Safe to use iPhoto?

[NewMacLover]

The reason I bought my iMac was specifically for photos and also to have the best computer ever! I've had it for a couple months now and have been using iPhoto to store all my images rather than creating thousands of folders and messing around with that whole mess.

1. Is it safe to use iPhoto to store all of my photos or is making additional folders outside of iPhoto a better option?
2. I do not use iPhoto for it's editing, just storage. I use Adobe Bridge and Photoshop CS5 for editing.
3. Once I delete photos off of iPhoto are they still on my computer? Because in Bridge, when using my raw images, the old photos that I have already deleted still show up on the line of images to select from.

I'm sorry, these may be dumb questions. I just want to figure it all out so I can keep my Mac clean and organized. :S

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

These are pertinent questions. I have been using iPhoto to manage my photos for about 8 years now and I am currently in the process of sorting out what I consider to be a pain but it is part of how iPhoto does it's thing.

If you are using iPhoto for storage only and have an outside editor, I'm not sure if you knew this, but in iPhoto prefs you can nominate an outside editor which will launch when you click on edit.

When you delete a photo in iPhoto it goes into iPhoto's own internal Trash. When you empty that Trash the photo is removed from your Hard Drive.

In your particular situation, because you use an external editor I think using iPhoto to store your media will work out just fine. It has to be easier than organising all those photos yourself, with nested folders and a crazy herarchy!

When you use any editing functions within iPhoto, be it rotation etc, iPhoto automatically creates a duplicate of that photo first, then applies any editing to this duplicate. Then if in the future, if you ever have the need to view the unedited photo, there is an option under Photos in the menubar, to revert the editing which removes the duplicate from your hard drive and displays the original, unedited photo for you to view.

I'm in the long and very tedious process of sorting out my huge iPhoto collection because I used iPhoto as an editor, my 7 GB photo (that's huge to me) equates out to around 15 GB with all the editied versions and original versions combined.

I don't want this bloat, even though this is the very nature of iPhoto, I just have come to realise that I want more of a say with my digital photos and I'm sifting though the lot and am deleting all the unedited-unrotated images which to me are just taking up space and there are thousands of them!

I'm using Lightroom as an editor once I sort out my collection, I'll import them into a fresh iPhoto library and never again use the iPhoto editor because I don't wish to have duplicates of my images other than the backups I make myself.

I hope I have helped you somehow to come to a conclusion.

 

[Kaveman]

Because in Bridge, when using my raw images

Don't go using Bridge to mess with the internals of the iPhoto Library. Bridge can do a huge amount of damage to your whole system with a slip of a mouse. We strongly recommend not using it at all.

Just set the Preferences > Advanced > Edit Photos: In <Your Choice> and RAW Photos: Use RAW when using external editor.

iPhoto is as safe as any HardDrive system, ensure your Library is Backed up. We recommend TimeMachine as it's fully integrated with iPhoto.

We have people with Libraries that run to 100,000s of photos.

Personally I use iPhoto, Aperture both do non-distructive editing and Pixelmator for that odd job.

I run an Microsoft and Adobe free Mac.