Help - Don't Quite Understand iPhoto

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OK - I've just read that Events are real photos in real folders on your HD and Albums are virtual. That makes sense in that you have duplicates of real photos if they appear in two or more Events whereas one one real photo if it appears in more than one Album. So an Album in iPhoto is like a playlist in iTunes. If have copied a number of folders onto my Desktop that include numerous photos in each and I would like to put these in iPhoto. I took one folder and was able to drag it over the Album icon and it appeared as a new Album in my iPhoto Album list. When I tried to drag it over the Events icon nothing happens. So it looks to me you can drag and drop a real folder containing real photos from your Desktop to the (virtual) Album and get a new (virtual) Album but you cannot drag and drop real folder/photos to Events and create a new one. This confuses me. If there were a folder on my Desktop called 'Test' containing two sets of similar pictures, AA and BB and I dragged it onto the Album icon and created a new Album called 'Test' where are the physical pictures? Does this not break the rule of Events (real) and Albums (virtual)?
 

chscag

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Moved to correct forum. Does not belong in "Switcher".
 
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You certainly can drag a folder (or many individual image files) from your Desktop into iPhoto and it will create an Event (or several Events, depending on the Metadata).
Try dragging the folder onto the iPhoto icon in your Dock. It will automatically create the Event(s).
 
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Thank you - I will try this. If I wanted to 'see' the actual folders and photos that iPhoto creates where are they physically on the mac HD? Where do I navigate to?
 
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Thank you - I will try this. If I wanted to 'see' the actual folders and photos that iPhoto creates where are they physically on the mac HD? Where do I navigate to?

Don't go there. (but they are in the iPhoto library file)
 
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Don't go there. (but they are in the iPhoto library file)

+1,000,000!!!

Just search Mac-Forums for "iPhoto Library" and see how many people have screwed up by going into there. It's nothing you want or need to mess with.
 
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This is something I don't understand. The other two main platforms (Windoz/Linux) allow the user to have control of his/her files via a variety of file managers as well as a multitude of applications. On macs it seems you can only access files via the application. Does this apply to your mp3 music files as well? You can't actually get to them - they are only accessible via iTunes, not the HD?
 
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You could leave you pics in folders 'as well as' in iPhoto and you can choose whether iPhoto actually holds a copy of these or simply links to them depending on how you set iPhoto preferences, but if you maintain links only be aware that if you then move them that iPhoto won't find them.

If you don't like iPhoto you could also try Picasa - it does not make copies of your photos and will read them in-situ.
 

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