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iPhoto copying photo's?

T

theanimala

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 2, 2007
450
252
I am a recent switcher and I have a few questions about iPhoto. I have a ton of pictures on my PC, and I have backed them up to a Western Digital Network attached drive, so both my Mac and PC can see them (and it's a nice backup of the PC). I have been going into iPhoto and selecting "import to library" to see my pictures in iPhoto. Under the Advanced tab, under Importing I have "copy items to the iPhoto Library" unchecked.

I am curious, are my photo's on the network drive and iPhoto is just pointing to them or is there a separate copy on my iMac? If it is copying them, does that mean that if I get an external HD and use Time Machine, that it will make another copy there? If that's the case, I will have 4 copies of each photo.

Also, under my wife's login I do not see any of the photo's I have in the library when I open iPhoto under her name. I do have Share My Photo's : Share entire library checked under my iPhoto. I was hoping she could see them without me having to do another step.

Last question, sorry, but how do I navigate Finder to see these photo's? Using spotlight, it looks like I may indeed have photo's in iPhoto rather then my network HD. When I go to finder, I click on applications, then iPhoto. From there, I cannot drill any further, it just opens iPhoto. I want to see what folders are in there.

I love the simplicity of OSX, but I feel like it is keeping needed information out of my hands. Thank you all for the help.
 
theanimala said:
I am a recent switcher and I have a few questions about iPhoto. I have a ton of pictures on my PC, and I have backed them up to a Western Digital Network attached drive, so both my Mac and PC can see them (and it's a nice backup of the PC). I have been going into iPhoto and selecting "import to library" to see my pictures in iPhoto. Under the Advanced tab, under Importing I have "copy items to the iPhoto Library" unchecked.

I am curious, are my photo's on the network drive and iPhoto is just pointing to them or is there a separate copy on my iMac? If it is copying them, does that mean that if I get an external HD and use Time Machine, that it will make another copy there? If that's the case, I will have 4 copies of each photo.

Also, under my wife's login I do not see any of the photo's I have in the library when I open iPhoto under her name. I do have Share My Photo's : Share entire library checked under my iPhoto. I was hoping she could see them without me having to do another step.

Last question, sorry, but how do I navigate Finder to see these photo's? Using spotlight, it looks like I may indeed have photo's in iPhoto rather then my network HD. When I go to finder, I click on applications, then iPhoto. From there, I cannot drill any further, it just opens iPhoto. I want to see what folders are in there.

I love the simplicity of OSX, but I feel like it is keeping needed information out of my hands. Thank you all for the help.
Click to expand...

I'm going to bump this thread too. I'm having some of the same questions / situations as well. I'm a "switcher" and am having one heck of a time trying to figure out how iPhoto is handling the pics I have formerly backed-up and then placed on my mac. I found that it was duplicating the pictures and it was very hard to "find" them. I could not see them in the finder, only the iPhoto Library in "pictures" folder. I had to open iPhoto and click on one to open the window containing the picture. I realized iPhoto appeared to be making extra copies.... anyways it was quite confusing and am just using preview to look at them and Photoshop to edit.

I guess I would like to know the answer to the above Q as well and maybe some comments on mine... hope it makes sense. thanks.
 
With iPhoto and a lot of other Mac applications, the stuff that happens in the background is intentionally abstracted from you. Unlike the Windows world, there's not really any good reason to know where certain files are, the easiest way to deal with things like this is to use the application. That's what is was written for and is why it's like that.

As for your questions about iPhoto. If you've selected to import the photos, they are on your local Mac drive. You may not be able to see them because they are in the iPhoto 'database' (for want of a better word).

iPhoto imports your pictures into a folder called Originals, and when you make any changes to a particular photo is saves the entire picture into a different folder - I think it's called Modified. So yes, you end up with two copies of the same file. The Original and the Modified one. One of the benefits of using iPhoto is that at any time you can revert back to the original. iPhoto takes care of all this for you.

So if you have your photos on an external drive, then import them to iPhoto and then edit them, you will indeed end up with three copies of the same picture.

