David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Smart Albums

Albums, as you now know, are a primary organizational tool in your shoebox program. But you have to create regular albums yourself, one at a time, and then fill them up yourself.

A smart album, though, is a self-updating folder that always displays pictures according to certain criteria that you set up.

• Picasa. The smart album always contains the photos to which you've assigned a certain tag (keyword), as described on Picasa Timeline. Every time you assign the tag travel to a photo, Picasa pops it automatically into the Travel smart album.

  To create the smart album, choose Tools→Experimental→ "Show tag as album." In the dialog box, type the tag whose photos you want rounded up into this smart album, and then click OK.

  Note

  When you're creating the smart album, you must type the tag name in lowercase letters. (It doesn't matter if the actual tag name contains capital letters—what matters is how you type it as you create the smart album.)

• iPhoto. Smart albums are very smart indeed. They can round up all pictures with "Aunt Edna" in the comments, for example, or all photos that you've rated four stars or higher—or both. (If you've ever used smart playlists in iTunes, you'll recognize the idea immediately.)

  To create a smart album, choose File→New Smart Album, or Option-click the + button below the Source list. Either way, the Smart Album sheet slides down from the top of the window. The controls here are designed to set up a search of your photo Library. In this illustration, ...