i am a new mac user. what is the difference between a keyword and description? title?
for example, a vacation to canada in 2009. if i put : canada vacation 2008 in the descriptions plus the city name--what is the difference if i use keywords or description?
can't i search for words in either the title/description or keyword?
i am trying to organize and think i will use iphoto vs bridge in elements. when i want to do layers in elements, do you export to elements or drag onto the desktop and then into elements?
thanks!
***WARNING***LONG REPLY***
KEYWORDS vs. DESCRIPTIONS
I think the biggest diff between title and keywords is spelling. With keywords, it's always spelled the same way. Also, later you can easily change the tags on a block of pictures, whereas with descriptions you have to do it one by one.
It's easy to use key words. Hit apple-K to bring up the key word menu. Hit "+" to add a new keyword. iPhoto will let you type in the new keyword, and then it will try to auto-assign a single-letter hotkey to that new keyword. You can also double click on the right-hand side column to assign/re-assign or delete the hot key.
Let's say you have a dog, and you want to tag all the picks of the dog with your pets name "rover" You can add a key word rover, and assign a hot key of "r" Then, when you load up new pics of Rover, you hit apple-k to get the hotkey menu, and then select all the dog shots and hit the "r" key, and now everything is tagged with rover!
Now, let's say Rover tragically passes away after having him for only six months. In the meantime, you have also gotten a cat and two goldfish. You've decided you want everything with animals to be tagged generically "pets" so you want to change all the "rover" tagged shots to "pets"
Do a search for "rover" and all your tagged photos come up. Open up the keyword menu, add a new keyword called "pets" with a hotkey of "p" With all your Rover photos (which you just searched on) selected, hit "p" which adds the "pet" tag to the picture and then hit "r" which deletes the "rover" tag, then delete the rover keyword and you've just switch 40 pictures (or how many ever) to a new keyword with just a couple of clicks. Plus you are sure every picture is tagged with "pets" instead of some with "ptes" or other typos, so you can find them again in the future.
Hope that helps! I use descriptions for uploading to web sites and for my favorite photos (e.g. Grammy visits the kids!) but keywords for organizing and retrieving photos.
SLIDE SHOWS
On your other questions -- I don't do slide shows, so I can't answer that.
BRIDGE
Bridge sux (imo).
EDITING
As ChrisA said, to edit in iPhoto, you can set up Elements to be your external editor so you don't have to drag pics to/from elements.
Here's how I have mine set up: for basic developing (levels, saturation, red-eye removal etc.) I use iPhoto, and have set it to do "full screen editing" which is really cool. For anything more advanced, I use elements as the external editor.
Here's some detail on how to set this up: go to iPhoto preferences (preferences menu choice under iPhoto on the menu bar) and when preferences shows up, you'll see "edit photo" (which most likely defaults to "main window") Click that drop down menu, and you'll see a choice called "in application" Choose that and select elements. Also, in the preferences, I recommend setting "double click" to "edit photo" instead of the deault "show full screen".
Now, iPhoto will drop your picture into Elements EVERY TIME YOU CHOOSE TO EDIT. Close the dialogue box and edit a photo, and you see it opens in Elements. Now, go back into preferences, back to "edit photo" and choose "full screen" instead of "in application" (you can also choose "main window" or "separate window" if you prefer those).
NOW, when you want to edit a photo, you double-click and it will open the iPhoto editing options. But, you can also RIGHT-CLICK the photo, and choose "edit in external editor" and iPhoto remembers your preference for Elements.
Now you have the best of both worlds -- quick and simple edits (actually they are more developing tools than editing tools) in iPhoto, or right-click to drop automatically into elements.
Hope that helps.