iPhoto disk space usage

Greetings. I am relatively new to the Mac world, although I did for a time use Apple II some-thing-or-other back in the DOS ages.

Anywho, I like the MacBook but am not convinced I actually need iPhoto; it seems a bit of a disk hog. Yes, it organizes the photos but I can do that manually as I cull out images.

So my question is, do I need iPhoto? If I "trash it" will there be problems down the road?

There are plenty of viable alternatives to iPhoto. And, no, there are no problems from ditching it, as in system lockups or conflicts with other software.

How does iPhoto take up any more space than you organizing the photos yourself, exactly?