Storing Pictures

How do you organize your digital photos? I have only tried using iPhoto and it seems really inefficient because you cannot organize them in folders better so if you want to find a certain photo to put on CD or what not it is really hard. But without importing photos into iPhoto you cannot have a good looking slideshow.

Does anyone know of a good way of organizing? I spent a bunch of time creating folders for all my categories and then realized that as soon as I drag them into iPhoto it creates all new files... doubling the disk space.

Without buying a third party program, is there any way to store pictures on a Mac in a good way?

I just fully describe my pictures data in iPhoto, create Albums and Folders, search by date, or search by the Keywords I put into it

Trpn has probably the best way but you can also just create a photo folder and name all of your pictures within subfolders by date or name or whatever. Then if you need to pull one up quick just Spotlight it or use Finder. That's what I do, I don't really like using iPhoto for my storage but I like it for other things.

Please don't cross post, place your question in only one place.

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http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26696