Picasa Fans: Here's how to use iPhoto with External Drive

http://www.homepage.mac.com/bwebster/iphotolibrarymanager.html

The download is FREE. This site is referenced in a MacWorld bonus I received. It allows you to select where you want your libraries to be located.

"Brian Webster's free iPhoto Library Manager Utility lets you organize your photos into a number of separate libraries, share libraries with other users, and switch easily from one library to another- even if the libraries reside on external FireWire drives. Plus, each library can have it's own set of preferences and permissions."

I save all of my photos on an external drive to keep my Mac drive as free as possible. I have over 20,000 pics, and really liked the way Picasa allowed me to view pics and save to folders on my external hard drive.

I downloaded this yesterday, and have spent part of this eveing organzining my files. I have made separate libraries for years, 2004, 05, 06. In each library, I designated "Smart" month folders. Select New Smart folder, name it, and then set the conditions. I used date ranges that correspnded to each month. Then, as you import files, iPhoto will automatically send the files to the appropriate folder. You can also add additional tags so that files that have names can go into other folders as well.

Hope this helps all of the Picasa lovers out there!
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Good Golly Miss Molly

sigh except that Picasa is free.

Their FAQ says they might make a Mac version one day. I hope so. I'm kinda surprised that they ported it to Linux before Mac. I tried to install the Linux version, but that didn't work out too well.

So, like if you bought a new Mac, you also got iPhoto for free. Since I don't currently use a Windoze machine, what is so special about Picasa, except that it is free?

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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}

Picasa is directory based rather than database driven. > > I

Also why I am resistent to Adobe Lightroom.