David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Working with Thumbnails

To see what's in one of these folders or albums, click it. The right side of the screen fills with the thumbnails of its contents. At this point, you can have all kinds of fun:

• Scroll through them either by using the vertical scroll bar or by pressing the Page Up or Page Down keys. Press Home to jump to the very top of the photo collection, or End to leap to the bottom.

• Make them all bigger or smaller by dragging the size slider at the lower-right corner of the window.

• Rotate one by clicking it, or selecting several, and then pressing ⌘-R (iPhoto) or Ctrl+R (Picasa).

  Tip

  Those keystrokes rotate the selected photos clockwise. To rotate them the opposite direction, press Option-⌘-R (iPhoto) or Shift+Ctrl+R (Picasa).

• Delete one by clicking it and then pressing the Delete key.

  Tip

  It's not actually gone for good. It goes into the iPhoto Trash (iPhoto) or the Recycle Bin (Picasa). It's not fully deleted until you choose iPhoto→Empty Trash or right-click the Recycle Bin and, from the shortcut menu, choose Empty Recycle Bin.

• Open one for viewing by double-clicking.

• Sort the photo thumbnails by date, name, size, and so on. In iPhoto, these options are in the View→Sort Photos submenu; in Picasa, they're in the View→Folder View submenu.

  Note

  You can also drag thumbnails around into a new sequence using the mouse. In iPhoto, though, this works only in an album (described later in this chapter).

• Export some photos to the hard drive by selecting them (see the selection tricks ...