moving photos from iPhoto to an external hard drive for use with Lightroom

[readstoomuch]

Whew . . . that was a long title!

I am cleaning up my iMac Os X Snow Leopard and need to move all of my 559G of photos to an external hard drive. I have copies burned to two disks which will be kept in two separate places.

I plan to purchase Lightroom and want to be able to access it from my computer via PSE.

Is there a "best" way to do this? I am so afraid that I will mess up my photos and they will be jumbled into a nonsensical pile! Can I move them into folders by year/months? Can I then keep about 12 months of photos in iPhoto on my internal hard drive?

Guess that is a lots of questions . . . any advice to ease my mind would be so much help!

[maureenreynolds]

Mollie, I wish I could answer you because all this info is covered in Kayla's Finding Photo Flow. Unfortunately, I've just not been able to work through any of this course. Hopefully, someone else can help you out.

[digigrandma]

Mollie I have Lightroom and I keep all my photos in folders by month and year on an EHD. I have done this for 3 years plus I have all my digital scrapbook files on the same EHD. I believe my EHD is a 500 gigabyte size. I still have 350 gigabytes left.

When I want to work on photos I can import them from the EHD to Lightroom. Then when I'm ready to use the photos on a scrapbook page I open pse and import or open the photos I want to use?in pse.

I think you'll be able to transfer the same folders from iPhoto to your EHD.

[cstaff]

AdobeTV | Getting Started with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3

Molly... I followed these tuts when I first purchased LR. Julianne Kost also has some wonderful info on her site to0... she's one of the Adobe evangelistas...

I also download all my photos directly to my ehd and work directly in lightroom. When I want to use a photo in PS, I go to photo-edit in CS5 and go from there. Hope this is somewhat helpful.

[readstoomuch]

Thanks . . . Maureen, Merr & Carol!

I have many of my photos in folders on an external . . . but they are sort of just there . . . not really organized. I just bought a 1G External yesterday and want to do it right this time.

I like your way of doing things, Merrilee . . . if it works for you it must be a good system. I will google "Kayla's Finding Photo Flow" and Julianne Kost to see what they say. I just clicked on your Adobe link, Carol and will read it first! I will probably get too much information and just confuse myself all over again!!! Thanks girls . . . you are all wonderful to give my your advice.