Do you need iPhoto to browse photos effectively?

[Kendo]

I have a ton of photos on an external hard drive that I backed up from my Windows PC. This is my first mac.

On Windows, I could simply connect the external HDD and open the folders and view each folder by thumbnail. I can view the contents of the folder by small icon, large icon, thumnail, etc.

When I connect my external HDD to my iMac, I can't tell what I am looking at until I double click the icon. And the default photo app seems to be Preview which is hard to manipulate (making photos full screen at the click of a button).

Does OS X have similar features to Windows where I can view the folders by thumbnail? Because the easiest way I found was to upload everything onto iPhoto. But the point was that I wanted to view what each photo was so I can upload only a few photos into iPhoto.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You could use:

Mac OS X - What is Quick Look?
Mac OS X 10.5/6 - Previewing files with Quick Look
Make the Most of Quick Look​

 

[McRCN]

You could use:

Image

Mac OS X - What is Quick Look?
Mac OS X 10.5/6 - Previewing files with Quick Look
Make the Most of Quick Look​

Great tip on using Quick Look. I did not realize how it worked.

BTW, your last link is not working.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

BTW, your last link is not working.

Thanks, just add a "p".