David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Albums

In the olden days of film cameras and drugstore prints, most people kept pictures in their original paper envelopes. You might have used that photo in an album or mailed it to somebody—but then the photo was no longer in the envelope, and it couldn't be used for anything else.

But you're digital now, baby. You can use a single photo in a million different ways, without ever removing it from its original "envelope" (your hard drive).

In iPhoto/Picasa terminology, an album is a subset of your pictures—drawn from a single Event or folder, or many different ones—that you group together for easy access and viewing. An album can consist of any photos that you select. It's represented by a little album-book icon in the list at the left side of the screen. (You can see a bunch of them on the facing page.)

While your photo collection as a whole might contain thousands of photos from a hodgepodge of unrelated family events, trips, and time periods, a photo album has a focus: Steve & Sarah's Wedding, Herb's Knee Surgery, and so on.

As you probably know, mounting snapshots in a real photo album is a pain—that's why so many people still have stacks of Kodak prints stuffed in envelopes and shoeboxes. But with iPhoto/Picasa, you don't need mounting corners, double-sided tape, or scissors to create an album. In the digital world, there's no excuse for leaving your photos in hopeless disarray.

The single most important point is this: Putting photos in an album doesn't move or copy them. ...