So confused about photo management...

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If you want to attach a picture to an email that is stored in iPhoto (latest version), there are three SIMPLE and SAFE ways to do it. Whichever one you like best.

1. Open iPhoto, select picture, drag to email icon on Dock. New message will open with photo already embedded in it. Done.

2. Open iPhoto, select picture, click on "Share," choose email, choose template, write message and address it, hit send. Done.

3. Open Mail, choose new message, click on "Photo Browser," choose picture. Done.
I'm a non-Mac user (but considering one) so pardon my ignorance... but can you just open the particular folder that holds the file you wish to attach, then simply click & drag the file from the folder into the email program?
 
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chas_m

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I'm a non-Mac user (but considering one) so pardon my ignorance... but can you just open the particular folder that holds the file you wish to attach, then simply click & drag the file from the folder into the email program?

Please see method #1 I outlined above.

iPhoto keeps its photos inside a vault you can't (and shouldn't) easily get at. This is because pictures are usually THE most valuable or hard-to-replace thing people store on their computers, and to be blunt people can be awfully dumb about this sometimes.

Having them much harder to access at the Finder level GREATLY reduces the risk of accidentally deleting photos you didn't intend to delete, so the proper way to do anything with iPhoto is to do it from within iPhoto. Simple.

For those who insist on micro-managing this themselves, don't use iPhoto (though I must point out that the "big boy" programs like Lightroom and Aperture ALSO use a "vault" system).
 
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iPhoto keeps its photos inside a vault you can't (and shouldn't) easily get at. This is because pictures are usually THE most valuable or hard-to-replace thing people store on their computers, and to be blunt people can be awfully dumb about this sometimes.
Okay, forget iPhoto for a minute... In Windows, I keep my photos in folders that I create myself within the main Photos folder (example: Photos / Baseball / 2011 / Game 1). It may not be ideal for some, but it works perfectly for me. Can I do this on a Mac? Or do I have to use an iPhoto type of program to "organize" my pics?

Thanks.
 
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chas_m

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Okay, forget iPhoto for a minute... In Windows, I keep my photos in folders that I create myself within the main Photos folder (example: Photos / Baseball / 2011 / Game 1). It may not be ideal for some, but it works perfectly for me. Can I do this on a Mac? Or do I have to use an iPhoto type of program to "organize" my pics?

Thanks.

This is a good question, and the answer is no, you do not have to use iPhoto (though iPhoto actually organizes your pictures very similarly!).

This is what I was referring to as "micro-management." Why should you have to do all that organizing yourself? You have a computer! :)

iPhoto INTERNALLY organizes photos by EXIF date information, but who cares -- it can PRESENT those photos to you in absolutely ANY sort of organization you like (by date, by event, by album name, by who's in them, by where they were taken, etc), including a pure manual sort if you want. It makes no difference because internally they're still sorted by EXIF date information -- the program just "presents" them in whatever way makes you happy.

Aperture and Lightroom do this as well, this "layer of abstraction," but can be told not to. ACDSee Pro for Mac is the only program at that level that I know of that totally does not do this at all, just builds a database of pictures based on where you put them without re-organizing them at all. I think maybe Adobe Bridge does this too, but I can't stand Adobe Bridge (for anything, and I'm otherwise quite the Adobe fan*).

*except Flash and Air. Junk.

Anyway, my long-winded point is that everything one does on a computer is done through a layer of abstraction anyway (unless you write binary or are a command-line whiz), so the fact that iPhoto organizes the photos for you and then gives you the option of presenting them however you like shouldn't make a difference to anyone but the very anal-retentive (not meant to be insulting, that's the terminology!).

It's part of the zen of Mac/iOS that sometimes takes people a while to get used to, but honestly it's not important. What's important is that the program gives you the option to present the information to you in the ways you want easily and quickly. IMHO, iPhoto does that.
 
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This is a good question, and the answer is no, you do not have to use iPhoto...
Phew. That's a relief. I was hoping for that answer.

Why should you have to do all that organizing yourself?
Because I want to. Want to, good. Have to, bad. :)

I already have Lightroom. But I use it for editing, not for organizing. Once I'm done editing a particular folder of pics in Lightroom I export the whole shebang into an auto-generated sub-folder called "edited."

Call me whatever ya wanna call me, but this system works for me.

Hey, thanks for your help!
 
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chas_m

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No no, I apologise if I came off as "how dare someone want to do it some other way!"

If that's what you want to do, by all means! Owning a computer is about being productive and having fun doing so -- I think *most* people like to let the computer handle the organizing of stuff but there's plenty of perfectly valid reasons why some would prefer to do it a different way. On a Mac I have always found that there's at least three ways to do nearly ANYTHING, so it's quite accommodating of different workflows.
 
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Interesting thread. I would like to get some clarification if I may?

When I open a finder window on the left of the window are several headings under "Search For" and some of these headings are "All Images", "All Movies", 'All Documents", is it messing with the IPhoto "Vault" to look and open those items from this point in the finder window or is this access permitted?

I hope this isn't a dumb question but I need clarification.

Regards,

Pat
 

Slydude

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Clicking these options should not mess anything up. These are essentially a type of saved search called a Smart folder. If you right click one of them you can actually choose to see the search criteria used to generate the results.

If you haven't used them before this might help. ATPM 16.03 - How To: Making Your Mac as Smart as Its Owner I tried to give a good overview including creating your own Smart Folders.
 
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Excellent. I will give that reference a look see.

Thank you.
 

Slydude

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Hope it's helpful. I wrote it when I was just exploring smart folders so there may be more that they can do which I have not noticed.

If you have ideas for future articles I'd certainly appreciate hearing about them.
 
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You can always think of iPhoto as being one big Pictures folder because you can organize things in iPhoto any way you like. You can keep things in their original Events, or combine events or create Albums the way you would subfolders.
 

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Hi guys, hope you can help me on this one! I'm pretty(very) new to Mac (got mine back in January this year), so there are obviously many things I don't know how work yet. I'm learning new stuff everyday though and so far very happy with my change from Windows to Mac.

So I imported some photos from my digital camera, iPhoto automatically popped up, I imported the photos etc. and all good.
After that, I wanted to copy these photos to a USB drive, so I found the location in Finder (under the iPhoto "folder" itself) and then copied the photos from there. To check if everything was good, I connected my USB drive to my television to view the photos. And here I have the problem! The photos appear very small size, and I suspect it has something to do with me copying the photos directly from the iPhoto "folder".

When iPhoto automatically import photos from a digital camera, are they only stored under the iPhoto folder? If so, when wanting to copy photos to a USB drive for example, how should I copy them in order to view them in normal size?

Because of that, I decided to use Picasa instead as I was familiar with the program from earlier. The other day though, I did finally have some time to explore iPhoto a bit more, so I ended up spending a couple of hours playing around and organizing my photos in there and after that deleted Picasa! :)

Cheers!
 
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First iPhoto does not have to import your photos automatically. When you have your SD card or camera connected open Image Capture, select your device (card or camera) on the left column and then use the pull down menu on bottom left to define what action takes place when that device is connected. If you select do nothing, that is exactly what will happen. Then you can open the SD card and copy the pictures where you want to.

Second once you have pictures in iPhoto the easy way to copy them elsewhere is to open a destination folder, go to iPhoto and multselect the pictures you want and then drag them to the folder. This is really useful if you want jpeg copies of RAW pictures. When you drag them across the original RAWs become JPEGS in the copy folder.
 

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