This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Understand the Organizer Work Area
The Organizer is dominated by the Media Browser, which is used to find and view thumbnail representations of your photos. It’s flanked by two panels that you use to group and organize your image files (FIGURE 3.12); the panels can be hidden to make room for more photos.
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FIGURE 3.12 The Organizer workspace makes it easy to browse your entire photo collection.
The Media Browser
Every digital photo or video downloaded into the Organizer is automatically added to the Media Browser. Resizable thumbnails in the Media Browser window make it easy to scan through even a large number of images.
Media is usually organized by the dates the photos or videos were captured, but you can also view images grouped by the people in them, by places where they’ve occurred (using geotagging information embedded in the files or locations you’ve specified on a map), or by time-based events. I cover each mode in this chapter.
The Folders panel
The panel at left includes multiple ways to display an overview of your image collection. Clicking Albums shows the albums you’ve created (discussed later in this chapter), and clicking Folders reveals where the files are stored on disk (FIGURE 3.13). Click a folder name to view its contents.
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FIGURE 3.13 The My Folders list reveals directories where your imported photos are located.
You can also click the button at the top-right corner of the Folders panel to expose your disk’s structure as a list or in a Tree view that reveals the folder hierarchy (FIGURE 3.14). In this view, for example, you can move images between disks (which ensures that the Organizer properly keeps track of them).
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FIGURE 3.14 The Tree view shows folders in their hierarchies on disk.
To move folders in the Tree view:
Choose View As Tree from the button at the top right of the Folders panel.
Drag a folder to a new location (FIGURE 3.15).
FIGURE 3.15 Move photos or folders using the Folder Hierarchy List.
Or
Select images in the Media Browser and drag them to a folder.
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The folders and their files are moved in the Explorer (Windows) or Finder (macOS), not just in the Organizer.
The timeline
An optional, but helpful, way to quickly navigate your photos by date is the timeline, located just above the Media Browser. Choose View > Timeline or press Ctrl+L/Command+L. The timeline uses date and time information embedded in each image to construct bars (month markers) to represent sets of photos taken within specific months and years. When a month marker is selected in the timeline, that month’s photos are displayed at the top of the Media Browser (FIGURE 3.16).
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FIGURE 3.16 Click a month marker in the timeline to view that month’s photos on the Media Browser.