Importing images into iPhoto

[Vinny]

Can someone walk me throught the correct way to import images into iPhoto?? I formerly used a W2K machine, using Picasa and would like to move my images to iPhoto. I have about 5,000 photos.

Also, in the past, all I had to do is stick in my memory card and Picasa would import my images, prompt me for a folder name, and that was it. Is this possible with iPhoto?

When I imported directly from my camera, the images were imported into a different folder and I had to manually create a new folder and drag the images over. I would like to streamline this like Picasa if possible.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Vinny

 

[jxyama]

dunno about picasa, but here are some different ways to import.

1) if you connect your camera directly, iPhoto will pop up and prompt you whether to import or not. if you import, all the pics on the flash card in your camera will be imported as one roll.

2) the same will happen if you connect an external flash reader.

3) another way is to ignore iPhoto (just quit it), use Image Capture to grab pictures individually. you can organize them into folders with names to your liking. now, launch iPhoto and drag all the folders into the Photo Library. each folder will come up as separate rolls in iPhoto.

4) yet another way. you can just grab pictures you want and drag them directly into iPhoto. you can rename the roll names later.

do you have iPhoto 4? if not, i highly recommend you NOT import all 5000 pics into one iPhoto library. it will make iPhoto practically useless. (depends on the size of each pic, but it's probably correct...) use iPhoto Library Manager available at versiontracker to split your pics into multiple libraries...

 

[jxyama]

Re: Importing images into iPhoto

Originally posted by Vinny

When I imported directly from my camera, the images were imported into a different folder and I had to manually create a new folder and drag the images over. I would like to streamline this like Picasa if possible.

sorry about double post, but i wanted to ask about this... are you talking about iPhoto here?

iPhoto will make it's own set of folders and organize them in a pretty convoluted way (i.e. don't go mess with it) for every picture in the library. if you manually made folders for your pics in addition to keeping them in iPhoto, you are basically using up twice the HD space...

 

[Vinny]

What I initially did was drag and drop the folders from my windoze machine onto a cd, then from the cd to the iphoto list on the left side. I did this to maintain my the same file structure as Picasa. I'm not exactly sure what is meant by 'library' as I am about 4 hours into using iPhoto, but I assume that each folder is a library. Let me tell you, iPhoto is very painful to use at this point, probably because I'm doing something wrong (and I'm using iPhoto 2, iLife arrived today and will be installed tonight)

 

[jxyama]

i'm a bit confused...

iPhoto uses its own folder structure to organize the images. if you are interested in manually going into /User/Pictures/iPhotoLibrary (via Finder) to mess with your pictures, you shouldn't use iPhoto.

either you let iPhoto do its thing - you should be able to do pretty much any functions you want from within iPhoto (duplicate, edit, rename, export, etc.) - or don't use it. if you start messing with iPhoto Library, iPhoto will lose track of the pictures.

 

[jxyama]

also... if you are really having problems, read iPhoto - the missing manual by Pogue press. it's an excellent book and should address just about everything on that app.