Super Noob question, how do i share photos?

Question

My girlfriend and I bought our very first mac yesterday and we love it! We are in the slow transition of putting all our digital files from our PC to our mac and I have come across one problem.
Do we have to upload every thing twice to put it on both accounts? I Figured once she loaded all the pics on her account I would be able to view and access them with mine.
There must be some way to do this. If not my memory seems like it would fill up having all the same files loaded twice.
Again, Super noob here, but loving it so much.
Thanks.
Message was edited by: Clearkidc

Answer 1

Clearkidc
Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
There are two ways to share, depending on what you mean by 'share'.
If you want the other user to be able to see the pics, but not add to, change or alter your library, then enable Sharing in your iPhoto (Preferences -> Sharing), leave iPhoto running and use Fast User Switching to open the other account. In that account, enable 'Look For Shared Libraries'. Your Library will appear in the other source pane.
Remember iPhoto must be running in both accounts for this to work.
Frankly, as you are brand new to Macs I suggest you use the above until you're more familiar with the machine and the Operating System.
If you want the other user to have the same access to the library as you: to be able to add, edit, organise, keyword etc. then:
Quit iPhoto in both accounts
Move the iPhoto Library Folder to an external HD set to ignore permissions. You could also use a dmg.
(Some people have had success putting the library in the Users/ Shared folder. If you do this make sure the file permissions are set to allow read/write access to everyone.)
In each account in turn: Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting dialogue, select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new library location. From that point on, this will be the default library location. Both accounts will have full access to the library, in fact, both accounts will 'own' it.
However, there is a catch with this system and it is a significant one. iPhoto is not a multi-user app., it does not have the code to negotiate two users simultaneously writing to the database, and trying will cause db corruption. So only one user at a time, and back up, back up back up.
Regards
TD
Message was edited by: Terence Devlin