Take Control of Your Digital Photos on a Mac

135 Pages·2013·4.446 MB·English

by  Jeff Carlson

EBOOK EXTRAS: v1.0
Downloads, Updates, Feedback
TAKE CONTROL OF
YOUR
DIGITAL
PHOTOS

ON A
MAC
by JEFF CARLSON
$15
Table of Contents
Read Me First ...............................................................4

Updates & More ............................................................. 4

Basics ......................................................................... 5

Introduction .................................................................6

Digital Photos Quick Start ............................................8

Shoot Smarter ............................................................10

Check & Set the Clock ...................................................10

Clear the Memory Card .................................................. 12

Choose a Format ..........................................................12

Geotag Your Photos ...................................................... 15

Choose the Right Photo-management Application .....17

iPhoto ........................................................................ 19

Aperture .................................................................... 22

Photoshop Lightroom .................................................... 24

Photoshop Elements ..................................................... 27

Jeff’s Recommended Application ......................................29

Import Your Photos ....................................................30

Apply Metadata at Import .............................................. 31

Choose Where Files Will End Up ...................................... 36

Auto-upload Services .................................................... 39

Understand Auto-organizing Schemes .............................. 40

Judge Your Photos .....................................................43

Develop a Consistent Rating System ................................ 44

Cull Bad Photos ........................................................... 48

Assign Keywords & Other Metadata ...........................53

Assign Metadata .......................................................... 53

Fix Incorrect Dates ....................................................... 62

Apply Geotags ............................................................. 65

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Skip Facial Recognition .................................................. 77

Organize Photos into (Smart) Albums ........................78

Locate Your Photos Using Search ..................................... 78

Get Smart about Albums ............................................... 86

Back Up & Archive Photos ..........................................98

Back Up Your Photos .....................................................99

Archive Photos for the Future ........................................ 108

Migrate Photos to a Different App ............................111

iPhoto to Aperture ...................................................... 112

iPhoto to Lightroom .................................................... 113

Aperture to Lightroom ................................................. 127

About This Book ....................................................... 129

Ebook Extras ............................................................. 129

About the Author ........................................................130

About the Publisher ................................................ -PAGE-

Copyright & Fine Print .............................................. 133

Featured Titles ......................................................... 134

SizzlPix! Coupon .......................................................135

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Read Me First
Welcome to Take Control of Your Digital Photos on a Mac, version
1.0, published in September 2013 by TidBITS Publishing Inc. This
book was written by Jeff Carlson and edited by Kelly Turner.
This book gives Mac users the information they need to build and
maintain a digital photo workflow that makes it easy to import, tag,
rate, and store photos to find them quickly and easily later. It helps
you spend more time on the enjoyable aspects of photography—
shooting and viewing your photos—and less on the mundane but
essential task of managing all your photos.
If you want to share this ebook with a friend, we ask that you do so
as you would with a physical book: “lend” it for a quick look, but ask
your friend to buy a copy for careful reading or reference. Discounted
classroom and Mac user group copies are available.
Copyright © 2013, Jeff Carlson. All rights reserved.
Updates & More

You can access extras related to this ebook on the Web (use the link
in Ebook Extras, near the end; it’s available only to purchasers). On
the ebook’s Take Control Extras page, you can:
• Download any available new version of the ebook for free, or buy
any subsequent edition at a discount.
• Download various formats, including PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket.
(Learn about reading this ebook on handheld devices on our Device
Advice page.)
• Read postings to the ebook’s blog. These may include new tips or
information, as well as links to author interviews. At the top of the
blog, you can also see any update plans for the ebook.
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If you bought this ebook from the Take Control Web site, it has been
added to your account, where you can download it in other formats
and access any future updates. However, if you bought this ebook
elsewhere, you can add it to your account manually; see Ebook Extras.
Basics

