Iphoto opinios please

marknicholls · Aug 17, 2004

Hey Guys

After having my imac for 24 hours, all my personal stuff is starting to take shape, i am now left with just my emails and photos.

In windows, i had all my photos (almost 1500) organized in folders in the "my pictures" folder.

I have copied them into the pictures section on my macHD, but not that happy with the way it handles photos, as i dont seem to be able to browse through them as easily as in windows, so i thought i would import them into ihpto and have a play with it (i knew if it mucked up the organization i have, it was not a problem as its all backed up)

After waiting a few minutes for it all to import, it just chucked them all into one giant folder!

Is there any way i can import all my photos into iphoto and keep them in the organized state?

Or i would like to know how you guys keep your photos tidy

Thanks

gallagb · Aug 17, 2004

hmm- other people will provide a better answer-
however- i can say that iphoto is great- the thing about it that i've noticed is that it really only organizes pictures that you upload from hense forth- so- it won't go back and categorize photos- (or if it does i havn't figured it out)- i've done something similar as you have- however it was more like 40 pictures)-

however- as you plug your camera in from now on- it will sort them by date...etc-

there might be a semi-easy way to sort though all 1500 pictures @ least by date?-

other than that- i know u can make photo albums from whatever pic's u wanna drag and drop into the specific album-

marknicholls · Aug 17, 2004

gallagb said:
there might be a semi-easy way to sort though all 1500 pictures @ least by date?-

other than that- i know u can make photo albums from whatever pic's u wanna drag and drop into the specific album-

Date would not be enough, i have folders for friends, family, birthdays, xmas, holidays.....etc

I guess i may have to go through them all manually and re-organize them if i cant use the directory structure that i had used on my PC

munkle · Aug 17, 2004

iPhoto is great IF you treat it like iTunes i.e you let iPhoto organise your photos and interact with them through iPhoto. You start running into problems when you start messing about with your photos through the finder. You can still create as many albums as you like and organise them how you want. You can also export your photos easily from iPhoto. Play around with it awhile and try to forget how your photos are organised in the finder and just concentrate on using iPhoto.

If you still don't like it I've heard good things about Kodak Easyshare and for a more professional approach try iView Media Pro.

emw · Aug 17, 2004

marknicholls said:
Date would not be enough, i have folders for friends, family, birthdays, xmas, holidays.....etc

I guess i may have to go through them all manually and re-organize them if i cant use the directory structure that i had used on my PC

If you have all of your pictures in folders, drag the folders one at a time (don't know if this works better in iPhoto 4 with iLife) into the Albums section on the left and iPhoto will create an album named the same as the folder and import the photos.

If you drag more than one folder at a time, it will create a single album with all of the pictures.

seamuskrat · Aug 17, 2004

If you sort via iPhoto it will create an XML file that has the organization of your photos. At the finder level, it looks messed up.
Iview media pro works better and allows far more customization. But its not free.
iPhoto works well for many, but 1500 is a lot of photos and it sounds like you may need specialized organization. so a commercial app may be best.

marknicholls · Aug 18, 2004

seamuskrat said:
If you sort via iPhoto it will create an XML file that has the organization of your photos. At the finder level, it looks messed up.
Iview media pro works better and allows far more customization. But its not free.
iPhoto works well for many, but 1500 is a lot of photos and it sounds like you may need specialized organization. so a commercial app may be best.

I really like iPhoto, but it seems it wont support folder in folders!

eg, i have a "Friends" folder, and then have seperate folders for different ocassions, eg, "Sams House Party" but i cant seem to create a folder in a folder! This is a very basic requirment, and i really hope its me being stupid!

Can anyone shed any light?

Thanks

jxyama · Aug 18, 2004

short answer is no. if you drag all of your photos, no matter in how many separate instances, iPhoto will collapse it into one folder called iPhoto Library.

go to versiontracker.com and download iPhoto Library Manager. that one will let you specificy separate folders for different set of pics. so you can have four folders, for example, and each will launch iPhoto with only those photos in it. you can change the name of the library as well, so it's more reflective of the contents.

if you are asking if there's a way to have iPhoto maintain your organized folder structure, the answer is no.

marknicholls · Aug 18, 2004

I must admit, thats shocking. Such a simple feature, and it has not been included. Thats the one thing that i am so far dissapointed about on my mac, and that i actually prefered on windows (photo management).

