Organizing Photos with Flickr
2. Browsing and Searching Your Photos by Tag
Photo sets are great if you’re accustomed to organizing photos into albums in programs like EasyShare, but when you get in the habit of tagging all your Flickr photos, you can pull up exactly the photos you want to see onscreen even more quickly (and you don’t have to pay Flickr for the privilege of creating more than three photo sets). For example, you can add the tags “xmas” and “party” to a photo, and the photo shows up with all your Christmas shots and all your party shots. Or, you can pull up only the shots that are specifically from Christmas parties (and not birthday parties).
Tags are easy to implement and maintain. Here are the basics:
- To add a tag to a photo, go to the “Your photos” page and click the photo. When the photo is open in its own window, click “Add a tag” (to the right of the picture). A little text box pops up, where you can type as many tags as you like, with a space between each. Or click “Choose from your tags” (just below the text field), and Flickr lists your existing tags right there onscreen. Click to add them to the displayed photo.
Figure 2. To create a new photo set (or add a photo to one you created earlier), click “Add to Set.” With a free Flickr account, you’re limited to just three photo sets. Fortunately, your photos don’t have to be part of a set. You can create and delete sets as needed, while keeping all your photos in one big photo stream.
Tip: You can also add tags to photos as you upload them to Flickr.
- To hunt down photos by their tags, type keywords in the “Search by tag” field (on the “Your photos” page, for example). You can also use the search feature in Flickr Organizr.
- You can also see all your photos listed by tag instead of by searching. Under the “Search by tag” field, you see the words “Or, browse by…”; click “Your tags.” The next page lists all your tags, in descending order of popularity. The big, bold words are tags you (or your Flickr pals) have visited the most often. Click a tag to see its photos onscreen.
- To remove a tag from a photo, open the photo in its own window and click “Edit title, description, and tags.” You can then edit right in the Tags text field.
- If you later want to rename or delete a tag from your list (change “bestfriend” to “ratfink,” for example), then look under “Manage your tags” (on the “Your tags” page, at right).
Next: Deleting Photos from Flickr
