Why can't I email photos from a folder?

Question

Hi,
Does a mac force me to email photos from iphoto? I just want to click on a photo in a folder -- any folder -- and email it. Am I missing something, because it seems you have to import everything into iphotos -- a real pain.
Also if I import into iphoto, does that mean there's a second copy of my photo somewhere -- one in the original folder and one in iphoto?
Thanks for any help -- just recently crossed over to macs from the evil dark side.

Answer 1

Hi betamac,
No, a mac doesn't force you to email photos from iPhoto. If you use iPhoto to import and organize your photos, it is easy to select a photo within iPhoto and hit the email icon to attach the photo.
Within your email program you can drag a photo in the message body to attach it or hit the "attach" button and navigate to the photo to attach it.
With iPhoto 5 all photos imported into iPhoto are copied in iPhoto's database, which is the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder. So, yes, you know have two copies of each photo if the photos were imported from another folder already on your computer.
iPhoto 6 gives you the choice of copying into iPhoto or having iPhoto use your own folder hierarchy.
More info:
--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.
If you have already put files/folders in the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder then you will also find out that if you try to import them into iPhoto you will get an error message. No worry, just drag them to the desktop and import from there.
--All images that you import are shown in the library view. You can choose how you want to view, by rolls, by date, by rating, etc. When you put images in an Album, slideshow, book, etc, you are actually just putting pointers to those images in the library. You are not adding more images. If you delete an image from the Album it will still be in the library. If you delete an image from the library it is deleted from iPhoto's database and your hard drive (unless you have it backed up somewhere else)
--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. (DO NOT HAVE IPHOTO DELETE THE IMAGES FROM YOUR CAMERA! DELETE THEM MANUALLY WITH THE CAMERA-if something goes wrong with the import and they are never imported and then they are deleted from the camera you might end up losing those images)
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.
You can open up prefs for iPhoto and choose "when double clicking on
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
have two of the same picture, one in the iPhoto library and one on your desktop. You can open up the one on your desktop in any graphic program and work on it. The one in iPhoto stays the same. You can also share/export the picture/pictures to your desktop or folder to work on them or do batch processing, etc. You will still have the originals in your iPhoto Library.
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
Don't tamper with files in the iPhoto library folder
About the iPhoto Library folder
Don't forget that in Library view you can Control click on any picture and get a contextual menu with many options. One is to revert to original.