Transferring files to mac, Where do you put them?

[MikeT]

I am going to transfer a bunch of pictures, letters and music files from a PC to a new mac. I will be using a flash drive. When I put the flash drive in the MAC and see them on the flash drive, where then do I put the files on the mac? Do I just drag all the photo files and drop them on the iphoto icon, the music ones on the garage band icon?

I'm just not sure where to put them.

 

[bobtomay]

For the pictures and documents, yeah, just drag and drop them into the iPhoto and documents folders.

For the music, you wouldn't use GarageBand - it's more of an audio mixer/creator type program. You can open up iTunes and in the File menu I think is an Import function - just go there and point it at your music folder.

 

[yogi]

Be careful, you want to do this the right way.

I strongly recommend that you don't just drag the files to folders on your mac.

Instead, do the following:

Photos

1. Open iPhoto
2. Drag the image files into the blank area of iPhoto. The application will copy over the files and organize them for you in the iPhoto folder. You should never meddle with this folder.

Music
1. Open iTunes

2. Also make sure that you've checked "Keep iTunes Music Folder organized" and "Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder" under iTunes
> Preferences... > Advanced
3. Drag all your music files into iTunes, just like you did with iPhoto. iTunes will now take care of everything.

Documents
1. Just drag them to the documents folder.

2. If you like keeping your files as PDF, consdier Yep Document Organier. It's like iTunes or iPhoto for documents, but supports PDF (TXT, and Images also) only.


Converting any document to PDF on a Mac
1. Open the document with it's specific application (e.g., open a word document in Microsoft Word)

2. Go to File > Print...

3. In the print dialog box, click the "PDF..." button in the bottom left corner. Then save it as a PDF.

PDFs are good, because they cannot be edited later (i.e., they're tamper-proof), they are displayed the same way on any computer, and anyone can open it, even if they don't have Word installed.

 

[thebeartrack]

I don't like the way iPhotos arranged my imported pictures so I would like to delete them and start again with just folders labels with various vacations and project folders. I don't know what folder the pictures are in and what to delete and what to leave alone. Can you walk me through this?

 

[baggss]

Here's a key thing to keep in mind. You can put all of this stuff anywhere you want. You can then simply point iTunes or iPhoto or whatever app at them when you want. I don't allow iTunes or iPhoto to manage my files for me and I keep my stuff organized as I want it. Pictures don't have to go in the Pictures folder, music doesn't have to go in the Music folder and iTunes music doesn't have to go in the iTunes music folder unless you want them to.

 

[thebeartrack]

I am in deep dirt...

Here's a key thing to keep in mind. You can put all of this stuff anywhere you want. You can then simply point iTunes or iPhoto or whatever app at them when you want. I don't allow iTunes or iPhoto to manage my files for me and I keep my stuff organized as I want it. Pictures don't have to go in the Pictures folder, music doesn't have to go in the Music folder and iTunes music doesn't have to go in the iTunes music folder unless you want them to.

I think you have the right idea...however, I monkeyed around in iPhoto and now it won't open and display my pictures at all!! HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[yogi]

Boy.... While I can respect that powerusers want things exactly this way and that way, this is exactly what I tell newbies: Don't play around with the files! You shouldn't have monkeyed around if you're not sure how exactly to do it.

You know where your files are, right? Just follow the instructions from my previous post and let the apps do the work for you.

I for one, don't care how files are kept. If I need an image file, I drag it out of iPhoto to the desktop -> makes a copy for me.

Same with music.

 

[metalsam]

Boy.... While I can respect that powerusers want things exactly this way and that way, this is exactly what I tell newbies: Don't play around with the files! You shouldn't have monkeyed around if you're not sure how exactly to do it.

You know where your files are, right? Just follow the instructions from my previous post and let the apps do the work for you.

I for one, don't care how files are kept. If I need an image file, I drag it out of iPhoto to the desktop -> makes a copy for me.

Same with music.

Good iphoto tip - Ive been using export to do that for ages !

 

[yogi]

Yeah but export makes you set the quality and all sorts of stuff I don't want if I just need the full image file. iPhoto has some very powerful features with exporting, especially in combination with Picasa Web Albums.

I ordered my first photobook today, let's see how it comes out. Pretty hefty at 57 Francs (30$ + shipping and VAT).

 

[baggss]

Maybe my POV comes from the fact that I had large collections of Music and Photos before iTunes and iPhoto came along. I was never real thrilled with letting either do all the organizing for me as I had been doing it for so long myself.

I only use iPhoto for pictures I take with my camera, not everything. For those I let iPhoto handle them, but keep the originals on my photo drive, so I always have a backup. For everything else I use Graphic Converter as it doesn't keep any sort of database is nice for light editing and organizing as well as browsing.

Yogi may be right, the average Joe Mac n00b probably shouldn't do what I said above. My apologies for causing any issues.

 

[walkerj]

Maybe my POV comes from the fact that I had large collections of Music and Photos before iTunes and iPhoto came along. I was never real thrilled with letting either do all the organizing for me as I had been doing it for so long myself.

I only use iPhoto for pictures I take with my camera, not everything. For those I let iPhoto handle them, but keep the originals on my photo drive, so I always have a backup. For everything else I use Graphic Converter as it doesn't keep any sort of database is nice for light editing and organizing as well as browsing.

Yogi may be right, the average Joe Mac n00b probably shouldn't do what I said above. My apologies for causing any issues.

I had the same POV when it comes to iTunes and iPhoto. Granted, now I have "given up" my music collection to iTunes - partially. Before they are imported they are backed up in original form to CDR, encoded by a command line encoder, tagged by a script I wrote, and also backed up to CDR. Then iTunes gets them because I can use all its features to do album art, sorting, etc. The originals are trashed once they're on the CD and verified on another computer.

My photos, however, are a different story. They get kept by Finder and I manage them a bit with Photoshop's File Viewer, but the originals are still in date labelled folders in the Pictures folder. The only photos I give up to iPhoto are those taken by my built-in iSight, which I did not have when I first switched with a Mac Mini. There are just too many steps where additional compression artifacts can be introduced which, at least for me, unlike music will eventually muck up the photo. Pics taken with the iSight are already not at digicam quality and will generally be in the 'goofing around' category sort of like cell phone cams. Photos taken by my digicam need to stay at the highest quality that the camera can do which, while pretty good don't need any help becoming any less quality-wise.

Even if I edit/retouch a given photo with PS, I always save the resultant image as a copy in .psd format. I do not fear the proprietary-ness of PSD since Apple stuff works more or less natively with the Adobe format and since Photoshop is the industry standard photo editor I don't see any situation where a more 'portable' or compression inducing format would cause a problem.

If you're new to Mac, however, you should probably just let the iProducts handle the management of them until you learn a little bit more about some of the caveats.

 

[qwinkan]

Here's a key thing to keep in mind. You can put all of this stuff anywhere you want. You can then simply point iTunes or iPhoto or whatever app at them when you want. I don't allow iTunes or iPhoto to manage my files for me and I keep my stuff organized as I want it. Pictures don't have to go in the Pictures folder, music doesn't have to go in the Music folder and iTunes music doesn't have to go in the iTunes music folder unless you want them to.

hi fresh newbie here, how do you "point" iphoto or itunes to the files?
if i made my own folder to put my pictures in (not in the "pictures" folder provided) and then dragged/pointed those pics to iphoto, will that double the existence of my files?