Moving My Photos to iPhotos

[bmorris]

My girlfriend's uncle just got a new iMac. He had a Dell XPS.
He had all his photos organized by year and events in folders.
He's trying to use iPhoto, but he hates the way it hides the contents in the iPhoto Library.
I'm thinking to make it easier for him, he'd prefer to not only have the Events, but albums on the sidebar for each folder of photos.

Is there an easy way to import the original photo folders and have them automatically make albums on the sidebar and events besides dragging folder by folder (like with Automator, Applescript, or an app maybe)?

 

[Tumbleweed666]

My girlfriend's uncle just got a new iMac. He had a Dell XPS.
He had all his photos organized by year and events in folders.
He's trying to use iPhoto, but he hates the way it hides the contents in the iPhoto Library.
I'm thinking to make it easier for him, he'd prefer to not only have the Events, but albums on the sidebar for each folder of photos.

Is there an easy way to import the original photo folders and have them automatically make albums on the sidebar and events besides dragging folder by folder (like with Automator, Applescript, or an app maybe)?

I believe if he starts again, (wipes out what he has done before) and unticks the preferences>advanced>copy photos ... box, iPhoto will just point to the original destination of the photos.

But if he goes messing with those contents outside of ipHoto, say, deleting photos, it will get confused. Not sure though what happens if you add extra photos to an existing folder, whether it picks those up automatically or doesnt see them or what.

It may however be that iPhoto is not for him, he might be better off using something like PhotoShop Elements which comes with its own organiser app "Bridge" which will just access whatever photos you tell it to look at and will use his existing structures, that way he knows where everything is filed.

The downside is you dont get the nice integration between iPhoto and the rest of Mac.

9 months in to a Mac and iPhoto, also coming from PC, if I was to start again, it would be a hard call for me, whether to use iPhoto or PSE or similar instead, I also don't like its arcane underlying structure, that you cant import directly into an existing event, and that every change however small changes a couple of 200Mb+ files that can be a pain for net backup.

Probably the deciding factor is how wedded to his existing photo structure. I suppose he has little to lose by trying iPhoto as I described and seeing how he gets on with it.

 

[ncmason]

Agreed. If the user wants a photo library that is truly manageable iPhoto is not the best solution. Adobe products such as Bridge or Lightroom are best for users that want more structure and control over their photo libraries.