Help with importing huge photo collection

Hello,
my brther switched to Mac and want to use iPhoto. His pohoto collection is about 40GB and many, many folders and subfolders. The structure of the folders and subfolders are like this example:
-X-mas     ->2009
               ->2010
               ->2011
Moto-trip ->Germany 2008 -> My photos
                                        -> Toms photos
                                        -> Mikes photos
               ->Switzerland 2009     -> My photos
                                                -> Brothers photos
etc...
Is there some possibility (maybe some script or 3rd app) of how to import all this pictures and for example automaticaly create Albums with subfolders in iPhoto?
Importing each subfolder would take days...
Any idea?
P.S.: He uses Mountain Lion and the latest iPhoto.

The structure you outline here is one for Files and not Photos. Using that structure in iPhoto is a bit pointless as it remains as limited in iPhoto as it is in the Finder.
iPhoto offers much more varied organisational opportunities, leveraging data that the file browser doesn't even know about - such as Exif and IPTC.
For Instance: anything date-based is done automatically based on the date and time of the Exif metadata in the Photos. So, Events are made this way, automatically. You can search by date using Smart Albums or the Calendar search in the search box: Therefore can easily find all the photos from any specific day, month, year, or in any time range using one of these tools.
If, in the example above, Tom and Mike have different cameras, then again you can sort these from each others with a simple Smart Album.
Next: Albums hold Photos. There is no such thing as a subfolder in Albums. You can have Folders. They can contain Albums nested Folders, which can also contain Albums.
As for importing folder tree: there's some stuff here that might help
http://www.macworld.com/article/1139658/iphotoimport.html
but I don't believe that there is any way to create a folder and move an Album into it.
Regards
TD

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I've accumulated over 10,000 photos stored on my PC which I've since transferred over to my LaCie external drive for my MacBook Pro via a wireless network connecting my PC & Mac. Some of these I've put onto my laptop internal hard drive and those I've imported into the iPhoto library. However, do I need to move the rest of the photos from my LaCie drive into my internal hard drive to import the photos into iPhoto, or can I tell iPhoto to look for the files in the external drive. If so, how do I do that? I know I'll then have to create albums in order to sort them, which I know how to do. Is there any fast way to do it by date? I had it sorted into different file folders by month & year so I could easily find them on my PC and would like to do the same using albums.
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Karen,
Is there any fast way to do it by date? I had it sorted into different file folders by month & year so I could easily find them on my PC and would like to do the same using albums.
This is where you get to enjoy the power of iPhoto's database. You can change the Sort in the View menu. Check out View > Sort Photos > by Date.
Or, click the little calendar icon near the lower left corner of the iPhoto window. This allows you to filter the library by year, month, week, or date. You can Command-click to add another date to your filter. You can Option-click to choose a recurring date: you get that month or date for all years in your library. [Want to see your kid's birthday for every year? Just Option-Click that date. Cool.]
The keywords filter is similar. There is a preference setting where you choose to filter based on ALL keywords chosen (where by choosing more keywords you narrow your field) or ANY keyword (where the more keywords you choose, the larger your field will be). Click on a keyword to filter your library by all photos containing that keyword. Use Command-click to add more keywords to the filter. A difference is that Option-click will eliminate photos with that keyword from your filter. [You can find all pictures of your kids with your dog but NOT at Halloween.]
You can create Smart Albums to combine the use of dates, keywords, ratings, titles, comments and more. The more information you enter into the database, the more powerful the tools become.
When your task of importing is complete and you are ready to play with iPhoto's features it may help to look at the iPhoto multimedia tutorial. Better organized than trying to read through the Help files, it can help you get acquainted with many of iPhoto's features.
Have fun.

Can u please help with my huge Photo/Album/Folder Management Project?

Thanks for looking and happy holidays.
Using 1.5.2
I had all my photos under one external Hard Drive and most were not keyworded. I also have a very large folder (recovered) that I had to recover
lost images during a HD crash so they are simply in folders such as
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on I keyword every single image. Am I on track?
Being So greatful for any advice.
Thanks
Tom

Hi Tom,
Sounds like lots and lots of fun. More fun than you know what to do with!
First thing I would do is sort on image date, just in case you have dups. .... unless you know you haven't. Create an album and drag all images (or batches of) from projects and recovered to the album. Sort on image date. Deleting any dups. from the album will delete the master/version image from its project also.
Next I suggest you create a folder and project structure you desire.
Then sort/filter your recovered project on keyword. Select the group needed and drag to its destination project. Dragging from project to project will move the master/version images.
This should get you a long way down the path without too much fun (hopefully).
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