But the pros way outway the cons

emw · Aug 18, 2004

marknicholls said:
I really like iPhoto, but it seems it wont support folder in folders!

eg, i have a "Friends" folder, and then have seperate folders for different ocassions, eg, "Sams House Party" but i cant seem to create a folder in a folder! This is a very basic requirment, and i really hope its me being stupid!

Can anyone shed any light?

Thanks

You're not being stupid - the freely available iPhoto doesn't do folder in a folder. You have to purchase iLife, which includes iPhoto 4, to get these features.

jxyama · Aug 18, 2004

emw said:
You're not being stupid - the freely available iPhoto doesn't do folder in a folder. You have to purchase iLife, which includes iPhoto 4, to get these features.

i don't think that's the "folder in a folder" feature the poster is thinking of... i don't think even iPhoto 4 offers it.

munkle · Aug 18, 2004

emw said:
You're not being stupid - the freely available iPhoto doesn't do folder in a folder. You have to purchase iLife, which includes iPhoto 4, to get these features.

Correct me if I'm wrong but iPhoto 4 still doesn't support folders within a folder does it?

munkle · Aug 18, 2004

jxyama said:
i don't think that's the "folder in a folder" feature the poster is thinking of... i don't think even iPhoto 4 offers it.

Beat me!

emw · Aug 18, 2004

munkle said:
Beat me!

Dang! You're both right. I don't have it, but was under the mistaken impression that it was possible.

Looking at the screen grabs, I saw the folder structure and thought it was "folder in folder," thus strengthening my belief. As it turns out, it's simply breaking out the shared photos section.

Now it's bugging me where I thought I read it... Probably just wishful thinking.

marknicholls · Aug 18, 2004

doea anyone else here have 100s or 1000s of photos? if so, how do you keep them organized?

munkle · Aug 18, 2004

marknicholls said:
doea anyone else here have 100s or 1000s of photos? if so, how do you keep them organized?

As suggested earlier if you're looking for a heavy duty app, albeit very costly, try iView Media Pro. It's a good app but recently they've been jacking up the price. Otherwise try QPict Media Organiser, haven't used it myself but it's had good reviews.

jxyama · Aug 18, 2004

i use the iPhoto Library Manager and have four library folders, each with about 500 to 800 photos. so i guess i have 2500 photos or so.

i group them by year, so i have one library for photos taken before 2002, one library for 2003 pics, one for 2003 trip to japan (where i took nearly 1000 pics) and one for 2004. i will probably add another library for a road trip coming up to seattle from michigan.

keeps things well organized and iPhoto loads quickly. it takes only a few seconds to switch the library and re-launch iPhoto, so it hasn't been a problem for me...

EMKoper · Aug 18, 2004

E-Mail Apple Suggestion Box...

iPhoto 4 doesn't support folder-in-folder organization, though that is my last remaining issue with relying on it for my basic photo organization tasks ... currently using finder.

I e-mail the apple suggestion box weekly with a canned "please add this enhancement" to future versions of iPhoto.... iPhoto Feedback Site.

If you are so inclined, please give that feedback. Maybe a small uproar will push them to include it...

Kingsnapped · Aug 18, 2004

Are we forgetting the ever important keywords? You can import your folders, the select a bunch to categorize as "family" or "dog" or whatever. It's not the same system that you had, but if you want to browse in iPhoto, this would be a good way to do it. Once you assign your keywords, you can do searches to only browse photos within "family" or "dog."

I have about 1000 photos, and it runs fine on a 1.25 g4 with 512, you should import a few hundred and see if it can do what you want. It won't be much like browsing within a file structure, but personally, I can't figure why one would like to do that.

marknicholls · Aug 18, 2004

Kingsnapped said:
Are we forgetting the ever important keywords? You can import your folders, the select a bunch to categorize as "family" or "dog" or whatever. It's not the same system that you had, but if you want to browse in iPhoto, this would be a good way to do it. Once you assign your keywords, you can do searches to only browse photos within "family" or "dog."

I have about 1000 photos, and it runs fine on a 1.25 g4 with 512, you should import a few hundred and see if it can do what you want. It won't be much like browsing within a file structure, but personally, I can't figure why one would like to do that.

\

Thanks EMKoper, i will suggest that myself - im glad that its not just me that misses this feature.

Kingsnapped - for me personally, using a directory structure is much easier. For example, ill have a folder for holidays, then each destination, or friends, then each party or event, i have had the same basic stucture for a few years, and i miss being able to have the same thing in iphoto - which is a shame as it looks like a decent program.

Ill just keep them tidy using finder for the time being i think

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