Importing and reorganizing 10 years of photos the iPhoto way

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Importing and reorganizing 10 years of photos the iPhoto way

Good morning, all:

I'm a new-to-Mac-after-15-years-on-the-PC-side user. My move to Apple was long planned, but it was expedited after my Dell laptop was stolen from our home a few weeks ago. Thankfully, all my data was backed up on external hard drives. But it is making my importing process a tad more complicated, since my photos and videos are scattered.

My old (PC-based) photo organization system worked well for me. I'm a mom to four, so I made extensive use of the folder-subfolder-subfolder. Photos were either grouped into a Family 2011 folder and then into subfolders by events (which tranlsates nicely into iPhoto) or grouped into folders I made for each of my four children (Amelia 2011) and then into month subfolders after that (June 2011). The folders for my kids contain photos that are mostly specific to them - pictures of lost teeth or art projects or learning to ride a bike or learning to walk.But ocassionally, I would end up with photos that were important to more than old child - my oldest daughter holding the new baby while he naps, for example. In my old system, I would simply copy the original picture and put a copy in each child's folder for that month. My thought was: That way, if I'm working on a book or project for that child, I won't have to search in the other children's folders for pictures that might contain them. (Of course, I also renamed all my photos, so I could search by names. But since 85% of my photos are of my family, it would be cumbersome at best.)

So my question now is: As I import each year for each child, I end up with iPhoto-recognized duplicates. What should I do about that? Should I let iPhoto create the duplicates and then reorganize later? If I do that, is there a way to mark duplicates so I can go back and save the original in multiple albums and then delete the duplicates from where they would be in the different Events? Or is it not really a big deal to have duplicates? It bugs me, as I'm a tidy person. But maybe it's not worth the effort?

I should add that the way I'm translating my old system into iPhoto-land is to create Events for each family subfolder (2011 Apple Orchard, 2011 Seattle, 2011 Christmas). That's fairly straight-forward. Then, when I translate my kids' photos for each year and get 12 Events for them, I use Albums to keep those photos organized. I have folders for each child and then subfolders under that for each year. Once I get the Albums organized, I merge all 12 Events for Amelia 2011 (for example) into one large Amelia 2011 Event file. It's one of the only ways I can think to limit the Events area, which will end up with hundreds and hundreds of events by the time I'm done transferring files.

Thanks for all your help! I've read through this community extensively in the last few weeks. It's a great resource.

Kelly

Posted on Dec 31, 2011 9:53 AM

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Answer 1

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LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Dec 31, 2011 10:31 AM in response to Kelly @ I Need More Sun

I'm not sure because it seems you may be using incorrect terms and using them interchangeably

events are a very basic and very inflexible way to organize photos - in essence a simple automatic organization by date for people who do not want to do more

You can easily recreate your folders into events in iPhoto but with no hierarchy

For hieracrhy you use albums and folders

Albums hold photos and folders hold albums and other folders - and albums are logical things that hold pointers to photos in the event so you do not duplicate the storage - as many albums as you want can point to the same photos using no additional space

and generally it is not necessary to subdivide by dates since you can instantly pull up date ranges using the serach function - if you want them you can create smart albums using date as a criteria

I work with the old high shcool jourlism theory of Who. What. Where. When and Why - Who is done using faces, when comes from the camera supplied date, where using places (I use a GPS camera so that is automatic form the camera too) and then add key words for what and why

Then with search orfolders, albums and smart albums I can find any photo very quickly

As to duplicates I probably would not import them but If you do I believe that you can pretty quickly find them in the photos view sorted by date/time - the duplicates should appear nexrt to each other there

LN

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Answer 2

Dec 31, 2011 10:43 AM in response to LarryHN

Thanks Larry. You're right -- I am using the terms interchangably in my post above. My apologies. I understand it in my head, but it doesn't always come out correctly in my terms.

I am doing exactly what you describe using iPhoto's Folders and Albums. The biggest reason for me wanting to retain my dated folders is that my first few years aren't true digital pictures - they are digital scans of pictures I took with my old film SLR. So they aren't dated correctly. The date associated with them is the date I scanned them, not the date the picture was taken.

