I rarely ever use all the features of iPhoto as it's been overwhelming to keep up with all the features available. However I don't like the way iPhoto stores it's data and while it's partially because of my ignorance of how all it's processes work I want to ditch it all together simply because I feel it tries to be too transparent and integrated without explaining what's going in it. Anyways I have a Adobe CC subscription for over a year and wish to learn the ins and outs of that in the next few months. I apologize if what I seem to be attempting or my explanation of it seems a little wacky. My family computer has been rather disorganized for years and thrown into random folders to "clean up" the computer and stashed on various External hard drives and computers. But since recently my sister that was 19 years old passed away in a car accident and well this has made organizing everything and optimizing our computer a major priority.
In my mind, an ideal scenario where cash was no object I'd buy a whole new computer with all the "right" things to replace this computer and migrate everything over to it. But obviously that's a dream scenario. Instead I will be spending the next few weeks trying to figure out everything I can about the computer I have now and how Premier Pro and Lightroom and also iPhoto and iMovie work and store information.
Now I already have 2 LaCie 3TB hard drives (among several other hard drives we purchased over the years)
one that is mine and nearly empty and another that is my fathers that he used for his volleyball pictures of my sister. While I am probably the most tech savy out my mother and father, I still hardly know everything that makes up the vast amount of information about all these software and OS.
My goal is to eventually migrate all photos and videos to a single external hard drive if there is enough room and organize them in Light room as I really like the fact it also incorporates the OS file system. It's too confusing to have ton all these separate libraries that are all bundled up in packages. Not to mention so far Lightroom has performed so much better when it has a large volume of photos in it. I don't know why exactly but I assume it's because of the way it stores and operates it's content.
Anyways I hope I didn't make my question even more confusing. It's just that over time, our Late 2012 27" iMac has gone from what seemed like a good computer to edit videos with to that comparable to an old dell. It's probably our storage habits and lack of knowledge but we suffered many kernel panics over the past year. Which I think is related to faulty RAM (two "Vengence 8gb cards" that are known to have some issues once and awhile but work wonderfully when they work.) I tested that using the Hardware test and said 4/Mem error. troubleshooted that and seems to work fine for now. iMovie never worked the way we wanted and always crashed and was always slow when it was working. iPhoto sometimes crashes but being slow is the main issue with it. Ultimately one day I wish to replace the hard drive with a SSD and run all application off it while keeping all other content on External Hard drives as that seems like the best way to edit videos and rarely come across the classic issues. My first step is to to back up everything and start from scratch as I feel it is the best way to organize the multiple hard drives I have and fix any hidden issues.
Thank you for taking the time to respond though. I know one question is not going to lead me to where I need to go and I know I am probably breaking Apple support forum rules or something with a question that is rather made up of many questions. But sooner or later I will have processed more of what I need to do to get where I need to be. Any help is greatly appreciated though! 🙂
The Metadata you mentioned that would be nice to have in Lightroom. I have done 2 exports one with all "Original" Files and had iPhoto catalog them by event names.But I also exported the edited ("current") copies into a single folder and there isn't that many in comparison so it wouldn't be too difficult to see if one was worth keeping over the original. The "original" seems to have all the metadata that would have been there if I imported the photos into lightroom though I am not 100% sure yet.