Where and how does iPhoto store photos?
I have iPhoto 2009 and tens of gigabytes of photos, maybe 10,000 in all.
Currently, I have been dumping these photos into my Pictures folder, then importing them into iPhoto. My questions are:
1) What's getting stored, and where?
2) Is this the best strategy?
3) What about duplicates? Do I just delete them from my iPhoto library, and leave them in my Picture folder? For example, I have hundreds of shots that I created as both RAW and JPEG. That's what I want to keep on disk, but I don't need duplicates in iPhoto.
4) How do I go about organizing my photos? Should I have a maximum number of photos in a given folder? And how should I organize all this in iPhoto?
I know these seem like stupid questions. I'm not a stupid user; I have 25 years of experience. I'm just looking for best practice suggestions and a deeper understanding of what is stored and where, and where I will hit performance problems.
the pictures in my Pictures folder have been copied into iPhoto, (into an enormous invisible folder somewhere)
Nothing enormous or invisible.
Since iPhoto 7 (iLife 08) the old iPhoto Library Folder is now a Package File. This is simply a folder that looks like a file in the Finder. The change was made to the format of the iPhoto library because many users were inadvertently corrupting their library by browsing through it with other software or making changes in it themselves.
Want to look inside? Go to your Pictures Folder and find the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.
Standard Warning: Don't change anything in the iPhoto Library Folder via the Finder or any other application. iPhoto depends on the structure as well as the contents of this folder. Moving things, renaming things or otherwise making changes will prevent iPhoto from working and could even cause you to damage or lose your photos.
How the files are stored: You have three core folders
Originals are the photos as they were downloaded from your camera or scanner.
(ii) Modified contains edited pics, shots that you have cropped, rotated or changed in any way.
(iii) Data holds the thumbnails the the app needs to show you the photos in the iPhoto Window.
See? No secrets.
I can be confident that they'll be backed up with Time Machine,
Yes, or any other Back Upmutility you choose
and they will remain in their original format (unless I edit within iPhoto),
Yes, as you can see from your look inside iPhoto
and, if I later choose a different photo management program, photos in the iPhoto library are still discrete files that I can copy using the Finder?
Yes, though the more correct way would be to export via iPhoto. Why? Because this will allow you to write any metadata you add in iPhoto to the files.
Regards
TD
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Where and how does iPhoto keep photos?
I am in the process of scanning and editing about 1000 old Kodakchrome slides taken over the past 40+ years.
My scans go into Photoshop Elements for tarting up and then are stored in various folders with appropriate names. After that I import them into iPhoto 5 in order to assemble them into albums, slides shows or whatever.
Questions: 1. Does iPhoto actually import and keep a copy of each image file? 2. Can I safely delete the folders I have used for the original and processed scans? 3. If I back-up the iPhotolibraries to an external hard drive, I am safe - I won't lose my pictures?
I am sure that these basic questions have been answered by various Mac gurus a zillion times before but I found it pretty daunting to read through the 20+ pages shown in discussions. One has to admit the contents of the iPhoto folders and files is all pretty mysterious!
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David AmiesHi David,
A little more info for you...
--First thing to know and remember is this...Do not drag any images, folder of images into the iPhoto Library in the Finder. Images have to be imported into iPhoto within the application. Do not scan images and save them into the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder. Save them to another location such as the Pictures folder or even the desktop. You can then import them into iPhoto.
--You have a folder of images on your hard drive and want to import them into iPhoto. Drag the folder of images into an open iPhoto Library window and the folder of photos will be copied into the library, resulting in a new roll with the name of the folder. You now have two copies of those photos, the ones in iPhoto's database and the ones on your desktop. You can keep the ones on your desktop that you just imported as backup or you can delete that folder.
-- you scan a picture/pictures and save it in a folder. You cannot scan directly into iPhoto or the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder.
You want all your photos in iPhoto so you import them into iPhoto.
Now you have two copies of that picture/pictures, so you can delete the originals that were in the scanned folder and keep the one/ones that were imported into iPhoto.
-- You download pictures from your camera into iPhoto.
There is now one copy of each of the pictures.
You want to change something about a picture you imported, such as
cropping it or changing the size, or changing the orientation.
Once you do that to a picture, you now have two copies of the picture
in iPhoto, the original and the edited one. The edited one will be in the library organize view. The original is packed away in an Original folder in your iPhoto Library folder under the date of the roll. You can always revert to the original by control clicking on the photo and choose "revert to orginal" You will not have this choice if you used iPhoto Diet to get rid of the Originals.
(a quick note on cropping within iPhoto...when you are in edit mode, you automatically will be in the crop mode with cross hairs to highlight the crop area. To finish cropping you must click the crop button and then go back to library view and your cropped picture will be there.
3.You want to use Photoshop or another graphic program to edit a picture in your iPhoto library.
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photo ..do" choose "other" and select Photoshop. Now you can edit all
pictures in your iPhoto library in PhotoShop by double clicking. If you save the photo with the same name and as a flattened file it will be saved right into iPhoto and you will see the changes. If you don't want to save it into iPhoto then do a "save as" and save to the desktop. You will then have the original photo still in iPhoto and your new edited photo on the desktop.
Or, with iPhoto open, you can drag a picture from the library window
to your desktop (you see a + sign on the pic you are dragging). You now
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Or, you can open up the ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/folders and option drag any
picture out of the folder to your desktop. Notice that you will see a plus sign while dragging the photo. This is copying the file to your desktop
I would advise anyone not to do this as they might forget to use the option key and drag the photo out. Next time you open iPhoto the photo will be missing.
Two Apple kbs for you to read
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https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4491 -
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KlausKlaus
Good thing you checked here first
It is strongly advised that you do not move, change or in anyway alter things in the iPhoto Library Folder as this can cause the application to fail and even lead to data loss
A Note about the iPhoto Library Folder:
In this folder there are various files, which are the Library itself and some ancillary files. Then you have three folders
Originals are the photos as they were downloaded from your camera or scanner.
(ii) Modified contains edited pics, shots that you have cropped, rotated or changed in any way.
This allows the Photos -> Revert to Original command - very useful if you don't like the changes you've made.
(iii) Data holds the thumbnails the the app needs to show you the photos in the iPhoto Window.
If you want to trim things down, then why not move the entire library to an external HD?
Regards
TD -
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Where does mavericks store photo files
where does mavericks store photo files.
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Dear fellow Mac users,
how are you! Tonight, my parents had a lot of fun taking photos of them using Photo Booth... awww. those love birds haha.. and i made a music slideshows for them. (too bad i dont know how to burn it into a VCD for them to watch on TV). I dont have a DVD RW.
My question is
1. How does Iphoto organises the photos? It seems like there are many dublicate copy of the same photo.... i am kind of confused. (There is .. Original Folder and Modified Folder) and worried that it will eat up my disk space
2. Is it possible for me to burn a slide show VCD?
Thank you soooo much!
mosesStanB:
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Do you Twango? -
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