Here are a few fundamentals that will help you read this ebook:
• Links: All blue text in this ebook is hot, meaning you can click
(or tap) it, just like a link on the Web. If you click a link to switch
to a different part of the ebook, you can return quickly to where
you were if your ebook reader offers a “back” feature. For example,
if you use iBooks in iOS to read the EPUB version of this ebook,
you can tap the “Back to” link at the lower left of the screen. Or, if
you use Preview on the Mac to read the PDF version of this ebook,
you can choose Go > Back or press Command-[.
• Menus: Where I describe choosing a command from a menu in
the menu bar, I use an abbreviated description that puts the name
of the menu ahead of the command. For example, at the end of the
previous paragraph, “Go > Back” means “choose the Back command
from the Go menu.”
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Introduction
You probably have a story like this.
My mother recently took it upon herself to organize and digitize
the family’s long-neglected stash of photos. Prints were pulled from
proverbial shoeboxes, albums, and envelopes tucked in the backs
of drawers. Black and white, sepia-tone, color; yellowed by age and
old chemical processes; worn at the edges and vignetted in ways that
today’s apps try so hard to emulate digitally.
Most details of the people and places in the pictures were lost or had
changed over time, but she had an advantage: flipping the photos over
often revealed valuable information about the shots, usually scribbled
in pencil as an afterthought because the photographer or family
member at the time knew who and what was depicted.
As we’ve embraced the digital photography revolution, there is nothing
to flip over. The shots we capture are saved to memory cards and hard
drives, and are infrequently printed.
And we’re shooting more. It’s now far easier to take photos because
decent-quality cameras are inexpensive and pocketable. Top-rate
camera technology is embedded into most cell phones; the iPhone, in
fact, currently ranks as the most popular camera at the photo-sharing
site Flickr.
As a result, we’re drowning. No longer restricted by the length of
frames on a film roll or the expense of paying to develop the bad shots
along with the good, we capture many more photos.
But then what? Too often, the shots are dumped into a computer
with the best of intentions of sorting and organizing, but are then left
scarcely examined or enjoyed. Life intrudes, more photos are captured,
and time passes until you need to locate some shots that you vaguely
remember taking.
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This is the point where you ask yourself, often in exasperation,
“Why didn’t I organize these better? This shouldn’t be so difficult!”
And here’s where the new story begins.
Taking control of your digital photos isn’t impossible. Although
we have more photos to deal with, we also have much better tools
to describe and organize them. In fact, your camera and photo-
management software can do some of the heavy lifting for you. By
taking some deliberate steps before you go out shooting and when
you import the images, you’ll streamline what is normally a time-
consuming task—making it all the more likely that you’ll actually
do it. Best of all, you’ll be able to find images later without having to
scan through every single shot in your library. You’ll be able to “flip”
the photos over and get all the information you need.
The process I describe in Take Control of Your Digital Photos on a
Mac stakes out the middle ground between a completely hands-off
approach (letting the software organize imported photos by time and
date alone) and the labor-intensive, detail-oriented approach taken
by some professional photographers. Although my approach embraces
the liberal use of keywords and other metadata, it also focuses on
saving time and reducing complexity to ensure you develop a system
you’ll really follow through on each time. (By the way, many of these
techniques apply to the ever-increasing number of videos in your
library, too.) For those who would like to spend even less time
managing photos, I offer some suggestions for modifying the process
throughout the book.
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Digital Photos Quick Start
Here’s a quick overview of my recommended strategy, complete with
links to different topics in the ebook, so you can jump to them quickly.
Prep your camera:
A bit of preparation before you head out the door will make things
easier after you return with new pictures. In Shoot Smarter, learn four
actions that will get you started on the right footing.
Get your app together:
• Decide which application you’ll use to organize your digital photos
in Choose the Right Photo-management Application.
• Compare four common choices and find out about Jeff’s
Recommended Application.
• If you currently use iPhoto, but would like to switch to a different
tool, read Migrate Photos to a Different App.
Import the right way:
• Many people rush through the process of importing photos from
a camera or memory card into the computer. However, this step
is essential: see Apply Metadata at Import to learn how to assign,
in one batch, valuable metadata to all images that come in during
the import stage. Let the computer do the work for you!
• I also talk about Auto-upload Services like Dropbox and iCloud
Photo Stream, and help you Understand Auto-organizing Schemes
like iPhoto’s events.
Pick winners and losers:
• Not every photo you take can be a winner, so the next step to a more
manageable library is to Judge Your Photos and assign ratings.
• Just as important: take a deep breath and Cull Bad Photos by
removing or hiding them.
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Apply keywords and metadata:
• After assigning as much metadata as you can during the import
process, take a second pass to apply more specific keywords to
individual shots (see Assign Keywords & Other Metadata, and
don’t miss my advice on how to Choose Good Keywords).
• If you used an external device such as an iPhone to collect GPS
data while shooting, Apply Geotags shows how to merge that
information with your photos.
Search with smart albums:
A large virtual pile of photos, even organized by date, can still be an
imposing mass (and mess). I recommend you Organize Photos into
(Smart) Albums—containers that look like regular photo albums but
whose contents change depending on criteria that you specify. Using
smart albums is like having a photo assistant who can dig through
your archives to find what you want in a matter of seconds.
Protect your photos:
• All this work is for nothing if a failing hard drive wipes out the
one and only copy of your photo library. You absolutely, without
question need to Back Up & Archive Photos with a backup strategy
that backs up all your data, not just your photos.
• Since there’s no guarantee the software you use today will function
in 10 or 20 years, I talk about how to Archive Photos for the Future.
The harried photographer:
Sometimes, you may not find it possible to hit every step in the system
I recommend. For those who find that too much complexity results in
paralysis, or who face years and years of unmanaged photos, I lay out
the bare minimum of how to get organized in a hurry. See The Harried
Photographer: Keywords and Metadata, The Harried Photographer:
Rating Photos, and The Harried Photographer: Organization. But keep
in mind that you may end up just time-shifting some of the work—
applying keywords later, for example, or spending more time scanning
through your library for that “one” shot.
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Shoot Smarter
It’s easy to think that taking control of digital photos begins when you
import the images into your computer, but the truth is that the process
starts before you capture your first shot. For example, time stamps are
the foundation of photo-management software, making it essential
that your camera records the correct time. It is possible to fix errant
time stamps later, but doing so throws a roadblock into your workflow.
(And if enough roadblocks appear, you may decide to turn around and
abandon the endeavor altogether.)
The advice in this section isn’t complicated, but it goes a long way
toward ensuring the photos you shoot will be cleanly imported.
Check & Set the Clock

How many digital clocks do you set on a regular basis? These days the
number is small because our devices—computers, smartphones, iPads,
even some televisions—configure the date and time automatically by
getting the info from the Internet. When Daylight Saving Time (DST)
switches over, I need to change only a few holdovers such as the clock
on my oven and an analog clock above the fireplace.
Oh, and my cameras. Although they include options for indicating
whether DST is on or off, I mistakenly assume that because they’re also
computers (specialized computers, that is) they inherit the correct time
when it changes. And every spring and autumn I invariably forget to
change one, resulting in imported photos that appear in my library
shifted by one hour. That may not seem like a big deal, but if you then
also import images from a properly set camera—such as an iPhone—
you’ll end up with photos jumbled out of order.
Time and date stamps are the most crucial methods of organizing
photos, so it’s important to get that information correct before you
start shooting. When you travel to a new time zone, make a point of
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