Chapter 3. Organizing Photos

3. Organizing Photos

There are two types of people when it comes to photos. First are the Martha Stewart types who manage to organize every picture into precious handmade albums constructed of used tissues and old grocery bags. Then there are the rest of us, who dump our pictures in a box, and that's if we remember to develop the film in the first place. We in the second group hate those in the first group (though we're sure you're actually very nice people).

For me, the promise of digital photography was a way not just to join that first group, but to beat them at their own game. I'm constitutionally incapable of cutting a print to crop it, and my miserable handwriting makes captions painful. I figured I could do it all on the computer with no trouble and make prints to boot. Unfortunately, it was just too harduntil iPhoto.

iPhoto's editing tools are covered in a future chapter, so here we're going to focus on iPhoto's organizational features. Some require a little effort, but even with no work, your digital photo collection will be far better organized than the box in the closet.

And if you're one of those people who put together handmade photo albums before digital photography, well, you're still going to love what iPhoto can do for you.

Switching to Organize Mode

Whenever you're not importing photos, editing photos, creating a slideshow, or making a book, iPhoto ensures you're in organize mode. Thus, there are only two basic ways to return to organize mode from another mode:

• In the Source pane, click the Library, Last Roll, or Last Months album, or any regular album or smart album to switch to organize mode and display the contents of the selected album.

• When you have switched into edit mode from organize mode but are not using the Retouch or Red-Eye tools, double-click the picture (outside of a selection, if you've made one) to switch back to organize mode.