Keyword on Multiple Photos

Simply, Use the Keyword Window:

Window -> Show Keywords

Select the files you want to tag

Click on the tag in the Keyword Window

Keyword is applied to all the selected photos.

Regards

TD

Great tip - thank you! Been looking to be able to do this for a long time. I knew Apple would have thought of this!

Someone already answered the batch keyword question. I just want to add that in iPhoto 9, the program tries to do face recognition for you. i.e. you can tag the photos by your kid's face instead of using the keywords. Of course, keyword is still useful for all non-facial tagging.

The problem with Faces is that they are useful only in iPhoto. You can't export the pics with the Faces data for use in other situations. However, you can write keywords to the IPTC data of the file on export.

Regards

TD

And, of course, if you want keywords for faces it is extremely easy to open the faces view for a person, select all and apply their name as a keyword - so by using faces you have the advantage of (mostly) automatic face assignment and being able to keyword them with trivial effort when needed

LN

Or just keep on keywording as you always have and avoid those extra steps. After all, it's a rare photo in my library that has a single keyword.

Regards

TD

Confirming names is a fun process all by itself. The "extra steps" that you referred to is not too much work, but as the other poster mentioned. You can globally apply the keywords once all photos are already organized by the faces.

When Faces arrived I already had more than 17k photos tagged in my Library. Do you think it worth my while to redo all that simply so that I could then see their faces on the Corkboard? Believe it or not, I already know what my wife and children look like 😉

Seriously, I gave this matter some thought. If I was starting from scratch, or if I had a smaller library, I would have probably invested the time in the Faces feature. However, I already had a lot of time and effort put into a tagging scheme that works very well for me, and I opted to stick with it. The only addition Faces offered me was the Corkboard view.

I use Keyword Manager as an excellent addition for tagging in iPhoto.

Of course, the beauty of the features available in iPhoto is that you can use some or all of them as you wish. Every one can devise their own system for filing and finding their photos. There is no one size that fits everybody.

Regards

TD

I totally agree with you that everyone has their own way to do thing. However, the face feature does more than just cork boarding. It crops the faces out of the pictures for you. In the face mode, you can view the original pictures or the cropped faces. You can scroll through thousands of pictures and only see close up face shots.

BTW, 17K pictures won't take too long to tag because the face recognition is automatic. Just let it run before you go to bed and when you come back the next morning it should be done. You may need to confirm some faces, just drag a selection rectangle around all the pictures to do a large group confirmation. You can complete the tagging in a matter of seconds. Again the benefit is a collection of zoom in face shots for every face in your album.

I also use the smart album to select "face contains X and keyword does not contains X" to verify that all the photo receive the proper keywords.

However, the face feature does more than just cork boarding. It crops the faces out of the pictures for you. In the face mode, you can view the original pictures or the cropped faces. You can scroll through thousands of pictures and only see close up face shots.

And there's another thing I've never wanted to do.

BTW, 17K pictures won't take too long to tag because the face recognition is automatic.

The initial scan on my Library took 18 hours. Then I would need to identify the face, confirm (and deny) the matches and then go back on the ones not caught in the scan.

There's no point in pretending that you can run a Faces scan and "complete the tagging in a matter of seconds". Perhaps if you have a small Library, yes. But not in my case.

I am familiar with Faces and - indeed with the Places feature too. The time and effort required to convert my system to use those is simply not worth the effort to me.

Regards

TD

The places feature is a totally different ball game. For people whose camera has GPS tagging, the global coordinates are in the photo data. For those who have already keyworded their photos by locations, the place info can be tagged by multi-select and followed by grouped change in the Get Info window. Tagging individual photos is crazy, but tagging large group of photos all at once may be worth doing.