Using Keywords to Search

Once you have a lot of photos in your iPhoto library, you’ll want a way to find them fast. Keywords make that task easy. Assign keywords — such as vacation or Mother — to your photos, and you’ll be able to find them quickly and easily weeks or months later by searching iPhoto by those keywords.

To assign keywords:

  1. Open an Event in your iPhoto library and select a photo.
  2. Choose View > Keywords or press Command-Shift-K.
  3. Choose Window > Show Keywords. The Keywords window appears. You’ll find several keywords already available, and you can add new ones.
  4. In the Keywords window, click Edit Keywords to have the window display a scrolling list of editable keywords.
  1. In the bottom-left corner of the window, click the Add (+) button. A new entry appears at the bottom of the keywords list, ready for you to customize.
  2. Type the keyword you want to add and click OK. The new keyword appears in the Quick Group section of the Keywords window.
  3. Go back to your Event and select the photos you’d like to associate with this keyword. Click the keyword button in the Quick Group area. All the selected photos now have the keyword assigned to them.

In the future, when you want to find a specific photo, just go to the search field, choose Keyword from the pop-up menu, and select a keyword button to find associated photos.