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mixmastabob · 10:02 PM

Just a general question, does Spotlight find photos in a photo album. For example if you have an iPhoto album named Cool Pictures, when you search for "Cool Pictures" in Spotlight, do those pictures show up?

I ask this because this doesn't work for me but I was wondering if it works for you guys.

Just leave a yes or no, I just want to know.

iPhoto 5.0.2 with Tiger 10.4 by the way. Thanks

mixmastabob · May 5, 2005, 11:30 PM

Bumpity Boo

MartiNZ · May 5, 2005, 11:41 PM

No, it doesn't. And I'm guessing it's because that information isn't attached to the files themselves but to something else in the iPhoto Library folder.

murk · May 5, 2005, 11:59 PM

Yes, it works, but it didn't at first. I tried something I read somewhere else and it started working. Don't know if it will help you, but here goes... Make a new keyword called "spotlight". Select all your photos and apply that keyword to all. See if you can search for that keyword. Then delete the keyword from iPhoto. Don't know why, but this even made searching by album name and photo name work, when it did not before.

MartiNZ · May 6, 2005, 01:03 AM

Hmm, photo names work for me but it doesn't find album titles - how do they appear in the spotlight results?

murk · May 6, 2005, 01:23 AM

All the photos in the album show up as search results.

cwasko · May 6, 2005, 01:38 AM

Originally Posted by murk

Yes, it works, but it didn't at first. I tried something I read somewhere else and it started working. Don't know if it will help you, but here goes... Make a new keyword called "spotlight". Select all your photos and apply that keyword to all. See if you can search for that keyword. Then delete the keyword from iPhoto. Don't know why, but this even made searching by album name and photo name work, when it did not before.

Yea, that did the trick for me. not sure why it didn't pick up on that to begin with.

andreadeca · May 6, 2005, 02:21 AM

Spotlight does not index photos based on the album name on which they are stored.
Instead, it looks for other information, typically the filename and eventual keywords you have attached to your pictures in iPhoto.
That is why adding the "spotlight" keyword on all pictures works. However, it will return ALL your pictures, regardless of the folder you are in.

I suggest to make several keywords (for example, one for each album) and to attach it to the varius pictures so you have more fine-grained control over spotlight searches.

andrea

mixmastabob · May 6, 2005, 03:57 AM

Thanks for all the replys everyone. I guess the general concensus is that iPhoto does not include the album in the metadata that Spotlight recieves. I guess I am going to make a keyword for each album and use that. Hopefully 10.4.1 will update Spotlight to utilize album data.

Judge_Fire · May 6, 2005, 04:47 AM

Technically IMHO, albums should just be keywords/phrases. Like 'Spring in Paris'.

It would look and feel just the same. When you drag an image to an album, it gets assigned the 'Spring in Paris' keyword. When you view an album, iPhoto collects all pics with that keyword.

Now these are two separate mechanisms, I think. It'd be easier for many to like and adopt keywords, if they were more compatible with the albums.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html

J

mixmastabob · May 6, 2005, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Judge_Fire

Technically IMHO, albums should just be keywords/phrases. Like 'Spring in Paris'.

It would look and feel just the same. When you drag an image to an album, it gets assigned the 'Spring in Paris' keyword. When you view an album, iPhoto collects all pics with that keyword.

Now these are two separate mechanisms, I think. It'd be easier for many to like and adopt keywords, if they were more compatible with the albums.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html

J

Defenitely, especially with Spotlight because honestly I drag photos into albums and never think about assigning them with keywords. Hopefully they will do something about it, its only logical right?

MartiNZ · May 6, 2005, 04:02 PM

Originally Posted by mixmastabob

Defenitely, especially with Spotlight because honestly I drag photos into albums and never think about assigning them with keywords. Hopefully they will do something about it, its only logical right?

I say right! And as you can add photos to multiple albums, there really does seem to be a bit of redundancy there - not to mention the interface for keywords kind of sucks. But I also think iPhoto should behave like iTunes and change the item names in the Finder!