Fastest way to use Ext HD with Pics and iPhoto?

[Wills.Details]

So i bought a 1TB Merc Elite Pro External Hard drive to store all my pics and vids on.

What id like to know is what is the fastest way for me to be able to work on my pics on the external HD. When i pull up iPhoto, it shows i have to import my photos from my Ext HD first and then work on them...but doesn't this just pull the pics from my Ext HD and then store them on my internal HD? So would i have to edit them and then have to REsave them back onto my External HD? Or is there a faster way for me to be able to work this whole thing.

Same question for editing vids on iMovie...

thanks in advance.

 

[DaveOZ]

Just move your entire iPhoto library package to the external drive and link to that. Hold the opt key while you start iPhoto. Make sure you backup the external drive too. I have my 160gb Aperture library and 200gb iTunes library on an external USB 3.0 drive which I share between a couple on Macs. Works great and is fast enough.

 

[Sairo]

Just move your entire iPhoto library package to the external drive and link to that. Hold the opt key while you start iPhoto. Make sure you backup the external drive too. I have my 160gb Aperture library and 200gb iTunes library on an external USB 3.0 drive which I share between a couple on Macs. Works great and is fast enough.

How do you move along libraries? I assume your trick also works for lightroom, but will it work between Mac and Windows?
I Would love to have my library on both machines w/o the hassle of copying on and off.

 

[Wills.Details]

Just move your entire iPhoto library package to the external drive and link to that. Hold the opt key while you start iPhoto. Make sure you backup the external drive too. I have my 160gb Aperture library and 200gb iTunes library on an external USB 3.0 drive which I share between a couple on Macs. Works great and is fast enough.

Dave thanks for the tip. The option key worked perfect for accessing my external HD with iPhoto. What about she using iMovies when i want to make and edit videos? Whats the best way to go about accessing my external HD when doing that?

 

[Wills.Details]

Just move your entire iPhoto library package to the external drive and link to that. Hold the opt key while you start iPhoto. Make sure you backup the external drive too. I have my 160gb Aperture library and 200gb iTunes library on an external USB 3.0 drive which I share between a couple on Macs. Works great and is fast enough.

Well, correction, it didn't work so perfectly actually. I hit Opt when choosing iPhoto, it gave me the option of picking another 'library', but when i clicked "Other Library" and i went down to choose my external HD as the library i wanted to use, it wouldn't allow me to choose it...what am i doing wrong?