How do I find albums in the Finder? Where did they go?

Question

Just upgraded to iPhoto 06 from 04. When I look for photos in Finder I don't see any of my albums listed. The file structure is totally changed, and I don't even have a folder for 2006 but I do have prior years, which I can then look in to see pictures by date. My 2006 photos can be found only under "DATA" by roll numbers, a somewhat annoying new concept.
Am I missing something really simple here? Why is the folder structure for photos completely changed in iPhoto 06? Why can't I find photos via album in the Finder anymore, and is there any way to fix that? This is a problem for uploading to sites like Shutterfly, for example (it was a total pain to try and do that and and it seems to be a significant deficiency in the program as compared to the earlier version. Any help appreciated!
PB 15" 1.0 Ghz 1.25G RAM   Mac OS X (10.4.5)  

Answer 1

Hi dscott1000,
Yes the folder structure/organization has changed in iPhoto 6. The Albums folder in the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder, however, that was in earlier versions of iPhoto has been done away with, starting with iPhoto 5.
iPhoto 5 (and now 6) now stores the Album information in a data xml file. The Albums folder within the iPhoto Library folder is no longer used. At some point, usually after a rebuild, you will no longer have that folder in the Finder.
If you need to access photos from an album it is very difficult for a third party application to navigate the iPhoto Library in order to find the photo you need. You will have to know the date of import in order to find the photo.
There are some third party applications that can read the xml file and can navigate the iPhoto library and show you the Albums. Hopefully more applications will be revised to read this file.
Until then you will have to Share/Export the photos to the desktop. You can then navigate to the desktop to use the photos (example: web uploading from online photo site)
If your application supports drag and drop, you can drag the photo from an open iPhoto Library window into your application.
For email you can also use the email icon within iPhoto to open a message with the highlighted photo attached.
You can also use spotlight to find images in an Album...
This is what I have done using Spotlight to find my images that are in iPhoto albums without opening iPhoto..
In iPhoto, select the album, then select all, go to Photos/batch change.
Change the comments to text. In the text field I put the name of the Album.
Do this for each album.
Close iPhoto.
Open Spotlight and put in the name of the Album ( you have to remember the names of the albums or have then written down)
In the spotlight search results. click on "show all"
Under "Images" click on the "xx more" to show all the images in the album.
Make sure you have it in icon view, the icon view box is the last one on the blue images line.
Now you can control click on the image to "reveal in finder", open in iPhoto or Mail, etc.
I am not sure if this is going to make you happy and it is a little more work, but you can find images in albums and even view them in a slideshow (by clicking the play arrow at the end of the Images highlighted blue line) using Spotlight, all without opening iPhoto.
One important thing to know is you can set up a graphic program to be an external editor (when you double click an image in the library} such as PhotoShop or PS Elements. You set up that within iPhoto Preferences. Just make sure you save the image flattened and with the same name. The edits will then be relected in iPhoto when you hit "save".
Two Apple kbs for you to read
Don't tamper with files in the iPhoto library folder
About the iPhoto Library folder
This is how iPhoto 6 is organized in the Finder:
iPhoto 6 Library folder in the Finder
As you can see the structure is now related to rolls. Rolls are created for each folder you import and each import session from a camera.
It is very easy to change the names of film rolls within iPhoto to make them easier to find images within. Open the info panel in iPhoto by clicking on the "i" icon. Once it is opened, click on the roll title in the viewing window.
Click on the word "title" in the info pane and type in your new title. I like to use a date and text format such as 12/25/05 Christmas at Mom's, 1/05/06 my birthday, etc. Once the roll names are changed within iPhoto, they are also changed within the Finder, making it easy to locate an image.
When importing from a camera, make sure you name the roll with a date and text before the import.
To help with your Shutterfly program, there is a plugin for iPhoto.
Shutterfly Upload Assistant