Hey peeps... Been using Macbook with iPhoto 08 for the past few months. I noticed that it take up quite lots of space for my photos!!!

When I created an event/album, on top of the original size of the picture, it will duplicate itself in the event file thus making the file size double and eat up my HDD space double the time. And if you believe it, my 160GB HDD left only 14GB and even before I start to install my bootcamp!!!

Any suggestions and any guidances really appreciated.

Thanks.

Yea, iphoto takes up lots and lots of space. try Lightroom or Aperture, i like aperture.

i think aperture is good!

Thank you guys. I will "get" aperture then. Hopefully it's better and as user friendly as iphoto 08.

Cheers...

What do you mean when you say it duplicates itself in the event file? iPhoto only keeps 1 copy of a photo (original version), and a modified version of it (if it is modified eg. rotated, colour tweaked, etc)... All non-destructive photo management applications do this, so you can easily revert back to the original version of a photo...

I think you have the "Copy Photos to the iPhoto Library" option ticked (iPhoto preferences>Advanced)... You should leave it this way.... Once you import photos into iPhoto, let it do the management for you... You don't need to store the photos on a separate location anymore (eg. Pictures/Documents folder/Desktop), as it's already stored in the iPhoto Library (Pictures>iPhoto Library)... Same goes with iTunes, let these apps do the file management for you =)

If you are expecting user-friendliness in Aperture, I am sorry, it is not.

Secondly, if you are not a professional photographer who do editing on RAW format, Aperture is a bit overkill if you ask me.

Thirdly, you know Aperture is not free, right ?

More than a third of my pics were in RAW. Currently using Canon's Digital photo professional to process the RAW files. Wanna try out aperture and see what's the diff.

As for the question on duplicating files size, when I import the file to iPhoto, in the iphoto library it will takes up some space (actually quite a big space) and at the same time my original files size as well. At first i thought it will point a link only to the original file.