How to Permanently Delete Images in iPhoto

Did you know... iPhoto has it's own trash can!? Yup! Like you, I did not realize this fact. iPhoto does so many things under the hood, it's hard to know what exactly is going on. Did you know that if you do red-eye removal on a photo, a new copy of that photo is made? iPhoto wants to make sure the original photo stays intact so that we, the users, may always have access to it. Okay, let's get on with the purpose of this post.

Album:

• Is a "view" on the photos in your library
• Think of albums as "Labels" in GMail
• many labels (albums) can point to the same e-mail (photo)
• you can create as many labels (albums) as you want
• deleting a photo from an album is akin to removing a GMail label from an e-mail -- that e-mail (photo) is simply removed from that view (label/album), but the e-mail still exists in your library
• deleting a label (album) does not delete your e-mails (photos); it only removes the association

Library:

• all of your photos
• deleting a photo in your library moves it to iPhoto's trash -- i.e., it still exists

So far, I hope the distinctions have been clear between deleting a photo in an album versus deleting a photo in your library. Once you have deleted a photo in your library (and it has been moved to the trash), you must EMPTY THE TRASH to permanently remove the photo from your computer. There are three ways to do this:

1. Use the main menu bar

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a) click on "iPhoto" in the main menu

b) click on "Empty Trash"

c) FANFARE!!!

2. Use the trash icon

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a) look under "Recent"

b) right click on "Trash"

c) select "Empty Trash"

d) FANFARE!!!

(Note: the icon will appear under "Recent" if you've recently viewed/emptied trash)

3. Use a shortcut

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a) make sure you haven't selected any images anywhere

b) press shift-command-delete