Keywords (Tags) to Group your Pictures with Picasa

tagsTags are the keywords that you can attach to pictures. They are not meant to be visible. They are meant to give you multiple ways to find and group pictures. In our 11 years of RV Travel in the United States, we have been in Texas several times. I store my pictures by month, so I have Texas pictures from April, 2015, we’re in Texas right now Smile, and I also have Texas pictures from March, 2006 and November, 2005 and March 2008, etc. etc. I try to add a tag for Texas to all the best pictures that I took while in Texas. To add a tag, you just select the picture(s) and then click the Tag button, type the tag and click the green +.  That way, any time I want, I can view all our pictures from Texas, regardless of their folder location on my computer.

If you Want the Tags to be Visible

1. If you just want to see what tags have been applied to any given picture, the easiest way is to set your thumbnail caption to show tags.

  • View->Thumbnail Caption->Tags

2. If you want to see what tags have been applied to a group of pictures

  • Select the Group (by clicking on a folder or an album)
  • Open the Tag Panel by clicking on the Tag button
  • You will now see the list of all tags used in the selected pictures

3. If you want to see your complete list of all tags you’ve ever used – you’re out of luck. Picasa doesn’t have a way to manage the list of tags. I wish they did! I do have a workaround though. You need to be able to select ALL your pictures so they are one group, then you can see the tags for the group like in #2 above.

  • Search for .jpg – this should give you a group of ALL your pictures (unless you shoot in RAW)
  • Click on Search Results in the top left, this should select ALL your pictures. For example, my selection tray now says “Album Selected – 55,550 photos”
  • Open the Tag Panel by clicking on the Tag button and you should now be seeing all tags applied. Unfortunately, you’ll notice that they are not sorted Alphabetically, they are sorted by popularity.

My favorite use of Tags is to create Albums.  See this past article: Picasa Tags can Make Albums

If you are a Geeks on Tour member, you can also watch these Tutorial Videos: