sdTechGirl

edit/update: before you go in and read all of this – note that if you want to use iPhoto the following text will be helpful, if you don’t want to use iPhoto, the easiest way to import images from your iPhone onto a Mac is to use the application “image capture”,  if you’re an Adobe CS4 user, open up Bridge and go to file>get photos from camera (thanks Steven & Dan) – be sure to have your iPhone connected to the computer first!

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I don’t know what it is about Apple that they think they have to hold our hands with everything!  Most of us are savvy enough to know how to use a computer and we can make our own choices, thank you very much!

So, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that the photos that I take with my iPhone cannot simply (automatically) be transferred or dragged from the iPhone to any folder on my computer that I want or accessed by any program that I want….oh no! Don’t let her touch her own photos!!!

You have to use iPhoto to import them..and then guess what Apple does for you? You helpless computer user? They create TWO folders, one called “originals” and then one called “modified” that has a duplicate of those images.  Now…not one of those images in the “modified” folder has actually been MODIFIED…they’re just duplicates.  Because apparently, we’re just too dumb to make our own versions when we modify them.

So why am I so PO’d that Apple would do this?

1. By creating an automatic duplicate file (modified) there is an unnecessary amount of my hard drive space being taken up (2x as much!).  I back up my own images to an external hard drive, thank you.
2. You cannot simply open a file folder to access your images…you either have to open the iPhoto application or you have to open a finder window, go to your “Pictures” folder (in Places), then to iPhoto Library, right click (control click) and choose “show package contents”. WARNING: if you want to use this method to move your images somewhere else….do not drag them out, make a copy…it’s all over the internets that doing this will damage the iPhoto database! geeze.
3. I don’t want to use iPhoto to sort/view/store/manipulate my images – I use Photoshop and Bridge to do that.
4. When you “move to trash” images in iPhoto….they DON’T GO TO THE TRASH, they actually stay in a folder called “trash” in iPhoto!  Which takes up more space on your hard drive!

My work around:

1. Connect iPhone & open iPhoto
2. Select images in iPhone and click import, after import is complete close iPhoto
3. Open “Originals” folder via the finder (pictures>iPhoto Library>right click and choose “show package contents”) select all images and hold the alt key and drag to a folder you have created where YOU want them.  (Holding the alt key creates a duplicate and does not move the images out of the iPhoto application.)
4. Open Bridge, navigate to the folder where you have your fresh copies, remove any images you do not want (much easier than doing it in the phone), move them around if you don’t like the order they are in, and then do a batch rename (exif data has been preserved so you can name the images using the date created, ie: iPhone_20081008_001.jpg).
5. go back into iPhoto, click the photo folder that you just uploaded and select “move to trash”, (remember that if you try to do this from anywhere else you will damage iPhoto database!)  By the way, don’t forget to empty that “trash” icon inside of iPhoto….otherwise you still have them on your hard drive….trust me, by the time I figured this out I had 5,000 images in there and I wondered why my hard drive was full?! o_O

Side notes:

1. Image sizes: I noticed that the images in the “modified” folder are slightly larger than the ones in the “originals” folder, for example…one was 576 kb in modified version and 420 in original – both were 1200 x 1600 and 72 ppi however – as viewed using the “file info” right click. When I viewed them in Adobe Bridge they were 574 & 416 respectively.  What the?!? Once the images are opened in Photoshop however, both show up as exactly the same size at 5.49mb!
2. Exif info: Viewed in Adobe Bridge the exif (file properties) info is confusing – the image from the modified folder shows that it is associated with the application Quicktime 7.5 & uses my Dell3007WP color profile! The image from the originals file has neither association.
3. Color/density: Preferences within Adobe Bridge seem to be ignored with the image from the modified folder (perhaps because it is associated with the Dell Color Profile?)  For reasons that I cannot exactly pinpoint, when images are viewed in Photoshop, the originals have better color & density (this is not true in preview however),  this is why I choose to copy the images from the “originals” folder.  Btw….I’m being VERY nitpicky here, you might not notice. (images are unretouched as viewed in Photoshop, image on left is from originals folder, the right is from modified folder).