Can iPhoto dynamically monitor photo folders a la Picasa?
We have 11,000+ photos, organized into 11 yearly folders. Picasa can monitor folders, and detect both deletion of a photo from a folder and movement of a photo from one folder to another. Can iPhoto be persuaded to do the same, without manual intervention?
So far, all I've been able to do is, import folders one by one into the iPhoto library (unchecking the business of importing the actual photo so that iPhoto merely indexes the photo). iPhoto loads each folder as discrete "events" (photos by date...) which I must then "merge" to get a "year" event.
(iPhoto disagrees with me about the date of some photos, perhaps because iPhoto looks at date of last modification rather than creation date as stored in the photo meta information.)
At any rate, I'd like to get iPhoto dynamically to monitor photo folders in the manner that Picasa does, and allow me to create "smart" folders by date range (date being, photo creation date!)
Is this possible?
So far, all I've been able to do is, import folders one by one into the iPhoto library (unchecking the business of importing the actual photo so that iPhoto merely indexes the photo). iPhoto loads each folder as discrete "events" (photos by date...) which I must then "merge" to get a "year" event.
(iPhoto disagrees with me about the date of some photos, perhaps because iPhoto looks at date of last modification rather than creation date as stored in the photo meta information.)
At any rate, I'd like to get iPhoto dynamically to monitor photo folders in the manner that Picasa does, and allow me to create "smart" folders by date range (date being, photo creation date!)
Is this possible?
Comments
Whether we like it or not, iPhoto is designed from the ground up to be the only way you manage your photos; messing about with the files in the Finder causes problems and there's no way I know of easily doing what you want to do. You could probably make an Automator Action or AppleScript to do what you want, but I think it would be better to either use Picasa, or learn to use iPhoto the iPhoto way and stop trying to make it behave like Picasa.
It sounds like you're an experienced Picasa user, why not just use that instead of iPhoto?
Whether we like it or not, iPhoto is designed from the ground up to be the only way you manage your photos; messing about with the files in the Finder causes problems and there's no way I know of easily doing what you want to do. You could probably make an Automator Action or AppleScript to do what you want, but I think it would be better to either use Picasa, or learn to use iPhoto the iPhoto way and stop trying to make it behave like Picasa.
iPhoto would easily sync with my iPod Touch, of course, and (IMO) offers a better slide show mechanism. But I suppose it is not to be. Thanks for your response!