How to download and manage photos without iPhoto

[caterina182]

I am new to macs, having just purchased one of the new MacBook Pros. I am still trying to adjust, but one of the annoying features that's killing me is the fact that I can't seem to download the photos taken with my iPhone 3G to my mac without using iPhoto.

I already have thrillions of pictures catalogued and categorised by Year and Events (but not with iPhoto, just by creating folders). I don't want to import these folders or manage my pictures with iPhoto. I tried importing them without copying the files and iPhoto just creates "events" that aren't really helping with my organising.

Bottomline, I don't wanna use iPhoto at all to manage my images. I wanna keep downloading my images from my iPhone and Canon cameras (which I haven't even tried yet!) and sorting them directly into the folders I want.

Is there a way of doing this? How do I find the drive (my iPhone) and just transfer the photos straight to one of my folders?

Thanks

C

[OlyComputers]

I'm not sure if you can do it directly, but you can download with Iphoto and then just move them from Iphotos default folders to the ones you want.

[lawrence123]

If you aren't going to use iPhoto at all you can just remove it from the system, it is part of iLife and is not required for normal operation of OS X. In it's place You can use something like diskaid to retrieve the photos from the iphone.

http://www.digidna.net/diskaid/ (Free app)

As for your cannon camera you will probably run into a snag with that as well, Under OS X cannon cameras report themselves as cameras instead of mass storage devices so they don't just show up on the desktop. I use iPhoto to manage my pictures so this was never a problem for me, but what you can do is you can either buy a usb card reader which are very inexpensive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010010069%201319721987%201179712244&name=USB%202.0

or check the CD that came with your camera and see if it has OS X compatible software on it. The disk that came with my Cannon A720IS has a utility called ImageBrowser 6.0 on it for OS X and that may be just what you need.

As a note to uninstall iPhoto you can just drag it to the trash and then empty the trash, or use something like app zapper. If you change your mind you can always reinstall it from your reinstallation discs that came with your laptop.

[rundie]

I believe there is also an option in the Finder prefs -- or maybe even in iPhoto's prefs -- that will disable the automatic feature that kicks in whenever you plug in a camera or iPhone or whatever. That's what I find most annoying. If you set it to manual, however, you can use any other program you please.

[blueviolet]

Oh, I hear you. I despise iPhoto and it was one of my main frustrations when I first got a Mac because I do a lot of photo organizing and editing.

I finally figured out that you can set the default to be Image Capture, through Preferences for either Image Capture or iPhoto. When I plug my camera in now, Image Capture immediately recognizes it (without any special camera software) and allows me to download the files into folders of my choice in Finder. It also lets me choose the color profile I want the photos saved in, and gives me the option to delete the photos on my camera.

Also, if you want to see the device you've plugged in in Finder, be sure that "Removable media" is checked in Finder Preferences.

Finally, as an alternative to iPhoto for editing photos, I'm using Pixelmator, which is very similar to Photoshop and much more affordable.