Why are 25gb of photos taking up 50gb of space on my hard drive?

Hi -- I'm a complete neophyte, so please bear with me.
I use I-Photo 6, which came with my refurbed Imac 2.16 ghz. So far, I've imported, via CDs and also via SD cards from my camera, about 25gb worth of photos.
The photos show up in my IPhoto library just fine, but the problem is that, for unknown reasons, the 25 gigs take up 50 gigs on my hard drive. So my question is ... what's going on?
Does this have anything to do with the "modified" vs "original" folders? Or with the "Data" folder within the Iphoto library?
Or does it have anything to do with the fact that I use another program as an 'external editor' -- Lightzone -- so that when I click on a photo for editing in Iphoto, I automatically go to Lightzone.
I assume there's some unnecessary duplication here -- help!

yclnyc
Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
iPhoto preserves your Original file at all times. All operations are carried out on a copy of the file. So when you edit a pic, iPhoto (in your case) sends a copy to Lightzone. When you save that edit in Lightzone the copy is sent straight back to iPhoto and yes, preserved in the Modified folder.
So you can have three versions of a pic in iPhoto - the Original, the Modified versions, plus the Thumbnail in the Data folder.
Here's a tip: 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.
There is no way to stop iPhoto working in this way. If you try to you will corrupt your library. If you do not want your Original file preserved then my best advice is don't use iPhoto.
That said, having a double size library seems excessive. Do you also sync with an iPod?
Regards
TD

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