Do iPhoto and Picasa make doubles of all your photos?

[LeandrodaFL]

I remember lunching picasa and it starts searching my entire mac for photos. I read something about iphoto doing the same. I would like to know if its possible for iphoto/picasa to just search my "Pictures" folder instead of my entire Mac.

Besides, is it true that iphoto makes copies of the photos in its own folder? That would be a ridiculous waste of HDD.

 

[flynz4]

I remember lunching picasa and it starts searching my entire mac for photos. I read something about iphoto doing the same. I would like to know if its possible for iphoto/picasa to just search my "Pictures" folder instead of my entire Mac.

Besides, is it true that iphoto makes copies of the photos in its own folder? That would be a ridiculous waste of HDD.

The idea is to import directlly into iPhoto... or Aperture... which means that the program has your "only" copy.

Once you move to a DAM... it is kind of pointless to keep photos stuck away in folders manually (and not indexed in the DAM database). Aperture (and I think iPhoto too) lets your keep your photos in or out of the library (your choice)... but you only need to keep one copy. In aperture... the distinction is "referenced" or "managed" originals. At the highest level, both work similar to the user... it is mostly a distinction on where you choose to keep the originals.

/Jim

 

[Dave Braine]

Besides, is it true that iphoto makes copies of the photos in its own folder?

Only if you have the "Copy Items to iPhoto Library" option ticked in iPhoto Preferences>Advanced ticked. It's probably a good idea to have this ticked, as you can then delete/move pictures in Finder and they will still be in iPhoto.