Organize Your Photos into Albums

In iPhoto you can use albums to group photos of similar subjects, such as photos from your vacation to Hawaii, or photos from your child’s soccer games. You can create as many albums as you want, and even include the same photo in multiple albums.

Once you’ve made an album, you’ll be able to share it with other users on your network or make a slideshow. Albums also help make it easy to do things like create a photo book, calendar, or greeting card.

Tips

Other ways to create a new album

You can create a new album by clicking the Add button in the lower-left corner. Or you can simply drag a selection of photos from the photo library to the Source list. You can also drag a film roll icon to the Source list.

Duplicate an album

Sometimes it is easier to create a new album by starting with one that already has many of the photos you want. To do this, select the original album, go to the Photos menu in iPhoto, and then choose Duplicate. Remember that just the album is being duplicated, not the photos.

Change the order in which albums are displayed

You can change the order in which your albums are displayed simply by dragging the album icons up or down in the photo Source list. You can change the order in which photos are displayed in an album by dragging the image, and moving it to the location you want.

Group albums into folders

Sometimes you might like to have your books, slideshows, and albums grouped together. For example, you might create a separate photo album for each day of your vacation, which will then go into a folder called "Vacation." To create a folder, go to the File menu and choose New folder. After that, add the albums you want to the folder.

More ways to select photos

To select a group of photos that are next to each other, click the first photo, and then hold down the Shift key while you select the last photo in the group. To select photos that aren’t next to each other, select the first photo, and then hold down the Command key while you select additional photos.

Add photos from a CD or hard disk

When you want to add new photos from a CD or your hard disk into your iPhoto library, you can drag a folder of photos to the iPhoto Source list, and an album will be created with the same name as the folder. If you don't want to create a new album, drag the photos into your iPhoto library or any album that you've already set up.

Steps

Create a new album

From the File menu, choose New Album.
In the sheet that appears, choose Album from the pop-up menu.
Type a name for your album, and then click Create. Your new album appears in the iPhoto Source list.
Select a photo in your photo library, and then drag it to the new album’s icon. Continue adding photos to your new album.
Click the album icon to view the photos in your album.
To see all the photos in your photo library again, click the Library icon.
Another way to create an album is to simply drag a group of photos in your library to an empty space in your Source list.
An album will be automatically created. Double-click the album to change the name.