iPhoto - how to use it properly?

[Rossatron]

this may seem silly, but i'd appreciate help anyway.

I understand that iphoto acts as my photo library. thing is, i have photos imported from other computer, and are naturally organised in different folders.
i want to add them to iPhoto, so i have everything in one place, but:

1) i have noticed that pictures that appear in iPhoto library, do not appear anywhere else. sure, i can find them under the iPhoto library in finder, but if i want to send a picture, or upload, i can't do it straight-forward from the library, but i need to export it first.

2) i don't know how importing pictures will work. i don't want to import everything, and have 2 copies of everything.

so, in regards to (1): is this how it works, or am i missing something?
(2): how can i import without having 2 copies?

 

[Weaselboy]

It sounds like you have the basics of it. The idea is that you never manage photos from Finder, but rather do it all from in iPhoto and use iPhoto to organize however you want. You can select photo(s) then click the share button at the bottom right of iPhoto to mail a photo. Or you can just drag photos from iPhoto onto your Mail icon in the dock.

After you have imported all your photos into iPhoto you can either save them somewhere else maybe on a separate backup drive, or just delete the original folders so you don't have two of each photo on your internal drive.

You will want to use Time Machine or some other backup software to backup the iPhoto library to an external drive.

 

[Rossatron]

Thanks, ill try what you said (dragging to mail, and deleting the copies)

 

[Dark Dragoon]

For question 1 there is another way to access the media in other applications from iPhoto.

The open file dialogue has Photos on the bottom of the list on the left (in the Media section). You can use this to access the media in iPhoto as well as other applications such as Photo Booth. In the attached picture I've highlighted this in green.

As well as this method some applications such as Mail have a button to access media, highlighted in blue.

 

[Rossatron]

I did what you both said and everything went well, and no double copies were left

 

[Weaselboy]

I did what you both said and everything went well, and no double copies were left

Excellent! Glad it worked out for you.