David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Hiding Photos

Most people think they have only two choices when confronting a so-so photo: Keep it or delete it.

Keeping it isn't a satisfying solution, because it's not one of your best, but you're still stuck with it. You have to look at it every time you open iPhoto/Picasa, you have to skip over it every time you're making a photo book or slideshow, and so on. But deleting it isn't such a great solution, either. You just never know when you might need exactly that photo again, years later.

Fortunately, there's a happy solution: You can hide a photo. It's there behind the scenes, and you can always bring it back into view should the need arise. In the meantime, you can pare your visible collection down to the really good shots, without being burdened by the ghosts of your less impressive work.

To hide some photos, select them (Selecting Photos). Then choose Photos→Hide Photos (iPhoto) or Pictures→Hide (Picasa). The selected photos vanish. Of course, they're still on your hard drive. But they no longer bog you down when you're scrolling, and they no longer depress you when they stare out at you every day.

Seeing Photos While They're Hidden

To bring all your hidden photos back into view for a moment, choose View→Hidden Photos (iPhoto) or View→Hidden Pictures (Picasa).

All of the hidden photos now reappear, but you'll still know which ones they are; in iPhoto, they bear big red Xs on their corners, and in Picasa, they're ghostly and transparent. This is your chance to reconsider—either ...