Where do I put files?

OK, total newbie switcher question.

I'm used to creating subject folders in Windows' "My Documents," and I keep my pictures and music indexed in folder hierarchies, which Itunes and Picasa are happy to respect.

Now with the Mac, I see I have a few main candidate directories, like Documents, Music, Movies, Pictures, etc. But it doesn't seem like I should just throw mp3 files straight into the "Music" directory or divx movies into the "Movies" directory, because it seems like programs use these folders to hold their own subfolders?

I let iTunes manage my music collection, so it threw all my songs into the "Music/Itunes/Itunes Music" folder. That's fine.

I imported my photos into iPhoto. Now they all seem to be sitting in a huge container file somewhere. So what if I don't want all my photos handled by iPhoto? Is there a "standard" or de facto good place to stick them? Straight in the Pictures folder? Do you create an "Other Photos" folder in the Pictures folder? The reason I ask is because I don't know if other applications will create their own folders within "Pictures" or "Movies" or somewhere else to store their own stuff. If that's the case, I don't want to dump jpgs there, as that'll clutter the space and break the "desired" hierarchy.

Same with Movies. I notice that iMovie and some other app place their own folders inside there. Does any other app, and if you have a bunch of DivX movies, where would they best go in the hierarchy? Would it be best under
/Movies/Bourne Ultimatum/bourneultimatum.avi
/Movies/Movie Files/Bourne Ultimate/bournultimatum.avi
/Documents/Movies/Bourne Ultimatum/bourneultimatum.avi?

What I'm trying to avoid is having folders for content interspersed in the same directory as folders for other applications, and I figure there's a more or less accepted standard for where to put things on a Mac...

I know I'm not doing the best job explaining what I want to do, but any help would be appreciated.

Put them where you want them. The Pictures folder is also where Desktop Pictures gets it's pics. Make new folders...I use MyPics or just Pics.
Name them what you want. That's the good part about Macs, there's always more than one way to do anything. Movies don't necessarily have to go in the Movies folder.

Same as windows, you didn't have to put things in those directories either I never did

your iPhoto 'file' is really a folder. opt click on it and select 'show package contents' and it will open as a folder, you'll find your originals under 'originals' in that directory.

A performance note first. Don't put anything you don't have to (which should be nothing) into the Documents folder. Mac OS X reads it on startup to preload icons. The more stuff you put in there, the slower your boot will be. Believe it or not, I create a "My Documents" folder in my home folder and put all my documents in there. Despite the fact that Windows uses this very name, a folder called "My Documents" for the storage of my documents seems to make sense. Don't blame Microsoft. Now and then even they can get one right!

For photos, I use the Pictures hierarchy. It is OK for you to use it along with other programs. I created a folder in Pictures called "Album" and put all my personal photos under it, with a subfolder for each year that I had pictures for. I have a similar hierarchy for my "negatives", the images right off the camera before I process them in any way. It is also rooted in the Pictures folder.

Music and Movies? I use the "Music" and "Movies" folders as you have probably guessed by this point. For music, of course I also have a large iTunes collection, so that shows up there. For all the rest, I created a folder under Music called MP3s and put all my MP3s there, with subfolders per artist. For Movies, I created a hierarchy similar to Photos: a folder called Album and then subfolders per year that I happen to have movies for - I am talking "home movies" here, not commercial releases. For commercial releases, I would likely start another folder in Movies called "Studio Releases" or some such, and set stuff up under it.

Those are my thoughts. I hope that they may be of some help.

Thank you, that was extremely helpful!

Right now I'm trying to figure out whether it's worth separating the pictures and movies from my digicam into separate directories. My digicam outputs movie files that play in QT, but can't be read by iMovie. I'm fine with converting movie codecs, but it's a bit of a hassle to keep everything in iPhoto and then opening the container to convert and deal with them in iMovie (and then I have duplicates of the original movie files in different formats).

I tend to think that it is worth separating out the different media types into their respective folders. It is just more ... organized. I tend to be an organized person, so that appeals to me. My two cents.

