Searching by Keywords

You've taken the time to assign keywords to your photos. I congratulate you on your organizational fortitude.

Now what? Now you can search for photos based on the keywords you've assigned.

One way to search by keyword is to use the Search box. If you have a keyword named Beach, you can quickly find beach shots by typing beach in the Search box.

But there's a problem: iPhoto's search feature may be too broad for your needs. If you have photos that contain beach in their roll names, comments, or file names, those photos will also show up in your search results.

What's more, you can't use the Search box to perform a complex keyword searchfor example, to find photos with the keyword Beach but not the keyword Sunset.

When you want to conduct searches based only on keywords, forget the Search boxuse the Keywords pane. When you click on keywords in the Keywords pane, iPhoto narrows down the photos displayed to only those photos that have the selected keywords.

If you suspect you'll want to conduct a specific keyword search again in the future, consider creating a smart album to automate the task for you; see page 134.

Using the Keywords Pane

Step 1.	To search your entire library, select the Library item in the Source list. To search a specific album, select its name.
Step 2.	Display the Keywords pane by clicking the button.
Step 3.	Click on the keyword or keywords for which you want to search.

Tips for Keyword Searching

Being More Specific

Being Less Specific

At other times, you may want to broaden a search to find, for example, photos of your trip to Hawaii or your trip to Paris. Normally, iPhoto performs "and" searchesa photo must have all the keywords you click in order to be considered found.

To have iPhoto perform "or" searches instead, choose Preferences from the iPhoto menu, click Keywords, then choose Any from the popup menu above the keyword list. Now, iPhoto finds all photos that have any of the keywords you click in the Keywords pane.

A Bigger Pane

Have a lot of keywords? Make the Keywords pane larger by dragging the horizontal bar above it.

Get a Photo Count

Curious to know how many photos have a specific keyword? Point to the keyword without clicking, pause a moment, and iPhoto tells you.

EXIF Exposed: Getting Information About Photos

I mentioned earlier that digital cameras store information along with each photo the date and time when the photo was taken, its exposure, the kind of camera used, and more. This is called the EXIF data.

iPhoto saves this EXIF data when you import photos. To view it, select a photo and choose Get Info from the Photos menu ( -I).

Much of this information may not be useful to you, but some of it might. If you have more than one digital camera, for example, you can use the window's Photo tab to see which camera you used for a given shot.

If you're interested in learning more about the nuts and bolts of photography, explore the Exposure tab to see what kinds of exposure settings your camera used.

At the very least, you might just want to explore the Photo Info window to see the kind of information iPhoto is keeping track of for you.