picture transfer

As a new Mac user I have what will seem rather simple questions.

Current one is: is it possible to copy an album from iPhoto to My Pictures?

I'm a little confused by your question: there is no "My Pictures" on a Mac.

Assuming you meant "the Pictures folder in my Home folder," there are at least two ways of doing this: here's method A.

1. Resize iPhoto so that you can see both it and the Finder window of the Pictures folder on your screen.

2. Select the photos in the album and drag them into the Pictures folder. This make a copy of the pictures.

3. It also doesn't put them into a folder for you -- yet. Now select the pictures you just added to the Pictures folder as a group, then right-click and choose "Make folder from selection." Retitle the folder the name of the album.

Alternative method B:

1. Create an empty folder on the desktop.
2. Open iPhoto, select the pics, drag them into the folder.
3. Move the folder to your Pictures folder.

and here's alternative method C:

The free iPhoto to Disk can do this for you. Despite the name, it can also export albums to folders.

Chas, thanks for your reply. Sorry for the confusion but when I moved from Microsoft to Mac I had some material transferred, including "My Pictures". It may be that what I am attempting is not possible. I have tried dragging and dropping. I do not seem to be able to copy and paste.

Shunhook

I've just tried it using all three of the methods I described, works fine and would work for any folder on your Mac. There could be permission problems with a folder transferred from a PC I suppose ...

Chas, Many thanks. Your method B works. No doubt other issues will arise! For example, why am I getting lots of files and pictures sitting on my desktop when I have put them away in their proper folders?


Shunhook

Depending on what you did, you likely just made a COPY of the pictures in their "proper" folders. If that's the case, then you can (and should) removed the files and pictures on your desktop.

Chas, Once again, thanks for your help. I read with interest your essay. Once I have fully digested it I will probably be back. Can I ask you further on the pictures point? Why is there a "pictures" folder and an iPhoto program? Would not the latter be sufficient? I have lots of stuff on the pictures, which I assumed was simply "my pictures" but which I now realise was incorrect. What is the relationship between the two?

On the desktop point: I find that many of the text files and pictures that I open, receive, file, appear on the desktop as well as residing in the proper place. What am I doing wrong?

Shunhook

shunhook said:

Why is there a "pictures" folder and an iPhoto program?

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Funnily enough I just answered this on another sub-forum (maybe that was you!) but regardless I'll answer it again: among many other reasons, sometimes people don't want to use iPhoto for whatever reason and prefer to use something else (third-party or what have you). Sometimes there are pictures that you don't want "mixed in" with your iPhoto library (though you can make separate libraries). Lots of possible explanations.

What is the relationship between the two?

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The iPhoto "vault" (Library) is located inside the Pictures folder by default. Other than that, there is no relationship between the two.

I find that many of the text files and pictures that I open, receive, file, appear on the desktop as well as residing in the proper place. What am I doing wrong?

Click to expand...

Hard to tell from your description. Are you referring to email attachments? Are you saving them in the Users/[yourname]/Desktop folder (which is the same thing as the desktop)?

Chas, Thanks for this. No, it was not me!

Re desktop litter: not email attachments, simply lots of documents that I create or receive.