Windows 8 Bible

Pictures, Tags, and Virtual Folders

You can use the Search box in Photo Gallery to find pictures based on rating, tags, name, and other properties. Outside of Photo Gallery, you can do much more with tags and other photo properties when searching, enabling you to find and organize pictures in ways that transcend tags.

Note

Photos Gallery’s tagging capabilities are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg in Windows 8. Tagging applies to many file types and is a key component in Windows 8’s search capabilities.

For starters, you can display the Charms Bar, click Search, type in a tag name, click Files, and see icons for all pictures that contain that tag. You can right-click the picture’s icon and choose Open File Location or right-click it and choose Open With, Preview, Send To, or whatever it is you want to do with that item. That’s pretty cool. If you prefer, you can open your Pictures folder and use the Search box in its upper-right corner to search for a tag. That will limit the search to pictures in your Pictures folder and its subfolders.

When you search from the Search box, you can opt to search for all files or just pictures. Be sure to click the Files item under the Search box to look for pictures.

If you want to find pictures that contain two tags, separate the tags with a space. For example, a search for

Ashley Alec

searches for pictures that contain both Ashley and Alec. Use OR to broaden the search to find pictures that contain either Ashley or Alec, as you can ...