Picasa Tutorials

Combining Stars and Tags

I’ll bet everyone likes to take pictures of flowers.  I get a *lot* of opportunity to do so as we travel around the country.  Whenever I have new pictures of flowers, I try to add a tag for ‘flower’ using Picasa’s tagging feature.  In the screenshot below, I selected the 4 orange hibiscus flowers and then clicked the ‘Tag’ button below.  I could also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-K for ‘Keyword.’  Then I typed flower in the space labeled, ‘Add Tag’ and last I click the Add button.

From now on, anytime I search for ‘flower’ – these 4 pictures will be included in the search results.

I also try to mark my best photos by clicking the Star button.  This has nothing to with the subject matter of the photo and everything to do with the quality.  Of my 22,000 photos, I would try to mark less than 1,000 as my best photos – the ones I’m proud to show to others.  Just select the photo or photos you want to mark, and click the Star button below.

Now, anytime I want to view all my flower pictures, I’ll just type the word flower into the search box.  Right now, if I do that, it results in 212 pictures.  Realize that search will show not only pictures with the Tag of ‘flower’ but also any photo with the word flower in it’s caption, filename, or folder name/description. 

But, not all 212 flower pictures are worth showing to others.  To limit the flowers to only my best pictures, I use the Filter button for starred photos.  The combination of searching for ‘flower’ and filtering to Starred, results in just 18 of my best flower pictures.

And, if I want to see them all together instead of separated by their individual folders, I can just click on the left where it says, “Search Results for Flower.”  Search results is a temporary album – always at the top of your album list.  So now, you could make a slide show, a movie, or a Gift CD with these 18 starred flower pictures. 

Applicable videos:
Picasa 3: Search for pictures (membership required)
Picasa 3: Search for pictures (membership required)
Picasa 3: Tags (membership required)
Basic Search (free)

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Related posts:

1. Albums vs. Tags
2. Organize with Tags
3. Picasa Tip: Search by Color
4. Picasa Tip: Finding Duplicate Pictures
5. Gift CDs and Temporary Albums