So I hope this answers your question. I switched just over a year ago, and it took me a while to get over the feeling of losing control as with Windows you always need to be aware of what's going on in the background, but once you get over that, and just let the OS and applications rid you of all that nonsense, you can use your computer the way it is intended and just use the apps rather than having to worry about all the background stuff.

You're not losing control, you're gaining control because you can just concentrate on organising and editing your pictures, rather than worrying about where they are.

It's a bit of a paradigm shift, but try to let go of the back-end concerns. It's worth it.

Cheers.
 
Perfectly stated. Ok that does explain things a bit better. What I was worried about was hdd space gettin eaten up. I only have a macbook w/ 80gb (one of a few upgrades I wish I had done at purchase) so I am I guess concerned with space. I was always used to using an external to backup everything but now with time machine it makes things easy since I don't need to "backup" my photos on an external.

Your right, wanting to make sure I'm in control of the computer is an old habit and I suppose they die hard sometimes.

So then the question for me is, since I just did a fresh install of Leopard on my MB, what is the easiest way for me to import my photos from the external hdd? Just drag and drop? I'm assuming then OSX will place them accordingly on my local hdd?

Just wanting to make sure I don't do it wrong. Thanks!
 
Perfectly stated. Ok that does explain things a bit better. What I was worried about was hdd space gettin eaten up. I only have a macbook w/ 80gb (one of a few upgrades I wish I had done at purchase) so I am I guess concerned with space. I was always used to using an external to backup everything but now with time machine it makes things easy since I don't need to "backup" my photos on an external.

Your right, wanting to make sure I'm in control of the computer is an old habit and I suppose they die hard sometimes.

So then the question for me is, since I just did a fresh install of Leopard on my MB, what is the easiest way for me to import my photos from the external hdd? Just drag and drop? I'm assuming then OSX will place them accordingly on my local hdd?

Just wanting to make sure I don't do it wrong. Thanks!
 
vanmacguy said:
With iPhoto and a lot of other Mac applications, the stuff that happens in the background is intentionally abstracted from you. Unlike the Windows world, there's not really any good reason to know where certain files are, the easiest way to deal with things like this is to use the application. That's what is was written for and is why it's like that.

As for your questions about iPhoto. If you've selected to import the photos, they are on your local Mac drive. You may not be able to see them because they are in the iPhoto 'database' (for want of a better word).

iPhoto imports your pictures into a folder called Originals, and when you make any changes to a particular photo is saves the entire picture into a different folder - I think it's called Modified. So yes, you end up with two copies of the same file. The Original and the Modified one. One of the benefits of using iPhoto is that at any time you can revert back to the original. iPhoto takes care of all this for you.

So if you have your photos on an external drive, then import them to iPhoto and then edit them, you will indeed end up with three copies of the same picture.

So I hope this answers your question. I switched just over a year ago, and it took me a while to get over the feeling of losing control as with Windows you always need to be aware of what's going on in the background, but once you get over that, and just let the OS and applications rid you of all that nonsense, you can use your computer the way it is intended and just use the apps rather than having to worry about all the background stuff.

You're not losing control, you're gaining control because you can just concentrate on organising and editing your pictures, rather than worrying about where they are.

It's a bit of a paradigm shift, but try to let go of the back-end concerns. It's worth it.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Hmm, ok, well I can understand a bit about what you are saying, but I don't understand why I wouldn't want to know where the photo's are. I was trying to post an image to a website and I had to pic the file where it was. I could grab it from my network machine, but if it's on my iMac I don't know why I would have to. Not only that, but since iPhoto is copying it, even though I told it not to, I will have a 4th copy when Time Machine backs it up. Lots of redudancy there. Until Data Deduplication is brought down to consumer devices I am going to be wasting a ton of space.

One other question from the original post, is there an easy way to have these photo's in my wife's iPhoto library so I don't have yet another copy of the image?
 
When you want to upload to a website or such, choose the photo in the iPhoto app and either use the export command to export it to your desktop, or simply drag and drop to desktop. Then upload from there.

Mucking about in the finder will cause you great grief -- corrupt and/or lost photos. Please stay out of finder. You are meant to do things to/with your photos from within the app.

