Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Searching for Photos

Anyone who's been diligent enough to assign tags to all (or most) of their photos will be pleased to learn how easy Elements makes finding tagged photos. And as for the untagged masses? The good news is that Elements still gives you some helpful ways to find your pictures. The next few sections take you through all your options.

Browsing Through Photos

When you don't know exactly which photo you're looking for, Elements gives you a few ways to search through groups of pictures. These methods are also great if you don't want to look through your whole collection:

• Text search. You can just type what you're looking for into the Search box at the upper left of the Media Browser. Enter a filename, caption, date, tag, or anything that's in the file's metadata (see the box on Saving Your Work), and Elements will find it. As you type, Elements displays a pop-out list of your tags beginning with the letters you're typing. If you want to search for a tag, click one to select it. You can also combine terms by using and, or, or not. You can also restrict what you want to search for; so if you enter, for example, Tag:Birthday in the Search box, you'll get photos with the Birthday tag attached to them.

  

  Figure 2-13. When you create a Smart Album, this dialog box appears so you can choose criteria for it. Click the + sign button to add another search parameter. Here, the Smart Album ...