Well, my two cents on this subject is as follows. Mostly for things that I want under my control (which are things like documents, like .doc .pdf .pages, etc) those will go into Documents because that's where a lot of apps like to put them. So that I leave well enough alone other than making folders in there to organize them somewhat. It also makes it fairly straightforward to back it up. Documents are important, so backing up that one folder to CD/DVD will be sufficient, or if I need to transfer them to, say, another computer in an upgrade.

Music I let iTunes handle as far as whatever folder hierarchy it wants to use. I know I can set a preference to let it allow me to organize it how I want, but why bother with that when iTunes can do it for me? Oh sure I have other folders where I have music files that I might be working on at any given time, and I do have a backup of all my music in the format that *I* prefer outside of iTunes, but for anything that is "active" musically (i.e. that which is going onto the iPod) I leave it up to iTunes.

Movies go into the Movies folder, and the reason for that is Front Row. If you want to use the remote to watch movies, then they'll have to be in that folder in my experience. I have a bunch of them on an external drive, but I handled that by making an alias in the internal drive's Movies folder called External Drive Movies that points to a Movies folder on the uh, well, external drive. That way Front Row can pick them up. There's probably an obscure preference to make Front Row work differently but I have yet to find it.

Photos are the one thing I keep absolute manual control over. Yes, they go into the Pictures folder, but under that folder I have subfolders that have pictures that go nowhere near iPhoto. My general rule is: If I took the picture with either my digital camera or my cell phone camera (which is an okay camera for what it is) it's under my control. Any photos taken with the internal iSight then I 'surrender' it to iPhoto, since its quality, while okay, isn't anywhere near that which my digicam can produce. Plus Photobooth integrates nicely with iPhoto, so iPhoto can have all of those. If it came from my Canon or LG phone, however, it goes under my own folder system.

mac57 said:

A performance note first. Don't put anything you don't have to (which should be nothing) into the Documents folder. Mac OS X reads it on startup to preload icons. The more stuff you put in there, the slower your boot will be.

Click to expand...

I thought that was the Desktop folder that got preloaded? Which is why I don't keep anything there.

walkerj said:

Well, my two cents on this subject is as follows. Mostly for things that I want under my control (which are things like documents, like .doc .pdf .pages, etc) those will go into Documents because that's where a lot of apps like to put them. So that I leave well enough alone other than making folders in there to organize them somewhat.

Click to expand...

Knowing default program locations is *very* helpful, thanks for that.

As to photo management, I have 3-4 years of digital photos as well. I've seen (from the post above) that the iphoto file is simply a directory and it keeps originals, which I'm fine with. But is there a way to use iPhoto without having it import everything automatically? What I really need is Picasa for Mac, but I don't think they're gonna make that...

mac57 said:

Those are my thoughts. I hope that they may be of some help.

Click to expand...

Thanks mac I appreciated your comments, very similar to my setup but I kept thinking it was me holding on to my Windows habits.

cradom said:

I thought that was the Desktop folder that got preloaded? Which is why I don't keep anything there.

Click to expand...

Actually, it is both. Hence, it is useful to keep both a clean desktop and a clean Documents folder to enhance the speed of your boot up.

I'll also wan't to say thanks to you guys.
I'm sure it'll help me, when I get my Mac.

But one question:
Which folder should I not put my files into?
Desktop? Documents?

BOTH! Keep a clean desktop and as few documents as possible in your Documents folder. Mac OS X scans both at boot up.

mac57 said:

BOTH! Keep a clean desktop and as few documents as possible in your Documents folder. Mac OS X scans both at boot up.

Click to expand...

Hmm, the tradeoff between a faster boot cycle and a slightly redundant, less-intuitive filing scheme...

Besides the obvious and minor annoyance of having to deal with application default locations on save/open, I wonder how using a separate documents folder affects things like backup or transfer of files to a new system. Maybe it's time to benchmark the system and see what kind of speed hit we're talking about...