Assigning Keywords : First, Make sure the Keyword toggle is set to assign, and not search (image right). Next, click on an image that you want to assign a keyword to. Now, you can assign as many keywords to that image as you want simply by clicking on the keywords themselves. As you click on the keywords, they will remain blue to indicate which keywords you have assigned to that individual picture. To remove all keywords assigned to a photo click on the None button. To remove an individual keyword, click on the button for the keyword that you want to remove a second time.

In the image above, you can see that I have assigned three keywords to the image that I selected. The three are now highlighted in blue. Once you have completed assigning keywords to one picture, you can move on to the next. Keywords can also be assigned to groups of pictures. If you want to give an entire group of pictures the same keywords, highlight all of the pictures that you want and then select the keywords as you would a single picture.

Image Titles : Another way that you can organize your photos is by giving each one a Title or name. When you import photos from your digital camera, they are usually given names like DSCN3154.JPG. While this name is fine for the camera, it means nothing to us. To change the name of a photo to something more meaningful, click on the photo you want to rename. You will see the name of the photo next to Title (image right). Here you will type in a new name and hit return to change the title of that image. You can also change the date of the image by doing the same thing in the date field.

Add Comments : If you would like to add comments, or a description of the image, click on the information button (circled in the image left). This will open an area (under Title and Date) for comments about the photo. You can type in anything you want here. To hide the comments field, click on the information button one more time.

Add Comments pt 2 : Another way to add comments goes back to Lesson one when we took a look at the iPhoto Preferences. In the iPhoto Preferences, you have the option to assign/search using either Keywords or Comments. If you turned Comments on then you would not see the Keyword buttons. Instead, you would see a field to add comments about each photo. (see image below) Personally, I would leave iPhoto as is unless I was adding comments to a number of photos at once.

Adding titles or comments will help you later when you want to search for an image.

Create Photo Albums : The best organizational tool available in iPhoto is, of course, the photo album. Photo Albums are easily created, modified and can contain as many, or few, images as you would like. In the Photo Album window you will see Photo Library (which contains all of the photos that you have imported) and Last Import by default. To create a new photo album, click on the new photo album button. You will then be prompted to give the new album a name (Album-1 by default). Once you give the album a name, click OK and then you will see a new photo album with that name in the Photo Album window to the left (in the example to the right I have created a new album called Garden Pictures).

Add Photos to Albums : To add photos to an album, drag the images from the Photo Library to any album. You can drag single images or you can highlight multiple images at a time and drag them into the same photo album. You will see a red badge with the number of photos that you are transferring as you drag the images to the new album. Click here to see a video demonstration of how to add photos to a photo album. An image can only be in an album one time. If you try to drag an image to the same album more than once, iPhoto will not let you.

View Photos in Albums : To view the photos in an album, simply click on the name of the album. This will take you from Photo Library View to Photo Album view. To go back to Photo Library View, click on Photo Library (above Last Import).

Remove Photos : To remove photos from an album, go to the album, click on the image you would like to remove and hit the delete key on your keyboard. iPhoto will ask you if you really want to remove this image from the album. Removing an image from an album does not remove that image from the Photo Library but, if you remove an image from the Main Photo Library, it will remove it from all albums also.

he number of photos that you take with your digital camera can make keeping them organized seem like a overwhelming task. Using the methods above (naming, applying keywords and organizing into albums) you can keep your photos well organized and easily accessible. In the next lesson, we will learn to search for photos that we have stored in iPhoto.