iPhoto how to keep organized through import

[fleurya]

One thing infuriates me about iPhoto and iTunes for instance is that I can't import things the way I have them. I have all my files organized in folders, but it's all imported into one big mess.

I have thousands of photos I have taken some time to organize. I don't want to have to do it again in iPhoto. I photo wants to organize by date, but I have folder and subfolders I have organized by names and events. Is there any way I can import them the way they are??

 

[kilo15]

Create A New Roll And Import Into That.

 

[NanoBite]

Group your photos in separate folders etc and just drag them from your desktop straight onto the left pane in iPhoto. You'll be prompted to name what is now an Album (that's only if you hadn't named the folder prior to the importation). Once you have a few Albums you can catagorise them by creating a New Folder from the File menu and dragging as many Albums as you want to them. This frees up a bit of Real Estate in that left pane.

You've got to understand that the main window in iPhoto is the Library and it's gonna be a mess sooner or later. You can't help that. The solution is to take advantage of the left pane.

Create Albums by dragging from the desktop as I explained earlier or by highlighting a group of photos in the Library and dragging them to the left Pane.

When you highlight an Album, navigate it this way:

• Control + 1 will zoom in on the photo that's selected
  
  [*]Control + 2 will zoom back out and you should see about 6 photos in the window depending on the window size you have.
  
  [*]Control + 0 will zoom back out so you can see every photo in the Album, again depending on how many photos are in that album.

Last but not least, go into iPhoto Prefs and create your own keywords and assign them to each catagory you have. Some of my Albums have photos with up to 3 keywords each and to add a keyword just highlight the photo/s and press Command + I.

Once you start catagorising your photos into Albums/Folders and utilising the Keyword function, iPhoto will start making a bit of sense or at least it did in my case.

Finally, you need to adopt the routine of each time you import a photo or a group of photos into iPhoto, you have to sort them pretty much straight away. Get them tucked away into their own beds with a Keyword attached and iPhoto will appear less confusing.

 

[fleurya]

Wow, thanks Pulse-8, that's a lot of great info! I tried pulling a few folders in directly at once and they all got lumped together, so I got frustrated. I guess I'll have to pull one folder at a time and then reorganize into the subfolders I had before. It'll still be a little bit of a pain, but much easier than complete reorganization!

 

[NanoBite]

Wow, thanks Pulse-8, that's a lot of great info! I tried pulling a few folders in directly at once and they all got lumped together, so I got frustrated. I guess I'll have to pull one folder at a time and then reorganize into the subfolders I had before. It'll still be a little bit of a pain, but much easier than complete reorganization!

No worries fleurya, You can either create the Albums first then click on the newly created Album and drag photos directly onto the Library window (It should be blank prior to you dragging any photos in). Any photos imported directly into an Album are automatically added to the overall Library.

It's important to know also, that if you want to delete any photos it's probably a good idea to first control/right click on the photo and select 'Show File' or whatever it really says, and delete the original first. Then just go ahead and delete the Alias from the Library.