Does anyone understand the iPhoto File Structure???

[AliensAreFuzzy]

Ok, I'm just wondering... What's up with iPhoto's filing? I knew it was really wierd for organizing, and on my computer I don't really care. But when I made a CD with iPhoto today, I noticed that it used that weird file structure again. I mean, really, I was going to give this CD of pictures to someone but I can't even figure out the pictures, I'm sure the person I'm giving it to isn't going to have any clue what's going on.

 

[wordmunger]

Ok, I'm just wondering... What's up with iPhoto's filing? I knew it was really wierd for organizing, and on my computer I don't really care. But when I made a CD with iPhoto today, I noticed that it used that weird file structure again. I mean, really, I was going to give this CD of pictures to someone but I can't even figure out the pictures, I'm sure the person I'm giving it to isn't going to have any clue what's going on.

Why not just export the pictures? Create an album of the ones you want to share and export them to a new directory. Then you don't have to worry about organization. If you specify "use album name" then it will automatically rename all the files. Or you can use the titles you create in iPhoto.

The whole point of iPhoto is that you organize your photos visually. The way they are organized in the Finder should never be an issue.

 

[Josh]

Personally, I think iPhoto is a great app, but the way it organizes its files is incredibly redundant.

Instead of showing thumbnail previews of the actual pictures, iPhoto creates additional thumbnail-size files, which not only cause massive clutter, but eat disk space like mad.

This is something that definitely has to be fixed in future versions.

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How are you moving your pictures to your CD? Are you dragging them from the iPhoto preview window, or from finder?

I believe (not positive - don't own a mac anymore) that dragging them from iPhoto preview should work just fine.

 

[DXoverDY]

Why not just export the pictures? Create an album of the ones you want to share and export them to a new directory. Then you don't have to worry about organization. If you specify "use album name" then it will automatically rename all the files. Or you can use the titles you create in iPhoto.

The whole point of iPhoto is that you organize your photos visually. The way they are organized in the Finder should never be an issue.

correct, but why shouldn't you be able to make a cd to send to friends and family and the blasted pile of garbage actually make things readable for the average user who doesn't know how files and folders and stuff works?

Sorry, iPhoto is a piece of crap. Hence the reason I use Picasa on my PC for photo organization. Also the reason I refuse to buy iLife again. I have very little use for iMovie and iDVD, iPhoto sucks, iTunes is free, no real use for GarageBand.... hmm.. yup, saving myself money Picasa = free.

 

[wordmunger]

correct, but why shouldn't you be able to make a cd to send to friends and family and the blasted pile of garbage actually make things readable for the average user who doesn't know how files and folders and stuff works?

If you do what I suggested, which is the way iPhoto is designed to work, then you will have a nicely organized folder for your friends.

Sorry, iPhoto is a piece of crap. Hence the reason I use Picasa on my PC for photo organization. Also the reason I refuse to buy iLife again. I have very little use for iMovie and iDVD, iPhoto sucks, iTunes is free, no real use for GarageBand.... hmm.. yup, saving myself money Picasa = free.

Well, I don't have a PC, so I can't compare it to Picasa, but if you use the program the way it is intended, it works fine. I haven't upgraded to the latest version of iLife myself, because mainly I use iPhoto 4, and it works fine.

edit: I should add that I've been using iPhoto since 2002. Where was Picasa then?

 

[wordmunger]

Personally, I think iPhoto is a great app, but the way it organizes its files is incredibly redundant.

Instead of showing thumbnail previews of the actual pictures, iPhoto creates additional thumbnail-size files, which not only cause massive clutter, but eat disk space like mad.

I don't think it's really eating that much space. For example, for one day's worth of photos, it takes 18 MB of storage. Out of that, 256 K is used for thumbnails. My understanding is that the thumbnails are what allow you to scroll through the library quickly. To my mind, that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

 

[DXoverDY]

If you do what I suggested, which is the way iPhoto is designed to work, then you will have a nicely organized folder for your friends.


Well, I don't have a PC, so I can't compare it to Picasa, but if you use the program the way it is intended, it works fine. I haven't upgraded to the latest version of iLife myself, because mainly I use iPhoto 4, and it works fine.

edit: I should add that I've been using iPhoto since 2002. Where was Picasa then?

ok so when i fire up iphoto, and i select an album.. and then burn it in iPhoto it shouldn't be easily readable to anyone other than a user with iphoto? what a crock.

i can create an album i picasa, select it, burn it, and it lays it all out so a normal human being can thumb through it with whatever image editor they want to use. and it's not full of weird folder names and odd image names. it's all logical.

picasa in 2002, not sure, but picasa 2.0 still hands down beats iphoto4, i have not tried iphoto 5 but i refuse to since it appears this issue is still present, and i won't pay $60 for ilife just for iphoto.

 

[Tortellino]

ok so when i fire up iphoto, and i select an album.. and then burn it in iPhoto it shouldn't be easily readable to anyone other than a user with iphoto? what a crock.

Dear DXoverDY, RTFM. There you'll find:

You can use iPhoto's burn feature to archive your photos and albums for viewing in iPhoto only. If you want to create a disc to be viewed on a Windows computer or by a photo processing company, you must use the Finder.

1.In iPhoto, select the album or albums you want to burn to disc.
2.Choose Share > Export.
3.Click the File Export button at the top of the Export Photos window. Etc., etc.

