Hi, I'm new to the MacRumors forums, so forgive me if I make any mistakes! So here is my problem, and its really annoying me.
Currently my home network consists of 2 Windows 7 PC's, 1 MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard and a Home server, running WHS 2011. On Windows, the Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos libraries are pointing to a network location (//Home-Server/Documents, etc). This works well, as iTunes on Windows is fine with using //Home-Server/Music/iTunes for all its files.
On Mac OS X, I can also quite easily use network locations for Documents, Music and Videos, because Documents is primarily accessed from Finder, Music from iTunes (Which is fine with network paths) and iMovie (Which also works fine with files on a network drive).
But iPhoto does not. Currently, the Pictures folder (//Home-Server/Pictures), consists of further event folders which contain pictures. So I store pictures in this way: Pictures < Florida 2010 < Picture.jpg
What I would like to know, is how to make iPhoto point to these photos and not copy them to a local location. This way, if I make a change in iPhoto, it will replace the old file in the network location, with the new one. I want to keep the current folder structure intact, because the other 2 Windows PC's use Windows Live Photo Gallery, which does a fantastic job of just pointing to the current folder structure and changing the files there, without the need for stupid Databases, as with iPhoto.
I have noticed that, If I uncheck the 'Copy files into iPhoto' option in preferences and import all my pictures, and then edit a picture, it does not then put that edited picture back onto the network location, so this leaves me with the old, un-edited picture on the network location and a newer edited picture on iPhoto. Which isn't good because, I can't then view it on the Windows machines.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Thanks, Jack
Currently my home network consists of 2 Windows 7 PC's, 1 MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard and a Home server, running WHS 2011. On Windows, the Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos libraries are pointing to a network location (//Home-Server/Documents, etc). This works well, as iTunes on Windows is fine with using //Home-Server/Music/iTunes for all its files.
On Mac OS X, I can also quite easily use network locations for Documents, Music and Videos, because Documents is primarily accessed from Finder, Music from iTunes (Which is fine with network paths) and iMovie (Which also works fine with files on a network drive).
But iPhoto does not. Currently, the Pictures folder (//Home-Server/Pictures), consists of further event folders which contain pictures. So I store pictures in this way: Pictures < Florida 2010 < Picture.jpg
What I would like to know, is how to make iPhoto point to these photos and not copy them to a local location. This way, if I make a change in iPhoto, it will replace the old file in the network location, with the new one. I want to keep the current folder structure intact, because the other 2 Windows PC's use Windows Live Photo Gallery, which does a fantastic job of just pointing to the current folder structure and changing the files there, without the need for stupid Databases, as with iPhoto.
I have noticed that, If I uncheck the 'Copy files into iPhoto' option in preferences and import all my pictures, and then edit a picture, it does not then put that edited picture back onto the network location, so this leaves me with the old, un-edited picture on the network location and a newer edited picture on iPhoto. Which isn't good because, I can't then view it on the Windows machines.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
--
Thanks, Jack
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