Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On today's episode let me show you how to create Smart Albums in the new Photos app
for Mac.
To create a new Smart Album you can do it one of many ways.
I'm going to use File, New Smart Album and you're going to have this very simple interface.
Let's create something called Test and then you have to specify some criteria for the
Smart Album.
So on the left here you've got the basic criteria.
You can say you want it to be in a certain Album.
You want it to be from a certain date, have something in the Description, use Faces, use
Filenames.
Anything listed here.
There is a lot of different things.
For instance let's go and use Date.
We can say the date, is, is not, is after, is before, you have a lot of options here.
For instance we can say is in the last, and you can see how this changes now to allow
you to go one day, two days, weeks, months, years, whatever you want.
Whatever you choose here will then change.
If I say is then it will give me a date interface here where I can select a date.
If you say is in the range I will get two dates to go from one to the other.
So this will all change depending on what you select.
Likewise if you were to select Description you can do includes, does not include, or
is exactly this, starts with, ends with.
Whatever you want there.
The same is true for any of these.
Sometimes it will actually pull from your data.
So, for instance, if I were to select Aperture I can select is greater than or equal to or
I can select from a list here.
This list is actually taken from all of my photos.
It looks through them all to see the aperture of all the photos and lists the ones that
are available.
The same is true for a lot of this here.
So for instance if I would do Camera Model I can click here and see all these different
cameras.
Some of these are my cameras.
Some of these are actually cameras I don't even own but say somebody sent me a photo
that I include now in my collection and that's part of the metadata for that image.
So these are just all the photos I have in this particular library were taken with one
of these devices.
So let's create a simple Smart Album.
We're going to go and say I want everything where the date is in the last and say thirty
days.
You can see here it shows me that there are no items matched for this.
So let's try something longer.
Let's try say is in the last nine months.
Now you can see it matches thirteen items there.
I click okay and it creates the album.
There it is.
Now I can select it and see all the photos in it.
Now it is important to realize one of the best features of Smart Albums is that they
update automatically.
So since the criteria for this Smart Album is any photo taken in the last nine months
if I take a photo today then of course that is within the last nine months.
It will automatically be added to this Smart Album.
I don't have to do anything.
I don't have to hit a button or anything like that.
The next time I view this Smart Album, of if I'm looking at it it will do it in front
of my eyes, it would add that photo because it fits that criteria.
That is the great thing about these is that you could create these Smart Albums and then
they will update automatically.
You can also alter Smart Albums.
I'm going to Control Click here and I'm going to Edit Smart Album.
Now I can change the name.
I can change this to be say the last twelve months.
You can see it updates the number of items.
I can add more criteria.
So you hit the Plus button here and say in addition to that I'm also going to select
the camera model.
So I only want pictures taken with my DSLR so I'll select that, right there.
You can see if I hit okay it will update the album for those.
I can continue to edit Smart Album for any of these.
Now notice this Match any of the following conditions.
So what this is doing now is showing me any pictures that were taken in the last twelve
months or were taken with this camera.
If I change it to All now its any taken in the last twelve months and they had to use
this camera.
You want to make sure you select the right one of these.
So now this is going to limit it a little bit more because it has to meet both of those
criteria.
There is those photos that were taken with my DSLR and in the last twelve months.
There is a lot of other great stuff you can do with just the simple amount of options
that you've got here that you can set.
For instance you can use Keywords.
So let's change it here.
I'm going to just change Keyword is and I'm going to have it only that.
I'm going to select a keyword.
So let's select Hawaii as a keyword.
So fourteen items match and I click okay.
So now this Smart Album is only showing photos that I've put Hawaii as a keyword in it.
So I can actually change the name to Hawaii and then as I'm looking at other photos I
can, let's see go to look at some more Hawaii photos, and any photo that I want I can add
a keyword.
So let's do that.
Let's get info on this photo here.
Add a keyword Hawaii and now it has that keyword.
If I go to my Smart Album, there it is.
So instead of actually organizing your stuff in albums you can assign keywords to photos
and then create Smart Albums that will then show everything that has that keyword.
Just another way of handling albums and being able to organize your photos.
Okay, so now I've got some homework for you.
To really get the best use out of Smart Albums I want you to go in and create a sample Smart
Album and then checkout every single one of these options here.
So you can see if you select album you can choose from current albums that you've got.
Or eliminating, you know showing photos that are not in a certain album.
You can go through things like Faces and it will actually list all the faces that you've
got available.
One there.
You can go and select Photo for instance.
There are some interesting options.
You can select Is and whether it is favorite, hidden, edited, whether it is RAW format,
tagged with GPS, all sorts of things.
So if you want to see photos that are not tagged with GPS you can select tagged with
GPS is not.
You can see ninety photos here that do not have GPS information.
So check out every single one of these to see what all the options are to really understand
how Smart Albums work and how they can help you organize your photos.
Then try creating some and see how useful they are.