Hey folks.
Today I’m going to be showing you Smart Albums feature that comes with your Mac to
very quickly and efficiently organize your photos, coming up next on Tech Talk America.
Today’s class is brought to you by Socialprintstudio.com.
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Now, on to the class.
Usually when I’m working my clients and helping them organize their photos, the first
place we really like to start is by creating a simple folder structure so that we have
a place to save all of what we’re about to create into.
Let’s open up the photos app, and as you will see here, clearly it has recently been
Halloween here in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which is where I live and record all of this
stuff.
If you ever want to see a very, very unique music video, all choreographed to Brittney
Spears’ Toxic, you can find it in the link in the description of the video.
Alright, let’s go over creating that folder structure.
If you’re kind of new to this stuff, the first thing that I would recommend that you
do is go over here into File, and go to the third item down, which is a New Folder.
Now, of course you can organize your photos however you like.
The method that I have found seems to work really well for a lot of people is to organize
them by year.
For now, let’s work with 2018.
Right now we’re at the tail end of it, as I have already mentioned.
Let’s just call it that.
The next thing that we’re going to do is, we’re going to create a Smart Album that
goes inside that folder.
With that folder highlighted, we’re going to go here to the top again, and we’re going
to create a new Smart Album.
I’m going to start with creating a very, very simple one that I think you will really
like.
We’re going to start by just taking all of the photos that were taken in this particular
year, and we’re going to put them inside of this Smart Album, with one little caveat.
You can see here, I’ve named the Smart Album “2018”.
Then over here, we have a whole bunch of different options that we can choose from.
Over the course of this video, I’m going to show you a couple of those different combinations
of folder types that I think will really help you organize your photos.
Let’s start with going here into Date Captured.
This is a very simple one.
Change it from “is” to “is in the range”, and then just make it January 1st of that
particular year until December 31st of that particular year.
Now, before you hit OK, there is one additional feature you might want to consider adding
to this.
In addition to knowing what photos we have snapped in a particular year, there is also
value in knowing which of those photos have not already been organized into albums.
What you might want to consider doing is hitting the little plus symbol here and adding a second
condition.
Because we wanted to match both conditions, up here you’ll notice this has just appeared.
Now it’s saying we can either have it match any of the following conditions, or all.
For this particular combination, we’re going to do all.
Now, let’s change this down here to Album, is not, Any.
What this is telling us is, we’re going to create a Smart Album that is showing us
every photo that is taken in a particular year, and then on top of that, we also want
it to ignore photos that are already organized into albums.
Now, because we’re brand new here, that number has not changed.
As we go through and process these images, it will.
Now that I have created my Smart Album, you’ll notice that it is located inside of my 2018
folder.
Now, let’s double-click on this image to go inside of that Smart Album.
Now from here, what we’re going to do is we’re going to very rapidly process these
images and get them organized into corresponding albums.
Now, from here, you are going to need to know how to select multiple items, which is kind
of a Mac basic.
Basically, the two ways that you can do it are either holding the command key and individually
selecting photos.
Or, if you’re going to do a group of them like I’m about to, let’s start with these
drone shots of the day’s cottages in Truro, Massachusetts, we’re going to click on the
first item, hold the Shift key, and click on the last one.
From here, we’re going to tell the computer to organize this into an album.
Depending on which version of Mac OS you’re running, and ultimately which version of the
photos app you are running, there are different way to do this.
The way that I believe works universally for everyone is, once you have your photos selected,
then you can go and hit Command + N, which will place them automatically into, if you
look here on the left-hand side, an album.
Now, it is going to automatically name that album the same thing as my corresponding Smart
Album, so now we just have to type over it and rename it.
Let’s just call this Truro Drone Shots.
What you’ll notice is when I lock it in, and then go back to my 2018 album, all of
those images are gone because of that second condition that we created, only show me photos
that are not organized.
As you can see here, you can very quickly go through here.
Let’s do one more together.
Let’s take all of the Halloween shots, and I’m telling you folks, you’ve got to see
this video.
It’s amazing.
Click on the first one in your list, hold down the Shift key.
Click on the last one.
Hit Command + N to create a new album, and then just rename it.
The next type of Smart Album that I want to show you how to create is one that is specifically
looking for files that have a similar name to them.
Let’s say I want to look in this case, for demonstration purposes, let’s say I want
to find all of my various drone shots, OK?
