I can use Mac file help, coming from PC last 10 years.

[cyberbro]

Hello,

I just got a new iMac on Thanksgiving and loving how fine of a machine it is. I have been on a PC for the last 10 years or so and before that Mac and PC.

Forgive these questions but I need to get back into the Mac land and feel a bit lost with files right now. I could not migrate my PC to the new Mac so I did it via external hard drive.

First question is, where are my picture's stored on a Mac? In the PC world I would use the 3 folders for pictures, music and documents.
So now I see all my pictures in iPhoto but should I keep them all in one folder on the hd drive? or are they all over the place and iPhoto finds them, so just place them where i will. I want to feel I have control of them and they are all some place I can get to them fast and not have a million copies I did not remember I had in other area's.

Also I see all the cover art from iTunes, i have been deleting them thinking (lol) it should not show that but now Im thinking thats the only copy of that art?

In short what is the best way to set this machine up to be organized going forward?

Thanks for any help on this.

 

[Weaselboy]

Documents is just like your PC. Just drag and drop your documents form the external drive to your Documents folder on the Mac.

Fot music and photos though you should use iTunes and iPhoto respectively. Just open iTunes and drag/drop you music from the external into iTunes and the files will be imported. iTunes will manage/sort the files and handle album covers.

iPhoto works the same way. Just open iPhoto and drag/drop your photos into it. Once the photos are imported you can use iPhoto to sort the photos into events if you like.

After this is done you should not manually go into the Music or Pictures folder and mess with the files. You want to manage them in the iTunes/iPhoto apps. Manually messing around in there can break things in the library the apps use to store the data.

 

[Twimfy]

Hello,

I just got a new iMac on Thanksgiving and loving how fine of a machine it is. I have been on a PC for the last 10 years or so and before that Mac and PC.

Forgive these questions but I need to get back into the Mac land and feel a bit lost with files right now. I could not migrate my PC to the new Mac so I did it via external hard drive.

First question is, where are my picture's stored on a Mac? In the PC world I would use the 3 folders for pictures, music and documents.
So now I see all my pictures in iPhoto but should I keep them all in one folder on the hd drive? or are they all over the place and iPhoto finds them, so just place them where i will. I want to feel I have control of them and they are all some place I can get to them fast and not have a million copies I did not remember I had in other area's.

Also I see all the cover art from iTunes, i have been deleting them thinking (lol) it should not show that but now Im thinking thats the only copy of that art?

In short what is the best way to set this machine up to be organized going forward?

Thanks for any help on this.

In the pictures folder, you can right click on the iPhoto Library file and click "show package contents" in there you will see all of your photos in folders providing you've imported them to iPhoto. iPhoto is essentially an organisational tool but it does store them locally in those folders as original copies providing them imported so there's no need to panic. Should you decide to leave OS X, copying them from that library is your ticket out.

As for the iTunes Artwork, yeah just leave it be. Nothing wrong with it

Ultimately for the sake of file preservation and organisation, it's best to put all of your files in the recommended programs and folders. It may look like Apple is pulling some trickery and locking you out of the raw files but it is just smoke and mirrors for the sake of a better user experience.

So, if you're currently running everything from your back up and copy and pasted files, try deleting them or removing them from the machine on a backup disk and then opening iPhoto and iTunes. Providing you can still see the photos and play the songs, it means iTunes and iPhoto have copied them and put them where they should be.

I see a lot of people who have all of there music copied somewhere on their mac and yet they don't realise iTunes has duplicated it and put it in the music folder, so they're essentially using twice the disk space on the count of paranoid alone.

That said it's always good to have a backup so once you're sure everything is where you want it to be, consider setting up time machine with a removable drive.