Breaking out of the iPhoto Folder Structure

Q: I have all of my photos already organized the way I like them in folders, but I’d like to start using iPhoto. I’ve heard that iPhoto reorganizes all of your photos, but I really want to leave the organized the way I already understand. Is there some way to make sure iPhoto doesn’t move all of my photos around?

A: Yes! You can, in fact, turn this feature off if you don’t want to let iPhoto decide how to organize your photos.

The following instructions are actually copied from the iPhoto help menu in iPhoto ‘06. The iPhoto ‘08 version has slightly more detailed information. You can find it in either version by opening iPhoto Help and looking for the item titled “Using advanced options when importing from a hard disk.”

By default, iPhoto copies photos imported from your hard disk, leaving the originals in their original location and making duplicates for use in the iPhoto library.

However, if you already have an extensive collection of photos saved on your computer and you prefer to leave your photos in their current file structure, you can choose to have iPhoto point to your original photo files instead of copying them in iPhoto. Either way, you can still make full use of iPhoto.

To set advanced options for photos imported from your hard disk:

Choose iPhoto > Preferences

Click Advanced.

Select or deselect “Copy items to the iPhoto Library.”

Deselecting this option means that iPhoto will not duplicate photos when importing them into the application, but will leave them in their original files on your computer. When you edit these images in iPhoto, however, the edited versions will be saved in the iPhoto library, not your original files. Your original files remain untouched.

Once you’ve finished these settings, you can import your photos to iPhoto (File->Import to Library), but they will stay in the files you put them in to begin with. Everything will look exactly the same if you launch iPhoto, however, so from within the application you’ll never know the difference!