Copying to external hard drive

How do I copy photographs from my mac to an external hard drive?

Where are the photos located now? Are they stored in your iPhoto library or elsewhere? (You should be using iPhoto to arrange and store your photos.)

Thanks for getting back to me, yes they are in iPhoto

I would open iPhoto and make a duplicate of the photos you wish to store on the external hard drive. Then drag the duplicates to the external hard drive. That will keep your iPhoto library intact and not upset anything. After you drag the photos over to your external hard drive you can delete the duplicates.

There's no need to make duplicates of anything. Just select the photos you want from within iPhoto, resize the window so you can see the external drive, and drag them onto it. That automatically makes a copy.

The method that chas described is even easier. Use his method instead.