Newbie to iPhoto - Can anyone help with a few questions?

Question

Hi everyone,
I have had iPhoto since December and I love it. I have been able to naviagate around it pretty well and love the fact I can put names to faces. I own a childcare business so this helps me individualise each child's photo's which I put on a thumb drive each week.
The things that I am having problems with are...
1. When I am uploading photo's from my SD card do they go directly into Events?
2. Why do they have event and albums? Is this to create just a few photo's from each event etc.? I am trying not to have double ups as when dealing with so many individual kids it can be confusing.
3. I noticed in the albums there is
- Photo Stream
- Last Import
- Photo's
If I delete these albums will these photo's be deleted from my events?
4. I also have photo's on FB which appear to be showing in my albums below (facebookTraceyBrock)
if I delete any of these do they delete photo's from my facebook?
5. Why is there events and albums? don't they both do the same thing? or as a guess is it just because you can import only the photo's you want to a specific album.
Any help on the best way to organise photo's would be so very much appreciated!
Thankyou in advance
Tracey

Answer 1

1. When I am uploading photo's from my SD card do they go directly into Events?
Yes.
2. Why do they have event and albums? Is this to create just a few photo's from each event etc.? I am trying not to have double ups as when dealing with so many individual kids it can be confusing.
Basic Concept: Every Photo is in the Library. Events are a view of the Library. Delete a photo from an Event and you delete from iPhoto
More opportunities for organising. Events are handy, but very limited: Events are organisation for those who can't really be bothered. They are automatic - based entirely on Date and Time the camera records the photos as taken. You can move photos between Events, you can Merge Events, you can Rename them and sort them in various ways except one: You cannot manually sort in an Event as Events are all automated.
Events also contain the Actual photos. So if you have a photo in more than one Event you are using more disk space than you need.
Albums contain pointers to the Photos in the Library. A Photo can be in 50 albums and use no disk space extra disk space whatever. You can mix and match in any way you like in an Album. Photos from different events, photos categorised or selected in any  way you fancy.
I'll post a longer answer at the bottom of this, showing some of the possibilities of Albums
I noticed in the albums there is
- Photo Stream
- Last Import
- Photo's
If I delete these albums will these photo's be deleted from my events?
Photos is not in Albums. It's under Library, like Events. It's another view of the same material. Like different windows into the same room. Deleting Photos from Photos is removing them from the Library
PhotoStream and Last Import are just handy shortcuts. They don't contain the photos, just pointers to them. There is no duplication here. There is no need to delete anything from here.
I also have photo's on FB which appear to be showing in my albums below (facebookTraceyBrock)
if I delete any of these do they delete photo's from my facebook?
Yes. Because you're using iPhoto to manage the pics on Facebook.
5. Why is there events and albums? don't they both do the same thing? or as a guess is it just because you can import only the photo's you want to a specific album.
See above. Some of the possibilities of Albums, Smart Albums and so on:
I use Events simply as big buckets of Photos: Spring 08, July - Nov 06 are typical Events in my Library. I use keywords and Smart Albums extensively. I title the pics broadly.
I keyword on a
Who
What
Where basis (The When is in the photos's Exif metadata). I also rate the pics on a 1 - 5 star basis.
Using this system I can find pretty much find any pic in my 40k library in a couple of seconds.
So, for example, I have a batch of pics titled 'Seattle 08' and a  typical keywording might include: John, Anne, Landscape, mountain, trees, snow. With a rating included it's so very easy to find the best pics we took at Mount Rainier.
File -> New Smart Album
set it to 'All"
title contains Seattle
keyword is mountain
keyword is snow
rating is 5 stars
Or, want a chronological album of John from birth to today?
New Smart Album
Keyword is John
Set the View options to Sort By Date Ascending
Want only the best pics?
add Rating is greater than 4 stars
The best thing about this system is that it's dynamic. If I add 50 more pics of John  to the Library tomorrow, as I keyword and rate them they are added to the Smart Album.
In the end, organisation is about finding the pics. The point is to make locating that pic or batch of pics findable fast. This system works for me.