Photo Library

I tried using iPhoto to store my photos but when I want to use one I can't find it. Then I tried Lightroom but there again there is a 1,000 pictures and it takes forever to find the one I want. Am I just Photo Phobic?

I've got the same problem. I guess I should be more organized with photos but when you're as old as I am, the only thing I really know how to do well with photos is stick them in loose leaf albums. My wife must have thirty or forty albums full of photos laying around, every thing from our wedding, kids, vacations, etc, etc. ;D

;D I can go you one better. My pictures aren't even in albums, they are in many, many boxes! I'm leaving them to my daughters as their inheritance.

GrannySueSnaps said:

;D I can go you one better. My pictures aren't even in albums, they are in many, many boxes! I'm leaving them to my daughters as their inheritance.

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Hi GrannySue - BOY, that sounds familiar - last year (I'm now retired so had the time - ) - I decided to gather up all of our old photos (many in boxes and some in albums) - thousands of photos & slides (family & past trips - wife & I use to travel a LOT and I was an avid pre-digitial photographer) - first decided to go through the photos/slides and discard what we would probably never look at again in our lives - ended up throwing out hundreds of slides and many old faded (or poorly composed) photos. I then scanned the remaining photos/slides into a new Canon scanner that I received as a retirement gift - now what I may want is on our computer (and backed up).

SO, for those w/ piles of photos/slides/etc. (and of course assuming one has the time and the desire - ), first discard what is likely will never be of interest (especially to future generations - can't imagine our son even wanting most of what I did save and scan?) - with this approach, I probably ended up scanning only 20% or so of what we had - a lot easier and glad that the job is done. Dave

When importing photos into iPhoto, tagging them will help you find them later. Add as many tags as you find useful, including the location and the people in the photos. Then you just type "Jenny" and "New York City" and all your photos of Jenny in NYC will be listed.

You can also make albums in iPhoto which are separate from Events. You can make an album called Family, one called Friends, etc and drag photos from your library into the albums so they're organized by type.

If you use it according to directions, iPhoto can make organizing photos very very easy, as by default it groups photos together into "events" -- all you have to do is name the event and voila, organized. Obviously the catch here is that if you're adding SCANNED (rather than digitally-taken) photos to iPhoto, you need to add the date and time (well, at least the date as best one can remember it) to the photos so that they can automatically organize themselves.