iPhoto Is Not Fond of Moving Files Around
iPhoto, by design captures everything into a big encapsulated holding tank of its own. You’re not supposed to go in there, but let iPhoto manage and update all the pictures on its own, while you politely stand on the outside, asking for your own pictures, only via the interface. This is great if you never expect to manage your own photos, archive them or move some of the folders to, say, an external drive. If you want to do any of those things, iPhoto starts getting really wierd. This is even after you’ve told it to import without actually capturing the files, but referencing the folders where they are. You’d better not move those folders, or iPhoto will have a fit when you want to access them again- it will also have a fit when you try to delete and re-import the folder from its new location. Of course, iPhoto has its own memory of the old location, even after you’ve trashed it. It will warn you with each of the 500 photos you’re importing that it can’t find the source. It matters not, whether you tell it where to find it repeatedly.
I like the ease of use of iPhoto, especially how it drags and drops into Blogo, my favorite blog editor and updater for the Mac, but file management is not great. Picasa would be my choice, but for the Mac, Picasa has no, I repeat, NO drag and drop capacity. I wonder, will Google ever take a serious approach to Picasa for Mac?
