David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Searching by Calendar or Timeline

iPhoto and Picasa offer long lists of ways to find certain photos: visually, by album, by text, and so on. But they also offer what seems like an obvious and very natural method of finding specific pictures: by consulting a calendar or timeline.

After all, you might not know the filenames of the pictures you took during your August 2008 trip to Canada. You might not have filed them away into an album. But one thing's for sure: You know you took that trip in August of 2008. The calendar and timeline will help you find those pictures fast.

iPhoto Calendar

Start by indicating what container you want the calendar to search: an album or folder, for example, or one of the Library or Recent icons.

Now make the calendar appear by clicking the tiny button at the left edge of the Search box. From the pop-up menu, choose Date.

The little calendar may look small and simple, but it contains a lot of power—and, if you look closely, a lot of different places to click the mouse.

For example, the calendar offers both a Year view (showing 12 month buttons) and a Month view (showing 28 to 31 date squares). Click the tiny ◄ or ► button in the upper-left corner to switch between these two views. You can also double-click a month's name (in Year view) to open the month, or double-click the month title in Month view ("March 2009") to return to Year view.

You can find photos taken ...