from Windows to iPhoto

[rudini]

Hello everyone,

Yet another Mac n00b here. Just pick up an iMac and beginning to transfer stuff from my Windows machine to my Mac. And i was wonder what the best way would be to move all my pics into iPhoto?

I used to manually organize everything in my "My Pictures" folder on my XP machine, but once i get the JPG files on the Mac...what do i do from there?

thanks!
rudy

 

[r.j.s]

First question: Do you have OCD about where your JPG files are?
If you do then iPhoto may not be right for you, it WILL destroy your organization and do it the way that it wants. If you have iPhoto 08 and decide to try to "fix" the organization - you will end up corrupting your library.

If you dont care how they are organized in the folders, then just goto File -> Import into iPhoto and you'll be all set. Once it is done, make a backup of the iPhoto library and then delete the originals that you imported from (since iPhoto copies files to the library)

 

[rudini]

Ummm... does partial OCD count?

LOL!, Well wouldn't mind keep all my JPGs in one folder (as a backup) then Importing them over to iPhoto (as suggested). That doesn't sound too bad...

If i take new pictures, but those JPGs in my backup folder. Go into iPhoto and import that folder...iPhoto is smart enough to know which are the new pics, right?

pax,
rudy

(please let me know if any of that made sense, kinda sleepy)

 

[r.j.s]

It should recognize duplicates and not reimport them, but I have never tried this, so I dont know for sure. Checking ...

 

[DaveF]

As of iPhoto 06, it doesn't understand folder-based organization for photo import. iPhoto 08 might be easier to for importing photos from a directory structure as it will auto-create events based on the photos' dates.

For iPhoto 06, I used a script called "iPhoto Folder Import v1.0" to help me manually import all of my photos, previously managed with Picasa. I don't know if this script was revised for iPhoto 08.

My recommendation is to import one folder at a time, making it a new Event. Do this for every folder you have. It's tedious, but should give you what you want.

If you desire more structure, you can create folders and smartlists in iPhoto to impost more structure on your photos.