Subfolders or albums within Albums in iPhoto

[vjaaan]

I am trying to organize all my photos like I used to have them, e.g., by year, then further by season, then further by type of event, etc. iPhoto throws them all together. I was told I could use Albums and make sub categories within the albums. I am not finding a way to do this.
If Albums is not the way to go, can I use Events and put events within events, so I could have, say, and Event called 2005, and subfolders or sub events inside that?

Thanks.

 

[Designer Dale]

You can create folders by hand and drag events into them. This creates a single level sub-folder, but you can't further sub-folder from this. As far as I know. iPhoto is a database and it's best left alone to do it's thing.

Dale

 

[Pomeroy]

When moving from windows to a Mac the hardest part of using iPhoto is giving up the idea of Folders... I know it was for me.. In a few years you will forget what year it was that you took the photo you want to find, was it 2006 or 2007 ? Then you have to start digging in folders and subfolders and scrolling around looking.. In iPhoto with just a few key strokes it will find any photo you want. To me the next worst way to try to organize in iPhoto after folders is the confusing way of trying to sort in Events . Under iPhotos "Library" in the left side bar click on "Photos" and most of your photos will already be in order of date if you sort them using iPhotos "View" menu and use "Sort by Date". To see see the Year and Month as you scroll, grab the blue scroll bar to scroll (don't scroll using a scroll wheel on a mouse or 2 finger scrolling), you must grab the blue bar.
I use Events just to get my photos into iPhoto and the next thing is to give them at least one Keyword. I use Smart Albums and Key Words for all photos, also now that iPhoto has Faces and Places I'm stating to use those also to find pictures i want. Use "command+k" to bring up the Keyword dialog box and make the Keywords you want to use. Use Smart Albums with some Rules to hold photos you use a lot. Use the "+ sign" under the left side bar to make some Folders and Smart Albums. You can drag Folders and Smart Albums into other Folders, but you can't put Folders inside of Smart Albums. I have a Folder named "States" and inside is a Smart Album for of the states we travel in. To find a photo easy and not have to remember which Folder you placed it in years ago just click on "Photos" under Library and use the Search box at the bottom of iPhoto to start typing a keyword. You can also click on a Folder or Smart Album in the side bar and search on in that Folder or Smart Album.
Lets say I have a photo of Uncle Bob that I took on vacation in 2003 at Blue Lake in Idaho, I would add the Key Words, Blue Lake, Family, Vacation and Idaho.
I can now find that picture several ways and not have to remember what year it was. I can find him by typing Uncle Bob or Family or Idaho or Blue Lake or Vacations. I could even sort my whole library by Date and scroll down to about the time I took the picture. That is just some of the ways to find a photo fast. Uncle Bob would show up in several Smart Albums.
Once you start thinking about using iPhoto like a Data base and let it do what it was designed to and not try to manage a bunch of folders yourself you will be able to find any photo you want with just a few key strokes.

 

[vjaaan]

After updating my iLife to '11, my iPhoto duplicated most of my Events, and the duplicates were not exact, so I could not just go through a delete a duplicate Event. After fixing that problem, I find I am not very trusting of iPhoto, so I hesitate to spend all the hours setting it up. But I do like many features of it, so I guess I'll do another backup and try to work with it.

With over 15,000 photos, I won't be going one by one and assigning keywords. So I'll have to see if I can assign keywords to batches of photos. I am assuming something like this can be done? If not, I'll need to create a massive number of albums I guess.

Thanks so much for the good suggestions!