Yet another iPhoto import question

[DVDSP]

My wife and I took a bunch of photo's while on vacation and would download them into iPhoto on her iBook. Now that we are home I'd like to transfer the pictures to one of our main computers.

However, when I import into iPhoto every image gets put into the library, including all the thumbnails and originals. That way, I end up with what appear to be up to 3 copies of each photo when really it's one photo, one thumbnail and (possibly) one unaltered original. To make matters worse, the 3 copies are rarely next to each other.

Is there a way to import the library from the iBook without all that hassel? (aside from individually importing each photo)

Thanks,

 

[PHARAOHk]

This may be long....

The two easiest options are to:
-1 From the computer you want to copy them from. Open iPhoto and click the burn icon on the bottom right corner. Choose the whole library or whatever and burn. This will create a specific iPhoto disc. Importing will be really easy on other computers but will be ultra organized on the new computers library.
-2 Instead of importing directly into iPhoto just import the photos (drag from media card to desktop) and you won't have them super organized in the library. You can also select all photos from the iPhoto display and drag to a folder or desktop. Click an image-Command-A.

My advice:
Do number two and then manually name and organize each picture into its own categorized folder. This makes backup and sharing a billion times easier. The reason I do this is because iPhoto will permit the import of redundantly named images from your camera. My camera names them as dcm-XXX in sequential order. In the iPhoto library I probably had fifty or more instances of dcm-001. If you haven't given your pictures different names and you try to make a collection of pictures for someone you will more then likely have more then one instance of the same name. Outside of the iPhoto library you cannot work with two files of the same name.

I have a photo folder on my desktop. In it there are family, misc, nature, etc... I have view options for these folders set to show icon preview and icon size is 128x128. I use a free app called Jview for slide shows and viewing individual pictures. It opens images really fast. It will also display images in their original size if you like or otherwise. iPhoto would be great if it would only let you view instead of all the weird archiving it automatically does. I think in the long run it's easier to work with images from their source instead of through a restrictive middleman.

(((k)))

 

[DVDSP]

Thanks for the advice, both of those options sound good. I can't use option 1 'cause the iBook doesn't have a CD-R drive, too bad for us.

What I ended up doing was connecting the iBook to our network and exporting the Albums I wanted from iPhoto to the target computer. Then I imported just that Album into iPhoto on the target computer. It didn't take long, worked flawlessly (so far ), I only got 1 copy of each picture and it kept all the original picture names (DSCN3080, so imaginative).

Thanks again,