Learn how to organise snaps with Smart Albums - iLife Tutorial

Most modern cameras have a function known as ‘geotagging’ built-in. Geotagging allows for the photos you’ve taken to be tagged with the location they were shot at. iPhoto’s Places feature already makes great use of this, placing your geotagged photos on a map so you can easily find photos by location, but what if you want more control? Make great use of Smart Albums by combining them with Places to create collections that automatically update with photos from specific locations. This could be useful if you’ve been on holiday to the same place more than once, and you want to create a photobook or calendar of your travels. You can even add extra conditions to the Smart Album to include more than one location. Here’s how to do it…

Step 1: Check your tags
Places relies on your photos being geotagged. You can view, edit or add a photo’s geotag by bringing up the info pane and looking for the map at the bottom.

Step 2: Pick a pin
Click on Places in the sidebar; you’ll be shown a map with pins for every location you’ve shot a photo. Click on the location you want to create a Smart Album for.

Step 3: Get smart
Click on the Smart Album icon in the bottom-right of the window. This will create a Smart Album for the location you selected and place it in the left sidebar.

Step 4: Take a peek
Select the Smart Album you just created to see all the photos that have been taken in that location. In this case, it’s all the photos taken in Naples, Italy.

Step 5: Importing is important
When you import new photos with geolocations that match the location of your Smart Album, they’ll be added automatically.

Step 6: See the magic
After the photo has been added to the Smart Album, bring up a photo’s info pane and check the map to confirm this.

Step 7: Tweak your album
To change your Smart Album, ctrl + click on it and click Edit Smart Album. From here you can rename it and update the rules that dictate what content goes into it.

Step 8: Rules are rules
Click the plus button below the Smart Album name to add a new rule. You can choose anything from the date a photo was taken to the camera it was shot on.

Step 9: Check the results
When experimenting with Smart Albums, check your rules yield the right results. Here, a rule asking for photos taken in Paris brings up ones of the Eiffel Tower.

(Click the image below to zoom in and view the annotations)