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Help with importing PC photo files and then organizing it all in iPhoto

Hi everyone,

I'm relatively new to mac but I am just loving my purchase! I need some serious help with getting all of my photos organized though so I can easily find it for editing in iMovie.

I've accumulated over 10,000 photos stored on my PC which I've since transferred over to my LaCie external drive for my MacBook Pro via a wireless network connecting my PC & Mac. Some of these I've put onto my laptop internal hard drive and those I've imported into the iPhoto library. However, do I need to move the rest of the photos from my LaCie drive into my internal hard drive to import the photos into iPhoto, or can I tell iPhoto to look for the files in the external drive. If so, how do I do that? I know I'll then have to create albums in order to sort them, which I know how to do. Is there any fast way to do it by date? I had it sorted into different file folders by month & year so I could easily find them on my PC and would like to do the same using albums.

I am quickly running out of hard drive space on my laptop which is why I've put most of my photos on the external drive. Once I organize my existing collection, I would like to be able to import new pictures and have it stored on my external drive, not my internal drive. How do I do that?

Any other tips on organizing a massive photo library would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Karen

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.9), PC Desktop with WinXP

Posted on Jul 8, 2007 8:39 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jul 8, 2007 9:24 PM

Karen

You can opt to not have iPhoto copy the files into the iPhoto Library Folder (iPhoto -> Preferences -> Advanced) but if you do, then it will be a multi-step process to import and delete pictures, and migrating to a new machine is more difficult as well. What you certainly don't want is to have a library that is part created with the default setting and part created with your file system. This is a recipe for lost image

My advice: Run the iPhoto library from the external HD entirely. Copy the iPhoto Library Folder from your Internal HD to the external and hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting dialogue select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. Thereafter that's the default location for your library.

You can very quickly re-create your filing structure in iPhoto: just drag the folders of images to the source (or left hand) pane of iPhoto. The app will import them and create albums of the same name. You can then create the enclosing folders in iPhoto (File -> New Folder).

Regards

TD
6 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jul 8, 2007 9:24 PM in response to karentam6600000

Karen

You can opt to not have iPhoto copy the files into the iPhoto Library Folder (iPhoto -> Preferences -> Advanced) but if you do, then it will be a multi-step process to import and delete pictures, and migrating to a new machine is more difficult as well. What you certainly don't want is to have a library that is part created with the default setting and part created with your file system. This is a recipe for lost image

My advice: Run the iPhoto library from the external HD entirely. Copy the iPhoto Library Folder from your Internal HD to the external and hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting dialogue select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. Thereafter that's the default location for your library.

You can very quickly re-create your filing structure in iPhoto: just drag the folders of images to the source (or left hand) pane of iPhoto. The app will import them and create albums of the same name. You can then create the enclosing folders in iPhoto (File -> New Folder).

Regards

TD

Jul 8, 2007 9:57 PM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks. I'm copying my iPhotos folder to my LaCie drive right now. Since I've been moving stuff around, with some stuff in My Pictures (old PC files) and some in Pictures, is there a quick way for the program to identify duplicate files and flag them for me so I can delete them? Or is this a slow, manual process I have to do to get my photos all organized?

Thanks for the tips so far. I am waiting for everything to copy over and then will try your suggestions for the steps after copying the library to the LaCie.

Karen

Jul 9, 2007 12:05 PM in response to karentam6600000

Karen,

Is there any fast way to do it by date? I had it sorted into different file folders by month & year so I could easily find them on my PC and would like to do the same using albums.

This is where you get to enjoy the power of iPhoto's database. You can change the Sort in the View menu. Check out View > Sort Photos > by Date.

Or, click the little calendar icon near the lower left corner of the iPhoto window. This allows you to filter the library by year, month, week, or date. You can Command-click to add another date to your filter. You can Option-click to choose a recurring date: you get that month or date for all years in your library. [Want to see your kid's birthday for every year? Just Option-Click that date. Cool.]

The keywords filter is similar. There is a preference setting where you choose to filter based on ALL keywords chosen (where by choosing more keywords you narrow your field) or ANY keyword (where the more keywords you choose, the larger your field will be). Click on a keyword to filter your library by all photos containing that keyword. Use Command-click to add more keywords to the filter. A difference is that Option-click will eliminate photos with that keyword from your filter. [You can find all pictures of your kids with your dog but NOT at Halloween.]

You can create Smart Albums to combine the use of dates, keywords, ratings, titles, comments and more. The more information you enter into the database, the more powerful the tools become.

When your task of importing is complete and you are ready to play with iPhoto's features it may help to look at the iPhoto multimedia tutorial. Better organized than trying to read through the Help files, it can help you get acquainted with many of iPhoto's features.

Have fun.

Jul 9, 2007 8:31 PM in response to Yer_Man

Hi TD,

This is going to sound kind of stupid but I'm going to ask anyways as a iPhoto newbie:) I've moved my iPhoto library to my LaCie drive now, and I've pressed alt/option and clicked on the iPhoto library folder and nothing happens. Am I missing some step here? I've also tried to drag the library folder into the iPhoto app icon in the dock and I didn't see the "choose library" option. All it's asking me to do is to rebuild my thumbnail caches for better performance in iPhoto 6, which I'm now doing.

How do I get to the "choose library" option so iPhoto knows to look for files from the external drive?

Thanks,
Karen

Help with importing PC photo files and then organizing it all in iPhoto

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