As stated before, just relax and let the software take care of you -- so much easier than windows! If you are really concerned about space, just have your photos on an external and not on your internal. That's what I do - works perfectly! Your wife could have access to that library as well, solving two problems!
 
What is everyone talking about? I'm struggling with some of the same issues. Lets throw a few out there. If I have photos on a network drive and want to use iPhoto, can I just linkto them, it appears not. So then the other machines on my business or home network that may or may not be Macs, how do they get my photos from the network? Can my windows pcs access the iPhoto database, I don't think so. So rather than taking care of my needs, iphoto is saying put your photos here and tell your other friends to go pound sand. So then I have to say no. Propritory file storage is not a winner. I have applications purchased on the windows side for productivity that would be so many useless bits if I can't store my assets on the network.

So then the question is again, how do you use iPhoto with a normal file storage system? Ok, so I understand using Time Machine for particular locations on my Mac, but saying that I don't want control of the physical locaiton of my files is nonsense. I don't want to rely on Time Machine for backups, unless they are of the, opps I deleted my files and want recover them sort. I want to have external drives for each of my media types and I want them to be portable and accessable from any machine, any thing else should be an option after you provide baseline functionality. Ok I can tolerate having to purchase software to access ntfs from the Mac, or to access a Mac drive from a window machine. But a proritiory media storage database. Give me a break. Can't use it. And whats more its incredibly annoying and arrogant to put users in such a box.

So I guess I'm just an angry dude. Whatever. Maybe there is a workaround? Anyone? I don't want to hear anymore about how its better. If you can tell me I'm just stupid and that is obviousy how to share this photos window my windows machines, I'm all ears.
 
Maybe your best option would be to not let iPhoto manage your Library and make new copies of photos, but rather only reference them in their existing location. This is an option under iPhoto preferences.

Edit: I'm not sure if this is the case with iPhoto 08, maybe I am mixing it up with iTunes functionality...
 
iphoto is doing it wrong anyway

Dear All,

Right it is better to let it go if you have disk space to waste. On the other hand, you would expect that the software will comply with its announced features and for iPhoto, it does not !
I just installed a fresh copy of Leopard and decided to import all my photos (8 Gb) of my external portable hard disk in iPhoto. To save space, I unchecked the copy photo option in the preferences Advanced pane. I read the help file before and realized that any modification to a photo will copy the modified photo in the iphoto package folder but I have no intention to modify so much photos. But what a surprise to observe that right after the import procedure, already 800 Mb of photos were present in the modified folder though I did not touch anything ! Difficult to let it go in these conditions. Conclusion, I will just drop iphoto as I did with the previous releases and use the good old finder and preview to browse them.

David
 
not so wrong finally

Sorry for the previous statement, I just realized these photos are automatically modified at import because these are vertical and their EXIF tag states it. So iphoto rotates the photos for you. I shall reduce my 10% vertical photo to save disk space ;)

David
 
Don't use iPhoto

Who ever says to let the iPhoto program "do its work behind the scene" doesn't have over 1gb of photos, kisses steve job
s a$$ every occasion possible, or doesn't really know the meaning of organizing. With iphoto controlling your photos you can't really have a central place for the family or a group of user to access the latest copy. It is a waste of space and inefficient. Maybe a copy and the original, but 4 and more to access them elsewhere? Oh and by the way, in iPhoto '08, just go to Pictures>right click "Iphoto library" and click " Show Contents Packet Contents" the Originals are in "Originals" and the copies are in "Data"; that is if you've made the mistake of working with iphoto.

I'm sadly working with the Finder :p
Any other programs out there?
 
Interesting -- I have over 25 gig of photos, and iPhoto organizes them brilliantly! I only have the originals and the modified -- not 4 copies or more as you say. If you have more copies than that,you are not using iPhoto as it was designed. It is user error, not software error.
 
skybolt said:
Interesting -- I have over 25 gig of photos, and iPhoto organizes them brilliantly! I only have the originals and the modified -- not 4 copies or more as you say. If you have more copies than that,you are not using iPhoto as it was designed. It is user error, not software error.
Click to expand...

