MacOS – How to export photos from a folder in iPhoto, preserving the album structures in the folder

iPhoto has an internal file storage system where it saves all the photos for the events, albums etc.

You notice this, when you select an event and click "Show in folder". Then you see the whole folder with all the pictures in it.

You should treat events or albums as your folders. You can give them custom names and everything.

What I have done is:

• Import all photos to iPhoto
• Delete original files
• Just work with iPhoto (when I want to see the photos in a folder structure, I can choose "Show in folder".

Note: I have heard that you can have an external file storage for your photos with Apperture. This is iPhoto with more functionality for 200 USD, in case you do a lot of work with iPhoto this might be interesting.

No. iPhoto does not allow you to dictate the internal storage scheme. However, the export function does have an option to export the original file, so you can avoid the re sampling and/or format conversion if that is enough to stick with what you have. Additionally, Aperture and iPhoto can use the same storage, so you could get aperture and do the following;

• convert the storage of any photos you want to folders and then save the library.
• continue to use iPhoto for convenient tasks and iPhoto will work with the aperture store locations.
• do all imports in aperture when you want the originals stored in specific folders.

You can use Lightroom, PhotoMechanic or Aperture which all allow whatever folder based storage of photos you prefer.