Dealing with photos so frustrating!

Can somebody tell me how best to deal with photos on an iMac! I am in the process of making a photo book and some of the pictures I need to use are on an external drive and they seem to be read only. When I open one (system automatically seems to use 'Preview') because I want to crop it let's say, I don't get the normal tools to do so, even after making a duplicate to allow me to make changes in the first place.

I do NOT like the feel of iPhoto as I seem to have no control over how to organize my photos - they are all over the place now. I prefer a folder structure that I control - should be so simple - but how do I do this? How to get around iphoto - is there a better solution? I so regret having opted for a Mac instead of a reliable PC that I know inside out.

I hope there is someone out there who can perhaps give me some tips. Thank you!

Welcome to the forum.

OK. Lots of varied queries in there so I'll start with the obvious ones.

pictures I need to use are on an external drive and they seem to be read only

Click to expand...

Chances are the disk is formatted as NTFS. Natively OSX can read NTFS partitions but not write to them, hence the read only status. There are ways around this if you need to read/write to NTFS disks regularly. In the interim why not just make copies of the files and drop them into a new folder on your Mac and work with them from there?

I've been using Macs for a while now and don't like iPhoto. But no sense throwing the baby out with the bath water. Many people like the not having to micro-manage their collection but I do so I use Picasa for Mac. That gives you the folder structure and image management tools.

Changing from one OS to another like any change from what you're used to takes time and effort and it's not always easy but I simply don't have a single regret.

This forum is full of people that can help ease the transition. Feel free to post back with further questions.

Thank you, I will give Picasa a try!

Wally52 said:

Can somebody tell me how best to deal with photos on an iMac! I am in the process of making a photo book and some of the pictures I need to use are on an external drive and they seem to be read only. When I open one (system automatically seems to use 'Preview') because I want to crop it let's say, I don't get the normal tools to do so, even after making a duplicate to allow me to make changes in the first place........

Click to expand...

Hi Wally - fairly new to Mac OS myself - Preview offers a lot more than at first glance - see my screen capture attached - the edit button is shown w/ the blue arrow which opens the lower bar edit options, which allowed me to add the arrows & select their color. The red arrows point to the 'cropping' & 'resizing' options - if I need to do more, then Pixelmator is a more powerful photo editing choice on the Mac and inexpensive. Good luck! Dave

Bingo - you just solved something for me! When I was looking for those two buttons, they were not there. I thought if I only had them, I would be a lot happier with this Preview. Finally it dawned on me to check View and Toolbar, and voila, all I had to do was drag them over. Why they were not there in the first place is a mystery to me. This has helped a lot - thank you so much! Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference!

Still a lot to learn with this Mac but feeling a bit more hopeful!

Best Regards,

Val

Wally52 said:

Bingo - you just solved something for me! When I was looking for those two buttons, they were not there. I thought if I only had them, I would be a lot happier with this Preview. Finally it dawned on me to check View and Toolbar, and voila, all I had to do was drag them over. Why they were not there in the first place is a mystery to me. This has helped a lot - thank you so much! Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference!

Still a lot to learn with this Mac but feeling a bit more hopeful!

Click to expand...

Hi Val - well glad that you discovered that Preview is a much more powerful program - I've learned along the way and try to first explore what is already available in Mac OS - this forum has been quite helpful in that discovery! Dave

Hi again Val - just another great feature that I discovered recently - check out THIS THREAD in the forum & my post (#3) - Preview allows you to easily view multiple images from various sites for removal and/or editing - don't know if you need that feature, BUT has really worked for me - Dave