Feature: Organize Your Photo Collection

At some point a few years back, I realized that my digital photo collection had gone from large, about a thousand images, to unmanageably huge--almost 10,000 pictures.

In the old days, I could keep track of my photos by arranging them into logically named folders. But with dozens and dozens of subfolders in the My Pictures folder, it was simply no longer possible to quickly drill into the right location to find the picture I need. And let's face it, having to root through several folders in search of a single item is a bad way to work. To solve the problem, I migrated to photo organizer software.

Pick a Photo Organizer

You have many programs to choose from; here are some of the most popular:

• Adobe Photoshop Album (bundled with Photoshop Elements, around $80 to $100)
• ACDSee (about $50)
• Corel Paint Shop Photo Album (about $25)
• Microsoft Digital Image Library (bundled with Digital Image Suite, priced around $80 to 100)

A Single View

What makes photo management programs special is that they allow you to break free from the limitations of folders and see all of your pictures in a single, unified view. That way you can scroll through all your image files as if they were stored in a single folder--even if they're scattered across 50 different locations on your drive--making your photos easier to locate.

Use Keywords for Convenience

Even better, most photo organizers use keywords or tags to help you zero in on your photos more efficiently. A keyword, also called a tag, is a kind of metadata--any word or phrase that you assign to a photo to help describe it. So a picture of a family photo during the holidays might contain any of these keywords: family, holiday, kids, snow.

The keywords you assign to your photos are entirely up to you, so your photo organizer works just the way you want it to.

I know what you're thinking: That sounds like a lot of work. You're right, it can take a few hours to keyword your existing images. But once they're done, they're done. And it'll be a lot easier to find what you want later. But don't think that you have to type all of these keywords in by hand. Let me show you how it's done with two of the most popular photo organizers: Adobe Photoshop Album and Microsoft Digital Image Suite.

In Adobe Photoshop Album, there's a Tags pane on the right side of the screen. Find the category you want to add a new tag to (say, the People category) and right-click on the header. Choose Create New Tag in Category, name it, and click OK. Now drag a picture from the thumbnail view onto the tag you just created in the Tags pane. That automatically assigns the tag to the picture. You can drag multiple pictures at once, making it easy to assign the same keyword to a slew of photos at a time.

In Microsoft Digital Image Library, click the Keywords button in the toolbar to open the Keyword Painter. Add a new keyword by clicking at the top of the Painter window and typing a new name. Then select the keyword by clicking the check box and "paint" it on thumbnails to assign it.

You can assign any number of keywords to your photos, making it easy to zero in on just the images that interest you. And your keywords can be as general ("sunset," "camping") or as specific ("Ocean Beach sunset" or "my Ferrari's new paint job") as you like.