How to file photos imported into Mac

As a Mac newbie, I've decided to load some (but not all) of the digital photos I had stored on my PC onto my new Mac. I am having a hard time figuring out where to put them within the Mac's filing system (Snow Leopard, MacBook Pro). In the PC world, photos are stored in a folder called Photos, with subfolders arranged either automatically when they're downloaded, or manually when the user creates subfolders. But when I open the Pictures folder within Documents in my Mac, there's a folder called iPhoto. Clicking on it starts iPhoto, but I cannot drag photos into the iPhoto folder, nor can I create a subfolder within iPhoto. Where shall I place my photos? In the same folder as iPhoto? In a subfolder? Should I create lots of subfolders? I guess it's confusing because Apple puts a *program/application* (iPhoto) into what seems to me to be a *document* folder, leaving me confused as to exactly where my documents (in this case, digital photos) are supposed to go. The video and the help files within iPhoto are no help, nor is the Help found in the Finder.

I understand I just switched recently. Just import all your picks in iphoto you can categories your photographs later in the events portions of iphoto. If you want to locate the pictures in iphoto I usually open iphoto and right click on a picture and locate file. From there you can see each photo in iphoto and copy any pics to your desktop of you need them individually for some reason. Hope that helps.

I made a folder on my desktop called Photos and import my pictures to it. I set up my own subfolders. ImageBrower does this automatically. I shoot in RAW format so I want to keep the original file. I then import the files I want to work with to IPhoto and keep a file there. Meantime I still have my original "negative" in the folder on my desktop.
I too was confused when I made the switch but this works out okay for me.

iPhoto uses a database to store your photos. You should not touch this database outside of iPhoto.

First place to start with iPhoto, is to watch some of the video tutorials which will give you the basic overview of working with this app.

If you're keeping the original RAW files both inside and outside of iPhoto, you are duplicating your photos (and doubling the amount of space used for your images) on the machine. iPhoto keeps the original you import into it. All changes are made non-destructively and you can go back to your original at any time.

iPhoto is a great tool for managing photos. Drag photos into it, they're copied into iPhoto's library (similar to iTunes but more "vault-like") and you can delete the "originals."

For those people who *enjoy* micro-managing their photos, or have otherwise gone beyond what iPhoto can do for them, there are other tools that don't impose so much structure on you. See my sig for an example.