Is there a way to get photos off my hard drive without losing integrity of various albums and folders

Question

I have a large number of photos on my mac, and wish to move them, but don't want to lose all the sorting and organizing i've done into various folders and albums.  Is there a way to move a series of events and not lose the tie to an album or folder?

Answer 1

Here's one way to do what you want:
1. Quit iPhoto.
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the external drive.  (Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) )
Now you have two full copies of the Library. To choose between them:  Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
3. On the Internal Library, remove the pics you don't want with you all the time.
Now you have one full library on the external and another smaller sub-set on the Internal.
A couple of comments:
a. The external disk needs to be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
b: When you're removing the unwanted pics from the Internal Library you need to delete them in batches of about 100 or so. Trashing more at one time can cause problems with the database.
c: Managing Multiple Libraries - including moving pics/albums/rolls and metadata between them - is greatly facilitated by using iPhoto Library Manager
Regards
TD