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Tag: Organize

Rate Your Photos with Ease

Photos Workbench seamlessly integrates with Apple Photos to help you organize, name, and compare your photos.

The Importance of Star Ratings

Star ratings are a powerful tool for organizing and culling your photos and videos. They help you identify your best images and categorize them by quality or relevance.

With Photos Workbench, you can assign star ratings to your photos and videos, ranging from 1 to 5 stars. While the interpretation of each rating is personal, here’s a suggested guide:

  • No star – Unrated. Still needs reviewing
  • ★ (1 Star) – Rejected. Marked for deletion
  • ★★ (2 Stars) – Keep without adjustments. May have emotional value
  • ★★★ (3 stars) – Okay. Worth investing time into adjustments
  • ★★★★ (4 stars) – Good. Worth sharing
  • ★★★★★ (5 Stars) – Fantastic. Worth printing

For tips on developing a workflow for star ratings, check out our previous blog post.

How to Assign Star Ratings

No matter how you choose to interpret star ratings or structure your workflow, Photos Workbench offers several efficient ways to assign ratings to your photos and videos.

Continue reading Rate Your Photos with Ease

Quickly Assess Photos Using Star Ratings

Photos Workbench seamlessly integrates with Apple Photos, providing powerful tools to help you organize, name, and compare your photos. The star rating system is one of the most effective tools in this suite.

The Importance of Star Ratings

Star ratings are invaluable for organizing and culling your photos and videos. They help you identify your best shots and classify images by relative quality or relevance, with ratings ranging from 1 star (worst) to 5 stars (best).

By rating your photos, you can streamline your library by removing the poor shots. This process makes deciding which pictures to share, publish, or print easier. Once your photos are classified, finding specific images becomes a breeze. Browsing your library to rekindle memories is also much more enjoyable when you can focus on the ★★★★ and ★★★★★ images.

Making the Process Enjoyable

While rating photos is an excellent opportunity to revisit memories, it can also be tedious work.

Assuming a 5-star rating is reserved for your best shots—those worthy of National Geographic—it should be relatively easy to identify them at first sight.

That would leave the 4-star rating for the best shots in the current album. However, determining the best photos without constantly comparing them can be challenging. The same holds for the 3-star rating for the best shots in a series of similar photos.

Assigning a rating can feel arbitrary. Would you give the same photo the same rating if you rechecked it the next day?

A structured workflow can simplify the process of assessing the relative quality of your photos.

Continue reading Quickly Assess Photos Using Star Ratings

Find Photos by Star Rating

Photos Workbench helps you easily rate, find, and cull your photos and videos, making your Apple Photos library more organized and manageable.

Rate Your Photos with Ease

Photos Workbench allows you to rate your photos and videos on a scale from 1 to 5 stars. While the exact meaning of each rating is up to personal preference, here is one suggested interpretation:

  • No star – Unrated. Still needs reviewing
  • ★ (1 Star) – Rejected. Marked for deletion
  • ★★ (2 Stars) – Keep without adjustments. May have emotional value
  • ★★★ (3 stars) – Okay. Invest time into adjustments
  • ★★★★ (4 stars) – Good. Worth sharing
  • ★★★★★ (5 Stars) – Fantastic. Worth printing

Regardless of how you choose to use the star ratings, the better photos always get the higher rating. Thus, Photos Workbench offers filters allowing you to see items above a particular rating. For example, to see the standout shots of a given album, you can filter to show items rated “★★★★ or better.”

Filter Photos by Star Rating: 4-Star or Better
Filter Photos by Star Rating: 4-Star or Better

What if you wanted to see only photos with a specific rating?

Continue reading Find Photos by Star Rating

Batch Change Photo Titles using Photos Workbench

In Apple Photos, titles can hint at what is in a picture or where and when you took it. Descriptive titles are one of the resources we can use to organize and find photos.

Photos Workbench offers several methods of adding descriptive titles to photos:

  • Find & Replace Text: Change existing titles
  • Name Format: Build titles from text and tokens

Custom names can include a date and counter. The counter numbers the photos in their current order. Sort photos by date or arrange them manually to number the images by topic or order of preference.

Let’s see Photos Workbench in action.

Add Locations to Photos Using Photos Workbench

Photos Workbench offers several methods of adding locations to photos:

    • Drag-and-drop photos on a large map
    • Automatic geocoding use a track log from a GPS device or iPhone app
    • Incremental geocoding places photos along the path you traveled

Location information will allow Apple Photos to show your images on a map. It will help you look up images that you did not otherwise file or tag.

Knowing – and showing – where you took a photo adds to its “story”. On the map in Photos and Photos Workbench you get a bird’s-eye view of where you took your photos and the route you took to get there.

Let’s see Photos Workbench in action.

Efficient File Searches using Filters

HoudahSpot uses the Spotlight index maintained by macOS. This allows for lightning-fast file searches and enables HoudahSpot to find all kinds of files by name, text content, and metadata.

Spotlight does have its limitations. Some of these affect HoudahSpot. While HoudahSpot lets you combine any number of search criteria to hone in on specific files, you however cannot find or exclude files by their path.

You can, of course, use HoudahSpot to search in multiple folders at once. HoudahSpot also allows you to exclude folders from your search.

Screenshot: Smart Folder Exclusion
Multiple search locations. Smart exclusion

You do, however, need to list the folders you want to search or exclude. Since the Spotlight index does not know about file paths, you cannot set up a criterion on file paths.

For example, you cannot configure a search to ignore all files where some parent folder is named Temporary. You’d need to explicitly list all such Temporary folders.

Fortunately, HoudahSpot can filter search results to hide unwanted results. A single filter can prevent all Temporary files from cluttering up your file search.

Continue reading Efficient File Searches using Filters

Hook-ed on Files

Hook by CogSci Apps lets you create links between your documents, emails, web pages, and notes. On the Internet, links between web pages allow you to discover related content and navigate a vast sea of documents. Likewise, Hook puts files into order on your Mac.

Much like HoudahSpot, Hook is a productivity tool in the guise of a utility. Rather than solve problems you wouldn’t have without a computer, these tools empower your Mac to help you get your work done.

Of course, HoudahSpot and Hook work great together.

Continue reading Hook-ed on Files

What’s New in HoudahSpot 6.1?

HoudahSpot 6.1 distills the feedback we received on the HoudahSpot 6 upgrade into a series of refinements: small changes that will subtly improve your file management.

Apple Mail Messages and MailTags

HoudahSpot can now find Apple Mail messages tagged by SmallCubed’s MailTags plug-in. HoudahSpot searches message keywords and project names. Requires MailSuite 2021 for macOS Big Sur.

Search tagged Mail messages
Find Mail messages by MailTag keywords

Continue reading What’s New in HoudahSpot 6.1?