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!
23 comments ↓
What about photos I directly import to iPhoto from my digital camera? If I deselect “Copy items to the iPhoto Library” what will it do with them? Or does importing them from the camera override that?
Hi Nicole,
I’ll need to do some poking around to find out for sure. I’ll get back to you on this issue soon!
Liz
Hi, I have the same question as Nicole, Liz did you find an answer?
Thanks for the writeup non the less.
Hi, great tip, thanks. I also have few questions… what if I want do delete some pictures and I want to do that withing IPhoto. The original picture does not get deleted. Is there a way to force the original picture to go away aswell?
Regards,
Björn
Yes. Help. My photos are stuck in I photo. I can’t find them with Adobe Bridge or Photoshop in order to do serious processing. is there some secret way to get files out of iphoto and into a folder that is visibleon the hard drive?
THanks
Hey…you never answered!
simply drag them out of iPhoto
I am able to drag files out of iphoto into Photoshop. It is inconvenient to individually save each of 180 files. I haven’t been able to drag files out of iphoto and into, for instance, Finder, or let’s say, my image folder.
Surely there is a way.
iPhoto is a horrible application. It should just store the pictures as files on the hard drive, rather than locking them into Apple’s properietory iphoto format. I will never use this application.
Hi there, Hasan, thanks for your thoughts. Actually, iPhoto does store the photos on the hard drive, in the open .jpeg format like most photo applications. They’re placed in a difficult to find folder, but as described in my blog post, they’re still accessible to anyone, and are not stored in any kind of proprietary format.
Replying to Jeff’s comment above, because I missed it: When I need to move a bunch of files out of iPhoto quickly, I usually use the File->Export option. I can export them all to a directory and go from there. Alternatively, there could be a plug-in you can install that would let you move photos back and forth between iPhoto and PhotoShop. I don’t know of any off the bat, because I don’t have PhotoShop, but I do have a plug-in that adds the option for me to export the photos to my online photo host.
You can also crack open the iPhoto folder so you can have direct access to the files. You’d probably be interested in my other post on this topic: Finding Photos Outside of iPhoto
Hope that points you in the right direction!
Hi. Thanks for this info on getting files out of iPhoto. One question. When I follow your instructions on “Finding Photos Outside of iPhoto” to open a finder to navigate through my photo folders, the finder does not contain any of the photo files that I downloaded since getting iPhoto 08. Only all the stuff from the previous version of iPhoto. Any thoughts?
There is a way to access your photos from iPhoto via your finder with Leopard.
Open your finder and on the bottom left side you will see, “Media”
Under Media you will see Photos
This is how you would access files if you wanted to upload them to Myspace or other photo sharing site. But it is also a good way to access the file to edit in Photoshop.
The article is usefull for me. I’ll be coming back to your blog.
I have been looking looking around for this kind of information. Will you post some more in future? I’ll be grateful if you will.
Some of us even don’t realize the importance of this information. What a pity.
It’s a pity that people don’t realize the importance of this information. Thanks for posing it.
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I find some features of iphoto highly interesting.
Until now, I have been using digikam on linux.
Now, I would like to iphoto on my brand new mac. But I would like all my pictures to stay the way they are and I want them to be, in their folders.
I would also like any modification to be applied directly on the-said picture. Not to a copy hidden elsewhere. This way, when I decide to copy all my picture folders on a harddrive to use them on an other computer, I don’t get lost. I have all my photos, sorted in theirs folders, with the enhancements I applied to them.
I would also like to be able to make copies of photos, delete them move them to another folder, create new albums… and I would like all these actions to be reflected on the folder structure of my drive.
In short, I would like iphoto to work without the library. (I am not complaining about the thumbnails files thought. I would just like to get my album structure to exist as an human-friendly folder tree on the disk)
Is it possible to achieve this behaviour with iphoto ?
Many thanks for your answers. Many thanks also for this article which answers some of these questions.
Well, I have been thinking. Maybe there is a way in iphoto to export all the albums to a disk and sort them in folders to reflect their previous organization in the software.
I could do live with this. Knowing that when the day comes for me to leave iphoto, I will be able to get painlessly all my photo sorted into folders on a hard drive exactly like they were in iphoto.
I was not able to find this feature. But me being new and all, maybe I failed to recognize it. Does anyone know if what I described above is possible ?
Thanks for your help.
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I wouldn`t do it.
[…] my point very well… This sums it up better, with some of the comments being issues for me too: Breaking out of the iPhoto Folder Structure — Unseemly Raptor The main reason I want to keep my file structure is that I use my photos drive on more than just […]
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