Categories/Tags

[tkonsler]

I am pulling my hair out!!! I am trying to figure out the difference between categories and tags. I want to take a group of pictures and separate them by year ex. 2006 and within that grouping separte those photos by ex. vacation, sports, etc. then within those separate groups selecte specific photos that I will pull out into editor to use in a photo album.

I am not grasping the difference in categories and/or tags to use the appropriate ones at the appropriate times to handle this simple task

Can someone please help me by explaining the difference in these two and how they can be used to accomplish this so so simple task?:confused:

[troush]

I think of categories as groupings. I have a "Category" called "Family", and then my tags in that category are the names of people in my family. I have a "Category" called "Events" and my tags in that category are "Christmas 2004", "Christmas 2005", "Easter 2004", "Halloween xxx", etc. I have a Category for Locations, and Tags like Home, Iowa, Okalahoma, etc. I have a "Scrapbooking" category and then tags for the the various types of papers and embellishmenets I want to use.

-Trish

[Byron Gale]

I use nested categories to refine things...

For example, I have a category "Events". Inside, I have a sub-category "Vacations". Inside, I have sub-categories for each year. Inside each year, I have tags like "2007 Tahoe", "2005 Yosemite".

Another example... I have a category "People". Inside, I have subcategories "Family", "Friends". Inside each, I have sub-categories like "Smith", "Jones". Inside each, I have tags like "Dick", "Jane".

HTH,

Byron

[NickLewis]

Apart from the difference between Categories and Tags, which Byron and Trish have explained, they aren't really the right way to do what you want.

You can filter your photos into a date range by using Find>Set Date Range, so, for example you only see for photos from 2006.

So you have one "Sports" tag and filter by date if you only want to see those "Sports " from 2006. Otherwise you multiply the number of "Sports" tags and make it difficult to pick out "Sports" pictures that may have been taken in several different years.

You should also be able to do this by dragging the tab stop markers on the Timeline, but, unless I'm missing something, the Timeline function is very badly broken in PSE6, so that may not help you if you have that version.

Nick

[Karin Sue]

Check out photofanatic.com for tips on using the organizer. Read the excerpts from the book.

Collections are what you want to use when choosing images for a project (album or slideshow, etc.) If you have PSE6 I think collections are now called Albums. You can assign a specific order to images in a collection.

You can search across categories and tags. You might have a Sports category with basketball, baseball, and hockey tags and a People category with Jon, Joe and Jim tags. You could then search for various combinations of people and sports. Adding more categories and tags gets more complicated but allows very specific searches.

Although the find by date range is great, if you like you could also set up a year category with tags for each year. This can come in handy if you do a lot of scanning and so don't have the camera data on date picture taken. Yes, you can add the correct date to the image but sometimes the only date you have is something like "early fifties" and it is simple to set up an early fifties tag.

[paws]

I'm pretty new to PSE6 so excuse me if this is a silly question! In regards to tags/albums in PSE6, while in the Editor, if I go to the photo bin at the bottom, and click on show open files, I only see my albums, not my tagged photos. How can I access my tagged photos through the bin?

[NickLewis]

As far as I know you can't. The idea is that you gather the photos you want to work on in an album, and then can access that from the Project Bin. (In PSE6 it's called the Project Bin, not the Photo Bin, and behaves slightly differently.)

To make best use of Organiser's Tags and Albums, you should tag your photos with suitable tags that describe the photo content, where it was shot, what event it was, etc. Then gather the ones you want to use for a project into an Album.

For example, if I go on a holiday to France, all the photos I take will be tagged as being shot on my French holiday. (And have other tags as well)But if I then want to put together a slideshow of the trip, I'd start off by choosing a subset of them, and gathering them into a French Trip Album.

Does that make sense?

Nick

[paws]

I have almost all of my photos identified/tagged; however they're not all in albums. I guess I'll have to do some reorganizing. I find this quite frustrating if I want to find pictures of one individual to scroll through quickly and don't want to have to open the organizer.

[dj_paige]

I have almost all of my photos identified/tagged; however they're not all in albums. I guess I'll have to do some reorganizing. I find this quite frustrating if I want to find pictures of one individual to scroll through quickly and don't want to have to open the organizer.

Now I'm confused. Maybe this is a difference between PSE5 and PSE6, but when I select a group of photos to use in Organizer from a Collection (Album in PSE6), and then open a project, the editor knows which photos I have selected, and then applies the photos in the order I select in the Collection (Album). Once the editor opens, I don't have to go back to the Organizer to pick photos (unless I forgot to select/include one).

Paws — you don't have to have both tags and Albums. Tags are pretty much mandatory in my mind (otherwise, you lose 95% of the value of the Organizer), but Collections/Albums are optional. You only need to create Collections/Albums if you want something in a specific order or for a specific project.

[NickLewis]

Paige - the Project Bin in PSE6 Editor is more powerful than the Photo Bin in previous versions. It contains a dropdown menu which presents a list of all Albums in the current catalog. If you select one of those, then the bin is populated with thumbnails of the images in that Album, instead of the Editor's "Open Files" (which is still an option as well). You can then choose to open these files in Editor.

You can also access Organiser related functions like Creations from the Photo Bin, and create a Smart Album of the Project Bin contents. I'm a bit hazy exactly how it all works, because I haven't had PSE6 long enough to use it much. I'm still trying to bottom out my understanding of the Organiser changes.

Nick