iPhoto Files

Rich2Putt said:

New to iMac, have 21.5 late 2012.

iPhoto:
When I imported my photo's from Window 7, each file generated an "event" in iPhoto. My files from Windows 7 were named Family, Holidays, Trip etc....

Went to the HD to find the name of these files and all I could find were numbers associated to my photo's in "events".

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By "File" I presume you mean "Folder"???

This is iPhoto's standard way yo store photos. By date. Folder 2012 contains all photos taken in Calendar Year 2012, Sub-folder 12 is all photos taken in December of that year, sub-folder 26 is all photos take on the 26th day of that month. The rest of the folders are probably iPhotos internal Database designations for events.

Rich2Putt said:

Windows 7:
In Windows 7, you could create a directory and you could see the individual file names.

It seems searching for a "event" or file (Family, Holiday, Trips etc...)is impossible with iMac or am I missing something. I've attached a screen shot of my iPhoto files.

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Windows, typically, does not manage your photos for you. iPhoto does all the management for you. Once imported to iPhoto, there is normally very little need to ever "manage" your photos using Mac OS X's Finder as you are trying to do. If you want to see all phots from an "event" then look at them in iPhoto, where they should all be in that Event. If they are not, just drag them into the proper event, and iPhoto will make a note of that in the library (iPhoto's Database), but it will not move the file anyplace.

The wonderful feature of this is that one phto can potentially appear in multiple places. A Family Album, a Vacation Album, a "Mom" Album, as many albums as you want, and only one copy of the image is ever stored.

viggen61 speaks wise words

Youve already found a way to locate the original images on your HD. But heres some useful info i've learnt recently that might help others..

Apple wants to ensure you dont accidentally alter or delete your photos when using iPhoto. So your original images are held on your HD but they are locked away out of easy reach. But there are two ways of easily finding where they are stored..

In iPhoto, open the Event, then highlight the photo. Then go up to the top of the screen and click File > Reveal in Finder.

Or

Open Finder > Pictures. Right click on iPhoto Library and select Show Package Contents. Then click on the Masters folder and navigate through the following folders to your photo.

But try not to mess around with these images as Apple want to keep them there unaltered, and messing with them could cause problems with iPhoto. Best to let iPhoto handle any changes etc to images, it has its own way of doing this, that preserves the originals.

Good Reply Big Stevie! and viggen 61.

I will just add that iPhoto is a Digital Asset Manager, just like Aperture and Lightroom. There are the actual images, and there is a database. As such it assumes that the application, and not you, will be organizing the "real" images while you set up a bunch of Folders and Albums within iPhoto to find your photos. So, set up the Folders and Albums within iPhoto to suit your needs - which will then give you much more powerful organizing tools than your previous nested folder structure.

snberk103 said:

Good Reply Big Stevie! and viggen 61.

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Ive learnt from the best!

Big Stevie said:

Ive learnt from the best!

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sniff.... you bring a tear to the eye....