Whenever I am taking a photo with my drone, the actual file name typically has the first
couple of letters in common.
This is also the case with a lot of digital cameras.
Really, all you need to know is what are those common letters that would be found in the
name of the actual file.
In my case, my DJI Mavic Air always makes the first few letters of every photo “DJI”.
I want to create a Smart Album, let’s do that right now, and I’m just going to call
it “DJI”.
Now, instead of saying photo, we’re going to change it to “File Name”.
In my case, I’m going to type “DJI”, OK?
You can see here it found five photos that match that.
Now, if I wanted to also include photos, maybe from an older drone of mine, again, all I
would need to do is add the plus symbol.
Also, say, OK, also, if the file name includes, one of my old drones is a unique drone spelled,
a very weird spelling, Y-U-N-E-E-C, I think.
I don’t know.
Those weird spelling companies.
Anyways.
I want to say, in this case, match any of the following conditions because I do want
both of them.
Now, let’s hit OK, and there you go.
There’s all of my drone shots from two different drones, at least the ones that I have on this
particular demo account.
You can see how very easily you could recreate that same recipe with photos of yours that
maybe had been scanned in.
They’re going to have those very, very similar file names.
Just use that same trick, and it should help you out.
Now, once again, from here, what I would probably end up doing is processing these photos, that’s
if you want to be able to have access to them on mobile.
The next type of Smart Album that we’re going to be creating is one based on relationships,
so who is actually in the photo.
Now, before I show you how to create this, I just have to at least mention that this
will only work if you have actually taken the time to go through and identify who the
people are in your photos.
If you haven’t already done so, there is facial recognition technology built into photos.
However, you do have to have taken time to identify who people are.
If I go up here to the People tab right here, you can see, for example, if I use myself,
I can just double-click on myself, and I’ll see every photo that I’m in.
When you want to find other people, that’s where this Smart Album is going to be really,
really handy.
Let’s go to File, and create a New Smart Album, and I want it to show me every photo
that has my mother and I in it, just for this demo purpose.
Let’s call it Mother and Son.
Instead of Photo, we’re going to change that to Person.
For this, we’re just going to use Is, and then I’m just going to simply select her
in it.
Now, if I want to also include myself, which is really not necessary in this case, I could
just hit the plus button, also add a second Person, and then put me.
If I really wanted it just to be the two of us, I would need to make this “all”, and
as you can see here, yes, that is one photo in this particular case.
This next trick won’t work for everyone.
It partially depends on how you ultimately got the photos in your computer.
If you are trying to find all of the older pictures that you have and group them all
together, one of things that all of those are going to share in common is that, unless
you’ve added it manually, none of them are going to be tagged with GPS.
Another useful combination that you might find is this: Photo is not tagged with GPS.
Now, these can also include photos that you were emailed, or if somehow the GPS location
information was stripped out of the photo, but for some people out there, this is still
going to be pretty handy.
For those of you out there who use more professional equipment, another handy feature you might
want to find is to create a Smart Album that only shows you photos that are shot in Camera
Raw format.
Of course, Camera Raw shots do take up a lot more space, and professional photographers,
this is going to be a really handy Smart Album.
The final type of Smart Album that I want to show you how to create today is one for
a reoccurring date.
Let’s say for example, that you’re a parent, and you have kids who dress up for Halloween
every year.
If you want to create a Smart Album for Halloween, you could have it automatically show you what
they looked like on that date every single year.
For this particular example, let’s use Halloween, since that’s what I’ve got here on my
screen.
What I’m going to do is, I’m going to make this Date Captured, is, and then I will
just simply type in on my keyboard to correct the date, and then hit the plus symbol.
For those of you who want to make this happen every single year, you would just need to
add this, and just go back in time as far back as you wish it to go.
Then make sure that up here it says “match any”, because you do want to see all of
them.
Then when you’re done, hit OK, and then you’ll see the photos captured on that date
from as many years as you tell it.
That trick is also really great for birthdays and anniversaries too.
Thanks for watching everyone.
I hope you enjoyed this class.
If you did, I really do appreciate it if you hit the little thumbs up like button, leave
me a comment down below.
If you haven’t already done so, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my YouTube channel,
and I’ll see you next time.
This is David A. Cox with Tech Talk America.
Class dismissed.