More on Film Rolls

iPhoto starts out sorting your Library by film roll, meaning that the most recently imported batch of photos appears at the bottom of the window. Your main iPhoto window may look like a broad, featureless expanse of pictures, but they’re actually in a logical order.

Tip

If you’d prefer that the most recent items appear at the top of the iPhoto window instead of at the bottom, choose iPhoto → Preferences, click Appearance, turn on “Place most recent photos at the top,” and close the Preferences window. This option also affects the Sort Photos → by Date option described below.

Using the View → Sort Photos submenu, you can make iPhoto sort all the thumbnails in the main window in a number of useful ways:

  • by Date. This sort order reflects the creation date of the photos (rather than the date they were imported).

  • by Title. This arrangement is alphabetical by the photos’ names. (To name your photos, see page 124.)

  • by Rating. If you’d like your masterpieces at the top of the window, with the losers way down below, choose this option. (To rate your photos, see page 138.)

  • Manually. If you choose this option, you can drag the thumbnails around freely within the window, placing them in any order that suits your fancy. To conserve your Advil supply, however, make no attempt to choose this item when you’re

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