Disk Allocation. Any Way to Change the Way iPhoto saves the folders????

Question

Ok so whats the deal with iPhoto. I thought about useing it to view all of my picture cause it seems like a pretty nice program. But the way it stores to photo makes them inpossible to find. I think it stores it by date. Which is no good at all. Right now I am switch over computers. So how does iPhoto work with the Ipod. Cause on my other computer I named all my files and now is it just going to be by date if I use iPhoto.
Thankss

Answer 1

Hi Brent,
Are you switching from a Windows to Mac?
Ok, the Deal with iPhoto.
All images imported into iPhoto are copied into iPhoto's database, which is the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder. Do not touch this folder.
Two Apple kbs for you to read
Don't tamper with files in the iPhoto library folder
About the iPhoto Library folder
This is the heads up on the iPhoto Library structure:
This is a view of how the iPhoto Library looks in the Finder.
It is organized by Year folders. Inside the Year folders are Month folders. Inside the Month folders are the days of the Month. Inside the day folders are the photos you took on that day. If you imported video clips and RAW files on that day they will be in an Originals folder. If you have edited any photo imported on that day, the original will be in that folder also.
This is the heads up on iPhoto with the iPod:
When you hook up the iPod and iTunes opens, go to the iPod prefs by clicking on the iPod icon on the bottom right of the window.
You can have your iPod sync with an Album in your iPhoto Library. Within iPhoto, make a new Album, and drag all the images you want on your iPod into that Album.
In the iPod preferences, you can also choose to have it sync with a folder on your hard drive instead of an album within iPhoto. If that is what you want to do, then navigate and choose that folder of images.
The heads up on importing images into iPhoto that you already have in your own directory structure:
Importing Images from the hard drive, CD, or DVD
To import a folder with subfolders of images maintaining the same organizational structure (or close to it):
Drag the folder into iPhotos viewing area.
A film roll will be created with each sub folders name. To view the rolls in the Library you need to first go to the menu bar and choose View>by film rolls.
To make each roll into an Album, highlight the tile of the roll
Go to File>new album from selection.
You will now have an Album in the source column with the images from that roll. Do this for each roll if you want them to be an Album. This is your choice.
Next, go to the menu bar and hit File>new folder
Name this new folder with the year or whatever the name was of the Parent folder containing the subfolders that you had dragged into iPhotos viewing area.
Next drag all the Albums into the respective new Parent folder you just made.
Albums- collection of images from one roll or many rolls. The Albums will be listed in your source column when you make them. The albums only contain placeholders for the images that are still in the library. They are not duplicates.
Rolls- rolls are created when you import folder of images. It will be given the name of the folder you are importing.
Rolls are also created from each import from your camera. You are given the option to name the roll at import.
Folder-a folder you create manually using the File>new folder command
Folders can hold Albums, slideshows, books, another folder, etc.
One other way you can import a folder of images and have an Album created for it as the same time it is imported as a roll in the Library view:
Drag each folder of images into the source column of iPhoto. When you see the plus sign, drop it in the source column.
An album will be created in the source column, and the roll that the album was created from will be in the library view window.
More heads up Info!
--First thing to know and remember is this...Do not drag any images, folder of images into the iPhoto Library in the Finder. Images have to be imported into iPhoto within the application. Do not scan images and save them into the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder. Save them to another location such as the Pictures folder or even the desktop. You can then import them into iPhoto.
If you have already put files/folders in the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder then you will also find out that if you try to import them into iPhoto you will get an error message. No worry, just drag them to the desktop and import from there.
--All images that you import are shown in the library view. You can choose how you want to view, by rolls, by date, by rating, etc. When you put images in an Album, slideshow, book, etc, you are actually just putting pointers to those images in the library. You are not adding more images. If you delete an image from the Album it will still be in the library. If you delete an image from the library it is deleted from iPhoto's database and your hard drive (unless you have it backed up somewhere else)
--You have a folder of images on your hard drive and want to import them into iPhoto. Drag the folder of images into an open iPhoto Library window and the folder of photos will be copied into the library, resulting in a new roll with the name of the folder. You now have two copies of those photos, the ones in iPhoto's database and the ones on your desktop. You can keep the ones on your desktop that you just imported as backup or you can delete that folder.
-- you scan a picture/pictures and save it in a folder. You cannot scan directly into iPhoto or the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder.
You want all your photos in iPhoto so you import them into iPhoto.
Now you have two copies of that picture/pictures, so you can delete the originals that were in the scanned folder and keep the one/ones that were imported into iPhoto.
-- You download pictures from your camera into iPhoto.
There is now one copy of each of the pictures. (DO NOT HAVE IPHOTO DELETE THE IMAGES FROM YOUR CAMERA! DELETE THEM MANUALLY WITH THE CAMERA-if something goes wrong with the import and they are never imported and then they are deleted from the camera you might end up losing those images)
You want to change something about a picture you imported, such as
cropping it or changing the size, or changing the orientation.
Once you do that to a picture, you now have two copies of the picture
in iPhoto, the original and the edited one. The edited one will be in the library organize view. The original is packed away in an Original folder in your iPhoto Library folder under the date of the roll. You can always revert to the original by control clicking on the photo and choose "revert to orginal" You will not have this choice if you used iPhoto Diet to get rid of the Originals.
(a quick note on cropping within iPhoto...when you are in edit mode, you automatically will be in the crop mode with cross hairs to highlight the crop area. To finish cropping you must click the crop button and then go back to library view and your cropped picture will be there.
3.You want to use Photoshop or another graphic program to edit a picture in your iPhoto library.
You can open up prefs for iPhoto and choose "when double clicking on
photo ..do" choose "other" and select Photoshop. Now you can edit all
pictures in your iPhoto library in PhotoShop by double clicking. If you save the photo with the same name and as a flattened file it will be saved right into iPhoto and you will see the changes. If you don't want to save it into iPhoto then do a "save as" and save to the desktop. You will then have the original photo still in iPhoto and your new edited photo on the desktop.
Or, with iPhoto open, you can drag a picture from the library window
to your desktop (you see a + sign on the pic you are dragging). You now
have two of the same picture, one in the iPhoto library and one on your desktop. You can open up the one on your desktop in any graphic program and work on it. The one in iPhoto stays the same. You can also share/export the picture/pictures to your desktop or folder to work on them or do batch processing, etc. You will still have the originals in your iPhoto Library.
Or, you can open up the ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/folders and option drag any
picture out of the folder to your desktop. Notice that you will see a plus sign while dragging the photo. This is copying the file to your desktop
I would advise anyone not to do this as they might forget to use the option key and drag the photo out. Next time you open iPhoto the photo will be missing.
Two Apple kbs for you to read
Don't tamper with files in the iPhoto library folder
About the iPhoto Library folder
Don't forget that in Library view you can Control click on any picture and get a contextual menu with many options. One is to revert to original.
Lori