But yes -- in subsequent years, I don't necessarily need to retain the folders. I feel most comfortable doing it for now, as I cautiously migrate. But it's possible I will do away with them at some future date and just lump them all together in an Album.

Your tip to view the photo by date and thus find the duplicates makes sense to me. Follow-up: Is there a way to see if a photo is being stored somewhere other than an event? For example, if I have duplicates of a photo, is there a way to see if one or both of them are being stored in a folder/album before I delete it?

One other question, this time about keywords: How do they differ from titling the photo? In the past, I would title my photos and use those for searchable terms, if I needed to find a photo fast. Do you not label/title pictures when you use keywords?

Kelly

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Answer 3

Rysz

Level 8

44,391 points

Dec 31, 2011 11:00 AM in response to Kelly @ I Need More Sun

"The date associated with them is the date I scanned them, not the date the picture was taken."

The photo date can be edited and changed for each photo or a group of photos. My workaround for the issue above was to change the dates manually. Since I did not know the exact date of the scanned photos, I assigned the arbitrary date of January 1st of the year that I thought the original photo was taken.

Just a suggestion...

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Answer 4

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Dec 31, 2011 11:08 AM in response to Kelly @ I Need More Sun

you can search on titles - keywords are a bit more structures way - and for poor spellers and typers like me it is easier to pick a word form a list than to type it 🙂

And smart albums are easy to use keywords with

LN

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Answer 5

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,408 points

Dec 31, 2011 11:45 AM in response to Kelly @ I Need More Sun

The folders for my kids contain photos that are mostly specific to them - pictures of lost teeth or art projects or learning to ride a bike or learning to walk.But ocassionally, I would end up with photos that were important to more than old child - my oldest daughter holding the new baby while he naps, for example. In my old system, I would simply copy the original picture and put a copy in each child's folder for that month

This is an excellent example of an opportunity to use keywords - two different keywords on the sme photo. So, a snap of John and Joan gets keyworded 'John' and 'Joan'. Now the same snap will turn up in a Smart Album for 'John' and also in one for 'Joan' too - no duplication involved.

fwiw here's a canned answer I offer to demonstrate some of the possibilities of iPhoto:

I use Events simply as big buckets of Photos: Spring 08, July - Nov 06 are typical Events in my Library. I use keywords and Smart Albums exensively. I title the pics broadly.

I keyword on a

Who

What

Where basis (The When is in the photos's Exif metadata). I also rate the pics on a 1 - 5 star basis.

Using this system I can find pretty much find any pic in my 25k library in a couple of seconds.

So, for example, I have a batch of pics titled 'Seattle 08' and a typical keywording might include: John, Anne, Landscape, mountain, trees, snow. With a rating included it's so very easy to find the best pics we took at Mount Rainier.

File -> New Smart Album

set it to 'All"

title contains Seattle

keyword is mountain

keyword is snow

rating is 5 stars

Or, want a chronological album of John from birth to today?

New Smart Album

Keyword is John

Set the View options to Sort By Date Ascending

Want only the best pics?

add Rating is greater than 4 stars

The best thing about this system is that it's dynamic. If I add 50 more pics of John to the Library tomorrow, as I keyword and rate them they are added to the Smart Album.

In the end, organisation is about finding the pics. The point is to make locating that pic or batch of pics findable fast. This system works for me.

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Answer 6

Dec 31, 2011 11:52 AM in response to Rysz

Thanks for the tip, Rysz. In this case, because they are photos of my first baby's first year, I don't want to lose the First Week, First Month, Second Month, etc. designation - which I put on them back when I remembered such things. General dating would leave me guessing too much.

But I'm sure I will use the adjust date option in the future, for other photos that are less time sensitive for me.

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Answer 7

Dec 31, 2011 11:55 AM in response to Yer_Man

Great system, Terence. It's been very helpful for me the last few weeks to read different people's different systems of organization. What you are doing is probably what I'll do moving forward. I'm not sure I care enough to go backwards and do it.

But I am happy that I won't have to have duplicates anymore; I can just use the same photo and put it into multiple albums. It will cut down on the amount of memory my photo library uses.

Kelly

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