Hi,
I read this thread with great interest. Yes, I'm a recent switcher. Yes, I am used to managing my Photos a certain way but I am willing to surrender if I can get all of the functionality out of iPhoto that I need. I have no doubt that iPhoto can organize my photos brilliantly but I like keeping my 20GB of photos on a network drive as well so I can access them from any computer in the house.

I don't think anyone answered the question of how to use iPhoto the way Apple intends *AND* have that Library accessible from other computers (windows) on a home network.

Adam
 
Rumor has it Picasa will be comming to Mac

That would be sweet. I just wish that iPhoto could work with files stored on the network. I too have a multi-system network at home where the sharing of pictures to devices such as xbox's, smart TV's, and Windows users is a requirement.

Oh well.

Jason
 
Until recently I didn't realize there was an option for importing without copying. I've done the opposite with tons of pics, meaning I imported by copying (whatever that means). So I have three questions.

1. If I "import with copying" am I to assume that I have 2 copies of this on my HD?

2. is there anyway to change this setting to the pics I already imported? Or would I have to delete and reimport with the "importing without copying" unchecked?

3. If I can't change this setting to the already existing pics, can I go ahead and delete the folder that I have all my pics in (not in Pictures folder) since they have already been copied?

TIA.

Jeryn
 
what do you do if the iPhoto library becomes corrupted? i am worried about losing (iphoto deleting) different albums unbeknownst to me until it is too late....
 
For me, this need to work within an iPhoto db is a dealbreaker, and also ridiculous. I have about 80GB of photos and while it would be nice to be able to use iPhoto for browsing purposes, I need to use other photo applications as well. Requiring the user to store photos in a db rather than as files isn't virtuous, it's vendor lock-in. Say what you want about MS, but their Windows Live Photo Gallery doesn't try to lock you up in a database, and from what I can tell, it has very competitive features.

I used to use Picasa on PC. I know it's available on Mac. Maybe it would be a good alternative for those of you who iPhoto doesn't work for.
 
acjohnson55 said:
I used to use Picasa on PC. I know it's available on Mac. Maybe it would be a good alternative for those of you who iPhoto doesn't work for.
Click to expand...

I anxiously awaited the release of Picasa for the Mac and I've been using it since day one of it's availability. It's the same app as on Windows and I love it. I will never ever ever attempt to use iPhoto again as long as Picasa is around.

I keep my photos on an external hard drive that's shared so all of my computers (1 iMac and 2 PCs - I'm not made of money... 1 Mac is all I can afford - the other 2 PCs - laptops - cost the same as the the one iMac). I have no difficulties managing all of my photos from any of the computers now. :)
 
Well, here's a new twist. I just upgraded to iPhoto 11 and found that I now have duplicates of 3/4 of my Events. I tried using Duplicate Annihilator (free download from Apple) to get rid of all duplicates, but it (the free version) only works on 500 files (not the 9,000 photos I seem to have now). It took a long time and only found about 25, which I manually tried to delete (not trusting it to do this automatically) one by one.

Then I thought I'd just go through Events and delete each duplicate Event I found, but on closer examination, I found that the duplicated Events often had a different number of photos in them. So they are not exactly the same and I cannot delete one (and wonder where the rest of those photos are).

And as for Apple making things "simpler" for us as they take control away from us ---- apparently it is still wise to keep that control, rather than blindly trust a program with glitches to keep track of all our priceless family photos.

I found that folder where iPhoto stores its copies of my photos (which I also have in my own Photo folder). (Right click on iPhoto Library in Finder and choose "Show Package Contents" and look in Originals folder.)

My question: can I delete (or empty) that Originals folder, and then start fresh by Importing all my photos from my other Photos folder?

And, if I want to set up iPhoto with a similar structure that I have always used (and like), is it best to use Albums and then create many subfolders under each album? I had my photos organized by Year, Season, topics or events, even sub events. Now they are all thrown into a mess of unrelated Events and I can't find things. I'm willing to spend the hours (weeks) creating these albums if it will continue to keep things straight.

Thanks.
 
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