iphoto & HDD usage

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Wife has folder of most all our family photos on her MacbookPro. She uses iphoto to keep all photos from her iphone and those I share with photo stream. Wondering if it would take up less HD space if she were to import all the family photos into iPhoto and then remove the folder of family photos from the HD. Would the folder architecture remain?
 

chscag

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If you're thinking about storing all your photos on an external hard drive, then yes, iPhoto can continue to manage them. However, be sure to follow the correct procedure when moving the iPhoto library folder. See the following Apple KB article: LINK
 
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I don't understand and I think my question is similar, so when I first got my Macbook Pro the other day I added a folder from my external drive to the pictures folder on the internal drive of my family pictures, when I opened iphoto inside the pictures directory the system created a iphoto folder. When iPhoto imports my photo's does it save the imported pictures to the newly created iPhoto folder in pictures or does it still pull the pictures from my original pictures I placed in the pictures directory?
 
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Chscag
The photos on wife's laptop are already on the laptop's hd. They are in own folder filled with jpegs. The main ? Is whether it is space efficient to import them into iPhoto and then remove the original folder that holds them now. All the photos are backed up to multiple, separate hdd
Other ? Has to do with current folder hierarchy. Would current folder setup stay the same ( ie. folders inside other folders )?
 

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tape:

not enough info - what is being used to view the "family photos"?
am 'assuming" from what you've said, these photos have not been imported into iPhoto?

devon:
If the default settings of iPhoto have not been changed - the pics are copied into the iPhoto library
You can verify this by opening iPhoto - Preferences - Advanced tab and see if there is a check next to 'Copy items to the iPhoto library'
If it is not checked, then it is pulling pics from the original location.
 
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Pics on MacBook are used to share on FB and with emails and occasionally to print. Folder pics not imported to iphoto yet are viewed via preview. Photos already in iPhoto viewed there. iPhone pref is to move pic to iphoto
 

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Just importing the pics into iPhoto and then moving them off the drive will not reduce the amount of disk space used.

But it would be a better viewer than Preview and provide some editing tools not available there.

Check this link out on how to import folders you've organized outside iPhoto.

There is also the free Picasa that could be used although not as many tools available.
 

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