Adobe Photoshop Album: My Photo Savior

It’s all thanks to Photoshop Album, or at least the tools it provides. I’d read about the software winning several awards, bought a copy in January 2004 and understood why. The ability to create “tags” and assign them to photos is simple and intuitive.

For example, I have a tag for me, each of my sons and my wife. When I import a batch of photos, I quickly drag and drop the tags on the right group of photos. I can select all the photos of my youngest son, drop his name on them and boom! All tagged. Is my oldest son also in one of the photos? Drop his name on it, and now the photo is tagged both my children.

Similarly, photos can be tagged for places — such as when we were at Disneyland — or events, such as Christmas. You can have tags for anything you like. And once the photos are tagged, it just takes a click to filter out all the photos but those that match your criteria.

Yep, I’m weird. I’m diligent about tagging my photos as soon as I import them. Many people I know aren’t. But you should! It doesn’t take long, and a tool like Photoshop Album makes it so easy.

Aside from tagging, you can also view photos by date — and one of the best features is the ability to adjust dates if your camera got things wrong. For example, say you set the date wrong, so all your pictures in a group you shot had the dates of Jan. 1, 2 & 3, 1980. Photoshop Album lets you give a group of photos the correct date — and it will even adjust things so that they are spread correctly over a period of time.

For instance, say the real date of when you started shooting photos was July 23, 2004. Select all the photos, give the correct day and time for the first in the group, and all will automatically be adjusted to match. In other words, Jan. 1 becomes July 23, Jan. 2 becomes July 24 and Jan. 3 becomes July 25.

Remember, time is a type of tagging as well — and one of the few key things automatically embedded in your pictures. That’s why the ability to correct the wrong time is incredibly helpful.