the only reason I use the rating system.) Not knowing what to use albums for makes me feel like I'm missing a huge part of iPhoto. But if my events are pretty organized, what should I use albums for?

If you could, PLEASE post a screenshot of your folders/albums and keywords. It would help me a lot in making a system of my own. Any tips are greatly appreciated. I'm being unnecessarily obsessive compulsive about this and I think if I just get a system down I'll relax. Thanks for your help.

Although I use Lightroom, I always use keywords when importing images into that program. However, I don't break down the images into too many keyword categories because it can make organizing the images too much of an effort in the first place. In other words, I try to strike a balance between the effort put in, and the benefit that I derive from doing so, which is to make searches more efficient, precise and direct in the future.

Before you start to create too many keywords, ask yourself how you intend to use them to do searches in the future, and the volume of images you can expect to take that falls within any one keyword. The greater the number of images, the more keywords you may want to include in your images to enable you to narrow the search for a quicker result.

For example, I have a ton of images of my kids and pets in all types of environments, seasons, and activities. For those categories, I will add more keywords than I typically would otherwise to be able to sort through and get the images that I want both quickly and efficiently. I may add words like, "action", "park", "Summer", etc.

There's no "correct" method here, so adopt your own criteria by fine-tuning as you go along.

As far as ablums, etc. I create folders first. Maybe "Vacations". Then I create albums under those folders -- maybe "Summer 2007" or "San Francisco 2006". Then, if I am looking for a photo from a certain trip, I can quickly find it in its album. I can keep the folders collapsed so as not to take up so much screen space, and only expand them when I want to look at something in there. These could be smart albums as well, I have just not gotten around to that part yet -- still organizing as you are!

skybolt said:

As far as ablums, etc. I create folders first. Maybe "Vacations". Then I create albums under those folders -- maybe "Summer 2007" or "San Francisco 2006". Then, if I am looking for a photo from a certain trip, I can quickly find it in its album. I can keep the folders collapsed so as not to take up so much screen space, and only expand them when I want to look at something in there. These could be smart albums as well, I have just not gotten around to that part yet -- still organizing as you are!

Click to expand...

But if you already have an event for your "San Francisco 2006" vacation, why make an album for it? I don't see the point.

But a seasonal smart album sounds like a good idea. Just set the date range to the summer months. Hmm..

Verbal said:

But if you already have an event for your "San Francisco 2006" vacation, why make an album for it? I don't see the point.

But a seasonal smart album sounds like a good idea. Just set the date range to the summer months. Hmm..

Click to expand...

In my example, for instance, when my husband and I travel to, say, San Francisco, we each take photos, and when they get imported they go to two events (I like to keep them separated at this step). So, I can put all photos in the album, but keep them separate in the library. Same for my pets. I have several "events" of photos of my cats, but only one album.

skybolt said:

In my example, for instance, when my husband and I travel to, say, San Francisco, we each take photos, and when they get imported they go to two events (I like to keep them separated at this step). So, I can put all photos in the album, but keep them separate in the library. Same for my pets. I have several "events" of photos of my cats, but only one album.

Click to expand...

But why two separate events for the same vacation?

Sorry, I'm just trying to understand.

I just like to be able to tell which shots he took and which ones I took -- just me. I have combined them on occasion, but generally like them separate in the events, but together in the album. As far as the cats, when they are in separate events, they are organized by date, but in the albums, I don't so much care about that, so I combine multiple events into one album.

skybolt said:

I just like to be able to tell which shots he took and which ones I took -- just me. I have combined them on occasion, but generally like them separate in the events, but together in the album. As far as the cats, when they are in separate events, they are organized by date, but in the albums, I don't so much care about that, so I combine multiple events into one album.

Click to expand...

Ahhh I get it.

I've been putting pictures from three different cameras in my library. One of the cameras is my girlfriends. So I made keywords for each camera and put the right keyword for the camera it was taken with.

My girlfriends parents have a ton of priceless photos of our daughter and I plan on adding some of them to my library too. So I'll do the same thing for their camera.

Verbal said:

But if you already have an event for your "San Francisco 2006" vacation, why make an album for it? I don't see the point.

Click to expand...

Because you can 'nest' albums (so all your vacation pictures can be listed under 'Vacations' for example). You cannot do this with Events. I'll stand corrected if anyone can tell me that it can be done... and how.