Plant Labels and Maps

[David Sellars]

I have found that the best solution is an electronic labelling system.  I take pictures of complex areas of the rock garden and annotate the images with the plant names.  The annotations can be done in PowerPoint or even more easily with the Preview program that is part of the OS with Apple Macs.  The images are dated which provides useful historical information on plant growth (and losses). This system is especially useful for trough and tufa plantings.  When I am planting I take notes of the plant locations and transfer the names to the images later.

For garden use I print the annotated images on letter size paper and put them in plastic sleeves in a 3-ring binder.  Here are a few samples.

[Booker]

Clever, clever, clever!!!   Very impressed David.

[Lori S.]

I also take photos as "maps" and write on the plant names, but have not got to the point of annotating them on the computer.   I hope you don't mind me asking you some questions about that, David (or other Mac users)?

Do you also use iPhoto?  How do you open a photo that is in iPhoto using Preview?  (An eye-rollingly dumb question to all the Mac lovers out there, no doubt, but I find many things about Macs completely baffling and incomprehensible.)

I am able to open other photos, that are not in iPhoto, and can see how Preview could be used to do annotations, however.  But what do you have to do to activate the "Preview/Tools/Annotate" function?  All tabs under "Annotate" are currently greyed-out... ??  Edit:  Oops, never mind.  (Evidently, "Annotate" would not function straight from the menu at the top of the page, but had to be moved to the toolbar in order to be activated...  Beats me.
 

[David Sellars]

Lori:

To use Preview you first have to export the photos from iPhoto using the File/Export command.  I save the images to a folder called Plant Labels.  To open them in Preview you can use the File/Open command or just double click on them from the Finder.

Once in Preview click on the Annotate button and a tool bar menu comes up.  The fourth item along is a Text Box.  Click on that and then click anywhere in the image and start typing.  The first item in the tool bar menu is an arrow so you can add arrows as well by I don't usually bother.  You can move the text boxes around by clicking and dragging to get them in the best location after you have typed in the plant name.

There is a catch using Preview.  Once you Save the annotated image you cannot change the annotations.  It saves the image as a new jpeg.  You can add more annotations after you save but not delete or move the previous ones.  PowerPoint is more flexible but is otherwise a bit more of a hassle to use than Preview.  You can get PowerPoint for Mac and it interchanges with Windows PowerPoint perfectly.

[Lori S.]

Ah, yes.  That makes perfect sense - thanks for the explanation.  I do have the "Office for Macs" version of Powerpoint on this iMac, and am familiar with the program from my work PC, so that's what I'll use (given the strange uneditability of Preview files).  
Terrific ideas, David!  Thank you!