Where does iPhoto store imported photos?

Hi Terence

I have tried to read through the entire discussion hoping to find an answer to my question. I don't think it's there, but i did get a good impression of your knowledge and professionalism. Anyway, to the point:

I started using iPhoto by importing pictures from my old windows folders. I then spent quite a while arranging them within iPhoto - sorting out alboms, faces and places. When I did this, I used the default setting of copying the file to iPhoto. Enebtually, the amount of pictures and videos became too large for my Mac Mini, and I decided to move all my pictures and videos to an external (OS formatted) harddrive. Now here is the dillema: I want to keep the original pictures in the external drive, and use iPhoto in reference mode. However, about 80GB of pictures are already stored within iPhoto. Is there any way of extracting the picture files out to the external drive, but keeping all the other iPhoto settings? I can of course move the iPhoto libarry out to the external drive, but then I will still have duplicate pictures there - thus "wasting" 80GB of space.

I hope this was clear enough. Any ideas would be welcome.

You really do not want to start using a referenced mode - it is extremely problematic and having a mixed library of both manages and referenced photos is the worst of both worlds

simply move your iPhoto library to the external drive and create a small one on your Macmini and use iPhoto Library Manager - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ - to manage them

Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)

And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto

And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive

LN

That was quick...

Thanks, I look into it.

LarryHN

I guess my problems starts from my old Windoes habit of keeping my pictures in folders. I seem to think that i may one day need them in that format, and if i move to iPhoto i may not be able to go back...

I don't think it makes sense to keep two sets of files - one in folders and one copied in iPhoto - as this will double my storage needs. If I import all the pictures to iPhoto, and then delete the original folders, is there any way in the future of "going back" and exporting the pictures back into folders? I can't think of a reason to do so other than if I want to go back to a Windows OS...

What do you think?

iPhoto also keeps your pictures in folders after it import all the picture to iPhoto library, you have to keep that setting enabled. You can copy Originals folders to anywhere you want if you decide not to use iPhoto. I am a newbie so wait for experts to confirm.

If I import all the pictures to iPhoto, and then delete the original folders, is there any way in the future of "going back" and exporting the pictures back into folders?

File -> Export... that's exactly what that will do for you.

Regards

TD

By process, user is not supposed to play with Originals folder, if you delete originals folder and you don't have back up of pictures anywhere else too, then you lost all your pictures. I don't think export feature will work in that case as it looks for Originals folder.

I think you misunderstand what the poster means by

If I import all the pictures to iPhoto, and then delete the original folders,

In this case I believe he means that if he deletes his own pre-existing folder system, not the iPhoto Library/ Originals folder...

Regards

TD

You seem to know enough that you might be able to help me. I'm trying to figure out how to access photo files so I can attach them via my web email. If one does not use Mail or another software email client, then one has to be able to access the photo file in order to attach it. Using Mac OS 7, can you please let me know if this is possible, and if so, how I might go about it.

Btw: When I do a search for the file name of the photo it does not appear. It seems like on this system there is no access to the file. On my other system, 10.5.8 I have easy access via searching the file name. However, I use an external hard drive to house my files and I'm not sure if that is why I can access them.

Looking forward to your expertise on this issue!

You use the media browser as documented in this thread. In every open/upload/attach window in the lower left hand corner under media ==> photos ==> iPhoto

LN

Ah hah! Thank you!!!

This seems to me 10 pages of bull. The basic question underlying the discussion here is to what extent I'm allowed to store my JPG and MP3 files the way and where I want them to be stored. When, once in a while, I need a particular file, I need to know the name of the file and the exact location where it is to be found. In this context, iPhoto is completely useless.

Then don't use iPhoto. However, iPhoto allows complete access to your images, though maybe not by directly accessing the iPhoto Library.

Its simple... use the Media Browser if you want to goto the individual files. Its the same as using My Pictures in a Windows world.

Good evening- I hope you all can easily help me, seems that you have been able to help some others. Full disclosure- I don't use iPhoto regularly and am not an expert with this. Here's the situation- I'm trying to clean up my hard drive and free up some space. There are a lot of old pictures stored in iPhoto on my system that I'd like to clear off. I regularly backup using my external hardrive with Time Machine. The photos in iPhoto are not ones I need to access on a regular basis but I don't want to lose them forever.

So, tonight I did another backup with the intentions of cleaning out the majority of what is in iPhoto. Backup is done. Before I went ahead and deleted images from iPhoto, I dedcided to do a "test" to see if I could locate a few files so I know what to do when I want to access them. I deleted a few pictures from iPhoto and then went into my external hard drive to try and find them/reload them but I can't seem to do this.

So here are my questions/ points of confusion (again, this is not something I'm knowledgeable about and you probably need to talk to me in a very elementary fashion):

1. Is there a way for me to access the files of the images or does it all have to be through iPhoto? When I right-click on a photo in iPhoto and select Show File, it seems that the path takes me through iPhoto, which isn't an option when I then go into my external hard drive and try to locate it. All I get on my external hard drive is Pictures -> iPhoto.
2. When I go into my external hard drive and double-click the iPhoto icon that shows up in my Pictures file, it will not open and instead gives me the following error message: The iPhoto Library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Relaunch iPhoto with <option> key held down to choose another library. But again, I can't seem to get to the images that I have backed up and then deleted, so if I can't open iPhoto from my backup, how do I do it?

This is as clearly as I can try and formulate my questions- if you can help please feel free to talk to me like I'm a 5 year old because I just can't figure this out (but under normal circumstances would consider myself an intelligent person, I promise.)

Thank you.