iPhoto Tricks and Add-ons

If you have stumbled upon I-Photo from a PC background then you may be unfamiliar with the storage habits of I-Photo, and you may feel inclined to drag all your pictures into labelled folders. Initially this may appear a good idea, but as your photo collection grows, so too will this endless list of folders and their sub-directories.

Eventually, you will have replicated your windows file structure where everything resides in labelled directories and can only be found by clicking endlessly in search of that classic photo of little Billy being mauled by your neighbours parrot. Is it in my kids folder or my neighbours or my animals or my can´t be bothered to sort them out folder?

Unfortunately I-Photo does not automatically label photos in any meaningful way, other than by date. So unless you are of the mathematical persuasion and remember life unfolding as a series of numerals then you will need to think again about how to organise these images.

Labels

The best way to use I-Photo is to label your photos when you import them. Labelling photos allows you to later use the search window to find them, and if you also create smart folders to contain them, I-Photo will automatically organise your collections for you. Look at the help files to get some good examples.

Size

Eventually however, you will be faced with the problem of the size of your expanding library. Each time I-Photo opens it has to load all your photos in miniature into its memory. Every time more photos are added then this process gets slower and slower.

There are several things that can be done to ease this problem. The first is to get into the habit of deleting bad photos when loading on a new roll. The second is to use a little program called I-Photo Diet. This removes all the edited versions of the photos I-Photo has made and kept in a folder called Originals (all those rotated photos, for example). Its invaluable and really should have been built into I-Photo itself. Remember to make a back up first of your library before using the program though.

Another program is called I-Photo Library Manager and it allows you to create different libraries and open them individually in I-Photo. This significantly cuts down on memory usage and can help in speeding up the process of finding specific photos by organising your libraries into different subjects. For example having different libraries called work, family, pets for example would help when looking for a picture of Auntie Gertrude. Why load your Pets library?

Finally, if you are trying to import a photo from I-Photo but would rather not open the program itself (to save on memory), try adding one of the free scripts such as Resize Image, this will not only will open a mini window for you to select your photo from within I-Photo, but copy it out and place it on your desktop, resized and ready to work with.

Finally, if I-Photo´s other editing possibilities leave you a little frustrated, then download Image Well. Its small, fast, flexible and free. Combine it with the script mentioned above and you can avoid having to open I-Photo all together and put your computers Ram to much better use elsewhere.

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