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To use iPhoto with a referenced library, you’ll need to learn some new habits—specifically, how you transfer photos from your camera. Typically, iPhoto will pop up when you plug in your camera and offer to import photos for you. Don’t accept its offer. iPhoto will ignore your stated preference and will instead copy the new images to its database. ^{link »}

This powerful and flexible image-management tool does a great job of downloading photos. What’s more, you already have it; just look in your applications folder. After it launches, just Command-click on the photos you want, click the Import button, and then tell Image Capture to copy them to the appropriate folder on your hard drive using the Import To popup menu. ^{link »}

I recommend that you create a new folder on the hard drive for each shoot you download. This lets you keep things organized. Label the folders so you can tell at a glance what’s in each of them. I use a month/year format with short descriptive name, such as “10-09 NY Street Shoot.” As a bonus, when your import these labeled folders of images into iPhoto, it will use the folder names to describe each Event, so iPhoto and the folders on your master hard drive will be in sync. ^{link »}

If you want to adjust exposure or color temperature, iPhoto will warn you that the master file can’t be located, and ask you if you want to find it. All you have to do is connect your hard drive of masters, and you can edit to your heart’s content. ^{link »}

Pointing other applications to your photos Another benefit of this approach is that you can point Aperture or Lightroom to this same hard drive of photos. In Aperture, just make sure that you choose Store Files In Their Current Location from the Import menu. In Lightroom, choose File -> Import Photos From Disk, then choose Add Photos To Catalog Without Moving. ^{link »}

The metadata you create (ratings, keywords, etc.) will be stored within each application. So if you give an image a three-star rating in iPhoto, but give it four stars in Lightroom, it’ll retain the different ratings in each program. ^{link »}

Also, is google picasa a non-destructive app? ^{link »}

Online vs local computer for photo management and editing, ^{link »}

One question: Is there a way to have iPhoto work in the following situation: I disconnect the main photos disk. Then, on the road, for example, I connect a portable disk with the same files/folders on it. Can I have iPhoto work the same way when I use the portable drive? ^{link »}

I've been trying to figure out a way to share an iPhoto library with my wife's user account. It seems like I should be able to keep the images in the shared folder, and just reference them from our separate iPhoto libraries in our own Pictures folders. ^{link »}

Strategies for sharing your iphoto libraries. ^{link »}

How can I move them to an external drive, while preserving my edits, albums and events, and re-import to a new "referenced" library? Please provide some instructions for people who already have massive existing libraries and want to switch to your referenced system. ^{link »}

Picassa uses a referenced library and let's the user organize the photos on their HD as they see fit. When you edit a photo in Picassa, it makes a copy and saves the originals in a sub folder inside the original folder. ^{link »}

But everyone should take in account several other caveats if following this approach. One very significant is that if you rename or change the location of a referenced file or folder, after importing them, iPhoto will lose its track of it. Do that with several folders or files, for any reason, and in time you'll get an iPhoto library full of exclamation signs for thumbnails and you'll have to locate each "lost" file. That's why I think this doesn't work on big libraries already imported to iPhoto. Many of these drawbacks are explained in detail in several threads in the Apple discussion forums. I recommend to check them out before changing your way of doing things with iPhoto. ^{link »}

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