iPhoto sync taking up all my Hard Drive! What can I do?

[S-Man]

I'm a part-time photographer, so I have lots of photos. I store my photos on external hard drives. Lots of RAW files and JPEGs.
When I first got my Mac, I wondered why it took iPhoto 6+ hours to sync with my photo library. Then I learned that it makes a copy of every single file in your photo library.
So my 320 gig Hard Drive is now down to 90 Gigs, thanks to iPhoto.

On my PC, I would casually use a program called Picasa (made by google) for simple viewing and slideshows etc.
When I would sync photos with that program, it would view them off of my external HD, and not copy them to my computers HD. If the external HD was not hooked up, it wouldn't show any photos in the library. But when I plugged it in, it would see the photo library.

Is there an option in iPhoto to do the same thing?
I don't want triple copies of all my photos eating up all my HD space. (One original, One backup, one on the Mac HD)

Please help a Mac Newbie!

 

[energysaver]

You're right, iPhoto does copy your photos, so that you can then delete the originals. iPhoto will organise them all into its own library so you don't need to worry about hundreds of folders etc. If you really don't like that idea, go to preferences > Advanced and turn off 'Copy items to my iPhoto library" but I wouldn't recommend this - if you move any files/folders or delete something using Finder, iPhoto won't realise and you'' just get a question mark where the photo used to be. iPhoto wants you to use the iPhoto interface and it wants to arrange all the files and folders for you.

A friend of mine has the same kind of headache cos she wants the Mac to work like a PC, but Macs aren't designed that way.

iPhoto can't instantly mix libraries from different sources, but what you can do is creat several different libraries. Hold Alt as you open iPhoto and you can create a brand new library (perhaps on an external drive). Holding Alt in the future will let you select which library you want to open.

 

[quotemeas]

There is an option in iPhoto's preferences to prevent iPhoto from copying your photos into it's library (see attachment). All that is created is a small thumbnail file. I would delete your iPhoto library and stat over, otherwise you run the risk of corruption if you try to manually delete the copies.

 

[S-Man]

Thanks guys! I think that's the route I want to go. Im' not going to be using it to edit photos, as I have CS2 and Aperture. I'm glad I can free up my HD space now!

 

[Vanarak19]

with my downgrade to iphoto 2009, I have tried using Picasa from google.

I cant even import several photos at once, troubling. (with iphoto09)

 

[S-Man]

what do you mean 'downgrade' to '09?
DOes it suck or what?