Create 'per film roll' Smart Albums in iPhoto

Jan 19, '06 06:27:00AM

Contributed by: avnit

This hint will allow you to have any number of the most recent film rolls, each in their own smart album. Instead of having the last X rolls all in the same Smart Album, as allowed by iPhoto (Preferences, General tab, Show last X rolls album), this hint will allow you to have, for example, five different Smart Albums, each representing one of the five most recent rolls. The end result is that there will be a Smart Album called, for example, "Second To Last Roll" which contains all of the items in the second to last film roll. I've only tried this in iPhoto '06, but it should work in '05 as well.

First, hit File: New Smart Album (or Option-Command-N). Enter "Last Roll" as the smart album name, and enter the following condition:

Roll -- is in the last -- 1 -- rolls
Make sure that is the only condition, and click "OK". This should have created a new smart album that includes only the most recent roll added to iPhoto. Next, create another smart album called "Second to Last Roll", this time entering the following conditions:
Roll -- is not in the last -- 1 -- rolls
Roll -- is in the last -- 2 -- rolls
Make sure that these are the only conditions, and then click "OK". Now you should have another smart album that includes the second to last roll added to iPhoto. If that's all you want, fine, if not, just keep on adding smart albums until you have enough. I use five recent roll smart albums. Here's another example for the third to last roll added to iPhoto:
Roll -- is not in the last -- 2 -- rolls
Roll -- is in the last -- 3 -- rolls 
Notice the pattern? If x is the number of the roll you want to use (2 for the second to last roll, 3 for the third to last, etc.), the pattern is as follows:
Roll -- is not in the last -- x-1 -- rolls
Roll -- is in the last -- x -- rolls
Enjoy!

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