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I find iPhoto to be pretty confusing as far as how the pics are all scattered throughout the program. When I open iPhoto, my pics are in a bunch of separate folders...Events / Faces / Places / Last Imported / Photos.....Etc
Is there a way I can get rid of all the other folders except "Photos" I see no need for the rest for my use. There are a multitude of useless individual event folders in my photos. I just want them all in one place so I can find them quickly. This is what I have to deal with when I click photos.


screenshot20110515at619.png
 
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chas_m

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Your photos are not scattered throughout the program at all. You are just fundamentally misunderstanding iPhoto.

You have a one library of photos. That's it. Everything else you see there -- albums, events, Faces, Places -- are just different criteria for viewing the same photos. Events is the photos grouped by time. Photos is the images grouped roughly by when they were imported into iPhoto (and you can turn off those "headers" by de-selecting "Event Titles" in the View menu). The photos view can be re-organized *ANY WAY YOU WANT,* even entirely manually.

To put this another way, in iTunes you can see songs by song name, by album name, by artist, by length and a dozen other criteria -- but it's all the same library of songs. In iTunes, songs are actually organised (on the disk) by Artist -> Album -> Song, regardless of whatever way you are looking at them. Likewise, in iPhoto photos are ACTUALLY organized by EXIF info regardless of how you are looking at them. The program just gives you options to look at your photos however you want, and most people don't want to stick to just one way. Sometimes you are looking for pictures from your Paris trip, sometimes you are looking for photos featuring Aunt Betty, and sometimes you are looking for photos from 1999. So iPhoto can show you a subset of the library that matches any of those criteria and many others.

iPhoto does not provide for way to "turn off" or "hide" the Events, Faces and Places views, but you're not obligated to use them. As you've already learned, you can create "albums" that show only photos hand-picked by you to meet a given criteria without regard to dates, faces, places etc., and you can use the Photos view to see your photos in whatever order you wish (you can also use both Albums and Smart Albums to "subset" things in various ways). The program *also* lets you organize photos by almost any criteria you want as well. It just *also* keeps track of the photos by other criteria (Events, Faces, Places) for those occasions when you might need to find something by those criteria (and in the case of Faces and Places, doesn't actually do anything until you set that up!).

I hope that helps you understand it better.
 
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OK, so what you're saying is I can view all of my pics in "Photos". But when I open photos, they're all in individual "Events" instead of all together. Did I mess something up to cause this to group them by event when I just want to see all of them in photos?
 
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iphoto automatically groups photos by date.

you can manually arrange your library so that it would be easier for you to view your pics by merging events / photos together.

5725749778_aff30668e5_z.jpg


i myself prefer using events than photos... I have 6,000++ for me it's easier to view since i know where my photos will be going...

5725766608_efe391e137_z.jpg


as you can see under photos category, i find it much harder to look for my photos since there's no thumbnails to go with each events and i have to expand the events to see the photos in it.

if you want, you can just create one event and merge all your photos so that you can view your photos in one event...


HTH!!!

cheers!!!
 
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OK, so I will have to learn how to create an event and merge all my photos into it. Thanks for the help. I do appreciate it.
 
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I think, this is not an issue,,, u can easily merge ur pics under the single heading...and u will not face any confusions...just try it and get back...:)
 
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OK, I'll give that a try when I get home from work today.
 
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OK, so I will have to learn how to create an event and merge all my photos into it. Thanks for the help. I do appreciate it.

I think, this is not an issue,,, u can easily merge ur pics under the single heading...and u will not face any confusions...just try it and get back...:)

Well John Daerson already mentioned it's not really an issue.

You can just simply drag photos one by one (merging them automatically) and make a single event from it. Rename say My Photos... and well you have a single event from it... i feel it wouldn't take you more than 10 minutes to do this (well depending how much photos you have).

If you do this... when you open your photos category you won't have an enormous listings of photos like what you have before and like what you see in my attached photo above...

well hope this helps my friend!!!

cheers!!!
 

dtravis7


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What version of ijphoto is this btw?
 

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I find iPhoto to be pretty confusing as far as how the pics are all scattered throughout the program. When I open iPhoto, my pics are in a bunch of separate folders...Events / Faces / Places / Last Imported / Photos.....Etc
Is there a way I can get rid of all the other folders except "Photos" I see no need for the rest for my use. There are a multitude of useless individual event folders in my photos. I just want them all in one place so I can find them quickly. This is what I have to deal with when I click photos.


screenshot20110515at619.png

I don't have a lot to add since you have already gotten a lot of good advice. But one thing I noticed is your screen shot shows that you have clicked on Photos rather than Events in the left-hand toolbar. If you click on Events you don't have to worry about creating events you will see the existing events that iPhoto created upon import.
If you look at johndope83's screenshot you can see this. In this view you can rename existing events (similar to renaming files) and you can merge events simply by dragging one event and dropping it on another. At that time you will get a popup window asking if you want to merge the two events.
 
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I took a free iPhoto workshop through my Apple store and it was the best thing I could have done. I was so confused by iPhoto before. I still find all the options a little overwhelming at times, but having one of the Apple employees show me all the cool stuff really clarified things for me. So check your Apple store and see if they're having a workshop. :)
 
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razormac - thanks for pointing out what i forgot to add... you must be in events to merge events just by dragging the photos to one another.... thanks razormac!!!

also pitbullmamaliz made a great point... i myself attended a free iphoto workshop here in a local apple reseller in Philippines and it made things clearer to me.

hope this help MontanaMac
 
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Yes, if you want to see all your photos in one location totally undifferentiated in any way, you can just merge all your Events, and what's more, you don't have to learn how to make a new Event. Just select all your Events and click the Merge button at the bottom of the window. Since Events are created automatically whenever you import photos, you'll have to remember to merge new ones with your single Event every time.

But if you want to create a new Event, just choose Event>Create Event.
 

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Is this thing with Events new in the new iPhoto? I have iPhoto 09 and the events show up under events but the pics all show up in Pictures and I have never merged a thing.
 
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chas_m

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Montana (and as an FYI for the rest of you): let me repeat this bit from my previous post --

"Photos is the images grouped roughly by when they were imported into iPhoto (and you can turn off those "headers" by de-selecting "Event Titles" in the View menu)"

I put this in because Montana's screen shot showed he was in the Photos view, not the Events view. Telling him to merge all his events is bad advice that will just make things harder when he (eventually) comes to realise that having Events is actually a much better idea (not everyone comes to this realization right away, or in some cases ever, and that's okay).

What Montana wants to do is go into the Photos view and just see thumbs of all his photos. Following the advice I gave will do that, and from there he can re-sort them using the view menu however he likes.
 

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What Montana wants to do is go into the Photos view and just see thumbs of all his photos. Following the advice I gave will do that, and from there he can re-sort them using the view menu however he likes.

The part that is confusing to me Chas is my iPhoto has never out of the box worked the way he has his set but all the pics are in thumbnail in Photos. In events all the events show. Does it like me or something? :D

I just selected Event Titles. I see what you mean but stock mine was never selected!

And Chas, you really know your iPhoto! + Rep for you sir!!

I have never even tried those options. Like it the way it was.
 
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"Photos is the images grouped roughly by when they were imported into iPhoto (and you can turn off those "headers" by de-selecting "Event Titles" in the View menu)"

Well that's one way of putting it but chas_m is right!!! this would be much simpler to do since this would remove the "event titles" and see the thumbnails of the pics without merging events.

thanks for sharing this to me!!! i always learn something new everyday in this forum!!!
 

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