The Art of Tagging Photos

Basics

The heart of Tidepool lies in the use of "Tags." For each photo, you can add useful contextual information in the form of Who, What, Where and When tags. You will then be able to find photos with various combinations of these tags. You will be organized without the pain and fuss of typical organizational schemes. This section describes easy-to-use techniques to tag 1000s of photos quickly.

Basic things you can do with tagging photos:

Tagging

You can tag photos using different techniques – you will find the method that best suits your own style and needs based on your current photos. You will get very efficient at tagging thousands of photos in no time if you use the "bulk" tagging methods, below.

Simple tagging

Select a single photo, drag tags onto the photo. Or, use the tag chooser by typing the name of the tag.

Bulk Tagging

A little preparation is helpful. Though you could tag each photo one at a time, being able to tag many photos at once is more efficient. Combining tagging and tag creation is also the key to efficiency.

• Think about what you are about to tag. Do you have lots of photos that need the same tags?
  
  
• For new photos, show only untagged photos in the viewpane.
  
  
• Select one or more photos in preparation for tagging them all with the same tag(s). (Getting good at multi-selecting thumbs is worth the effort to learn — and it applies to all windows-type programs.)

Tag Chooser Style

• Simply start to type the first few letters of the tag.
  
  
• You should see the Tag Chooser with a list of tags that match by name. Press the down arrow or click to select the desired tag. Press Enter.
  
  
  
  
• If it is a new tag, simply keep typing, choose the proper tag type, and press Enter.
  
  
• Now your selected photo(s) get that tag.

Drop Photos into a Box

Boxes are nothing more than a collection of specific tags. When you drop a photo into a box, that photo will automatically get the tags that make up the box.

Example: Maybe you have vacation photos, the majority of which have a set of common tags:

1. Ensure the tags exist: who is on the vacation, where the vacation is/was, maybe a what tag for the vacation "name."
   
   
2. Then simply select all of these tags and make a box  (don't worry if no photos appear in the box yet).
   
   
3. Rename the box to something simple: "Our Vacation."
   
   
4. Now exit out of the box () and return to viewpane with your new vacation photos.
   
   
5. Open the lister () and scroll if needed so your new box is visible.
   
   
   
   
6. Now you can drag photos from the viewpane into the box.
   

And see that each photo gets all of the box tags.

If some tags do not apply to a photo, then simply remove (untag) the tags by dragging the errant tag off of the thumb and onto any dock.

Drag and Drop

• Select one or more photos to receive a tag.
  
  
• Drag a tag onto the closest of the selected photos (it does not matter which one, all photos in the selection will acquire the tag)
  
  

  Drag tag from dock:		and drop it on a photo(s)		This will tag all selected photos:

Untag

To remove a tag from one or more photos, simply drag the tag off of the photo's sleeve, and back onto any of the docks.

Think of it as dragging the tag off the photo and depositing it anywhere outside of the photo borders (and not onto another photo).

Tagging Regions

Tag rectangular regions of your photos.

• Select a photo and zoom by clicking full zoom button or by double-clicking the photo.
  
  
• Select a rectangular region on the photo using the mouse
  
  
  
  
• Drag a preexisting tag into the region,
  
  
  
  
• or use the freeform typing and Tag Chooser to tag the region.

Hover your mouse over the region to see tag(s):

This is also useful for tagging many faces in a photo:

Tip: regions can be used as the icon to display for a tag.

Changing the tags of a region

You can drag as many tags onto a region as needed.

You can remove a tag by hovering your mouse over the region until the tag(s) become visible. Then, simply click on the "X".

Resizing a Region

When you hover over a region, you can see the resizing "handles" on the sides and the corners. Simply "grab" any one of the handles (you can tell you are over a handle when the shape of the mouse cursor changes) by clicking on it and moving the mouse as desired.

Deleting a Region

When you hover your mouse over a region, you can see the "X" in the upper right corner. Click to delete the region.

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