I admit that iPhoto should be more clear that "Burn Disk" means "Burn an iPhoto database." That being said, I think that complaints about iPhoto file structure are totally lame, and show lack of understanding if the ideology behind iPhoto.

If you want to get just the images without all the thumbnails and stuff, then just simply drag them out of the iPhoto window into whatever folder you want. Or if you want to resize and change the format at the same time use the Share->Export function.

The strength of iPhoto is it's filing and sorting capability. If you want to organize your folders with your own hands then get iView or something of that kind. I want to create picture sets on the fly, and I don't care in what folder they are actually located. If I want to burn a CD for giving out I follow the instructions, and haven't had a problem a single time.

 

[7on]

iPhoto stores by YYYY/MM/DD in your iPhoto library folder

The thumbnails are there so iPhoto won't be iPhoto 2 and take ages with scrolling. Also the thumbnails that are saved within files are only 128x128 - which wouldn't work of course. So an extra file has to be made.

Burn a disk with iPhoto and then hand it to a friend with a Mac and iPhoto open immediately showcasing the pictures.

To burn the way you want, you could even let Finder handle the CD then drag the photos you want directly from iPhoto onto the disk.

 

[DXoverDY]

my point is it should be made very clear what happens, and there should be an option of burning for other users with a simple "select and burn" button, same way you do with iTunes. See, when i burned my first iphoto disc, i expected it to work just like iTunes. Here we are talking about consistancy, apple is famous for it.. however i'm beginning to get this idea that consistancy is irrelevent anymore for apple.. 3 different windowing skins in OS X now... "burn" doesn't do quite the same thing in each iLife app.

I'm not saying it doesn't make a bit of sense or that i'm retarded, i just expect it to work consistantly across applications.

not to mention iLife is all about sharing and organizing your media. so why not make SHARING the media easy to do? especially photos. ok so you can email them, upload them to .mac, why not make a nice slideshow, burn to a disc.. or even just burn the selected images to a disc by selecting an album and clicking burn?

Don't tell me to read the "freakin" manual. Go look in the "freakin" OS X forum, notice the "CoreImage FAQ" .. i'm hardly stupid and answered many questions a LOT of people here wanted answered. so treating me like i'm stupid isn't going to work.

 

[AliensAreFuzzy]

Why not just export the pictures? Create an album of the ones you want to share and export them to a new directory. Then you don't have to worry about organization. If you specify "use album name" then it will automatically rename all the files. Or you can use the titles you create in iPhoto.

The whole point of iPhoto is that you organize your photos visually. The way they are organized in the Finder should never be an issue.

You can use iPhoto's burn feature to archive your photos and albums for viewing in iPhoto only.

I'm not complaining about the way they're organized in the Finder. I'm just saying that the burn option under SHARING should maybe give you a little more neatly organized folder structure to SHARE with other people who may not have iPhoto.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

Their organized as follows:

~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/[Year]/[Month]/[Date]/[filename].[ext]

The year/month/date are extracted from the EXIF photo metadata. If none is available, it uses the date the file was imported into iPhoto.

Hope this helps.

 

[wordmunger]

I'm not complaining about the way they're organized in the Finder. I'm just saying that the burn option under SHARING should maybe give you a little more neatly organized folder structure to SHARE with other people who may not have iPhoto.

That is weird. In iPhoto 4, "Burn" is not under sharing, but Organize. I've only ever used that to make backups, and the backups are organized the same way iPhoto organizes itself, which makes sense, because when I'd need them would be to restore iPhoto.

Seems like iPhoto 5 has taken a step backward in this regard.

 

[decksnap]

I think that complaints about iPhoto file structure are totally lame, and show lack of understanding if the ideology behind iPhoto.

If you want to get just the images without all the thumbnails and stuff, then just simply drag them out of the iPhoto window into whatever folder you want. Or if you want to resize and change the format at the same time use the Share->Export function.

I say this is crap. #1 reason iPhoto is useless: There is NO way to rename files inside of iPhoto without exporting them and dragging them back into iPhoto. Totally weak. #2- The way iPhoto organizes images stinks. Why not have it be just like iTunes? (Allowing for multiple ways to organize the source files) "Allow iPhoto to organize Photos", etc... #3 And I could be wrong on this, because I don't use iPhoto (See #1 and #2), but iPhoto comments and names aren't searchable through spotlight??? It would be nice to go into iPhoto and NAME an image, then be able to FIND it on my system with spotlight.

 

[Applespider]

I say this is crap. #1 reason iPhoto is useless: There is NO way to rename files inside of iPhoto without exporting them and dragging them back into iPhoto. Totally weak. #3 And I could be wrong on this, because I don't use iPhoto (See #1 and #2), but iPhoto comments and names aren't searchable through spotlight???

#1 I always figured the reason you couldn't change the actual filenames was in case you ended up with duplicate names that the underlying system might go nuts over. But I'd much prefer the option to be able to change file names. Exporting and dragging em back in means that you lose any currently set keywords.

#3 Spotlight does work with iPhoto 5. It searches for title, keyword and comments but, to harp back to complaint 1, shows the thumbnails with the original file name rather than the iPhoto title. It also searches the date they were imported/modified in iPhoto rather than the created date which can be annoying.