I don't know why I can't understand iPhoto!

[davidg4781]

Ok, so, I'm just going to live with the whole photos placed into temp folders (when imported via Missing Sync from my Treo 700p). I know, I know, I'm supposed to stay out of Finder, but I stumbled across it awhile back and those are the only photos going in there.

Well, ok, so now I'm starting to import some pictures from a school trip. I put them into albums and folders and what not, but how do I add keywords?? Do y'all go through every picture and add comments and keywords? I know you can do the batch thing, but still! An hour ago, I had 0 photos, and now I have 132, with A LOT more waiting in a folder from my PC to be imported. Is there an easier way or am I finally going to have to take a vacation??

 

[M@lew]

I guess for my photo's I end up putting the keywords in individually. Sometimes when I have a couple of hundred photo's I batch edit them, but if you sit down and concentrate on adding them it shouldn't take too long. Around 10 minutes for me, but I use Lightroom so maybe adding keywords is easier there than iPhoto.

 

[davidg4781]

Well, let's say Me, George, Mom, and a beautiful sunset are all in one picture. Do I add keywords for Me, George, Mom, and Scenery or do I add them all into comments and just put Family for the keyword?

Maybe I'm trying to hard to get this. iTunes was so easy to understand. It took me a while to figure out the difference between folders and albums.

 

[polycat33]

I'd love to throw in my iPhoto question here. I loading over three thousand photos into my library, and they were already sorted into folders by me so I kept them in those folders instead of letting iPhoto put them in the iPhoto library by year and stuff. But I find that the photos are still in the library by year, or so it seems, except the entire iPhoto library is WAY smaller than my whole collection of photos that is in iPhoto, so while it looks like every single photo is in my iphoto library as well as my other folder, it isn't. What's the deal? Are these thumbnails or something?

 

[M@lew]

@davidg4781 - If you wanted all those names etc. to be a keyword, you'd add all of them to the photo. That way in the future should you want to see all the photo's with you in it or George in it, all you need to do is search for the name and all the photo's will be displayed.

@polycat33 - You could have set iPhoto to reference the photo's where they're stored in Finder. (Which is the better option anyway)

 

[r.j.s]

http://homepage.mac.com/kenferry/software.html

Keyword assistant - makes adding keywords a lot easier and the whole process faster.

 

[polycat33]

@polycat33 - You could have set iPhoto to reference the photo's where they're stored in Finder. (Which is the better option anyway)

That's what I did. I unchecked the box that said add files to computer when adding to iPhoto library, or whatever it said. I did it once with that checked and ended up with two times and much space being take up with all my photos. So I re-did it and the files are left where they go. And, as I said, this folder seems to contain all of my photos BUT the entire thing is like a half a gig at most while all my pictures in their original folders is about 10 gigs, meaning it's clearly not the whole picture, which is why I wondered if they're thumbnails or something?

 

[davidg4781]

What would be the benefit of leaving the photos where they are as opposed to copying them into iPhoto? I thought it would be best to have iPhoto handle all the sorting and filing, just like iTunes handles all the sorting and filing of music and movies.

 

[Cameront9]

What would be the benefit of leaving the photos where they are as opposed to copying them into iPhoto? I thought it would be best to have iPhoto handle all the sorting and filing, just like iTunes handles all the sorting and filing of music and movies.

I'm not sure you understand what it means by "leaving them where they are" (nor does the poster above you).

When you tell iPhoto (JUST LIKE iTunes) to leave the photos where they are, it leaves the photos on the disk where it was and just references it in the library. Think of iPhoto as a database. It's basically just making it easy for you to browse your pictures.

If you copy to iPhoto, EVERY PHOTO you import into the iPhoto library is ALSO copied into iPhoto's folder in finder.

So let's say you have an external hard drive with 20 GBs of pictures. If you drag these photos into iPhoto, it will COPY all 20 GBs of photos onto your Mac's hard drive, in the iPhoto folder. Obviously, you probably don't want this. So that's when you check to leave files where they are. When that option is checked, when you "import" something into iPhoto, ALL you are doing is adding that photo's information and location to the iPhoto library file (i.e., the database).

Does that help?

 

[davidg4781]

I guess that makes more sense for large libraries. Does it still do the same as it does if you copy it, as in making 2 copies, one original and one that's been altered?

Right now, I just import them, then delete the original, if everything went ok. I didn't realize how large mine was, it's close to 800 photos already.

Ok, one more question if they are left on a central location, say a networked hard drive.

If I add a photo to it, will another computer on the network see that photo when they open iPhoto or will they have to reset their library? I once had 2 users on my computer pointing to the same library using iTunes on Windows XP and it would not update automatically.

 

[polycat33]

I'm not sure you understand what it means by "leaving them where they are" (nor does the poster above you).

When you tell iPhoto (JUST LIKE iTunes) to leave the photos where they are, it leaves the photos on the disk where it was and just references it in the library. Think of iPhoto as a database. It's basically just making it easy for you to browse your pictures.

If you copy to iPhoto, EVERY PHOTO you import into the iPhoto library is ALSO copied into iPhoto's folder in finder.

So let's say you have an external hard drive with 20 GBs of pictures. If you drag these photos into iPhoto, it will COPY all 20 GBs of photos onto your Mac's hard drive, in the iPhoto folder. Obviously, you probably don't want this. So that's when you check to leave files where they are. When that option is checked, when you "import" something into iPhoto, ALL you are doing is adding that photo's information and location to the iPhoto library file (i.e., the database).

Does that help?

I apologize for hijacking this thread! I have actually figured out the answer to my own question.

I DO know what it means to "leave them where they are" but I don't think the other guy knows what I mean. And the process you explained is exactly what I did.

I left the actual photo files where they are. As in, I had my jpeg's organized into folders in my own way. So I want to load them into iPhoto to view them/arrange them, etc. So I unchecked copy into iPhoto Library (a folder on my computer, not the one in the program) so that the files would be referenced in iPhoto where they are in my organized files.

It's just that when I looked in the iPhoto library file on my computer, I see that it has stuff in it. It actually all of my arranged files and the pictures inside of them. Each and every picture that is in my iphoto library is in the iphoto library folder on my comp, except a smaller size. I just finally opened one and I think I can conclude that these are thumbnails. They're bigger than I might expect because the thumbnails in iPhoto can be resized, so they are as big as the largest thumbnail view in iPhoto before you are just looking at the full size picture. I just found it weird that it appeared I had duplicates of all my photos except the duplicates were only taking up less than a half a gig of space.

This also explains why when I move my pictures that I have already loaded into iphoto, I can still view them as thumbnails but I can't view them as full size. Cause iphoto is referencing the thumbnails before I move to full size, and the thumbnails didn't move. But the full file is referenced at the largest size and the path is broken. It's all making sense now. Thanks.