How to handle pictures on MacBook Air

[wanttolearn25]

I am looking to dabble in photography starting with my daughter. I have been using my iphone and point and shoot up to this point. I FINALLY got my Nikon D5200 for christmas! My question is on my macbook air, which I have/had been using iPhoto, what is the best way/place to store the photos (as I have filled my internal hard drive) and how do you manage them when viewing/editing them? Loved iPhoto, except for its ridiculous storage system in folders inside of subfolders inside of 17 more subfolders.... if you have used this, I'm sure you get my drift. Please let me know the best way to do this. I have Lightroom 5 and Elements. I also have 2 external hard drives a 1 TB and a 2TB.

Thanks in Advance​

 

[Designer]

I don't use iPhoto. I just place my photos in folders. Editing in Aperture3.

 

[DanielLewis76]

I place mine in folders within my Pictures directory. I then sync this to an Airport extreme file server via time machine.

 

[SnappingShark]

I use Aperture on my MBP.
I will archive off my 2013 images to HDD and CD and barely touch them again.
2014 will allow me to start afresh.

 

[wanttolearn25]

Does anyone then edit in Lightroom? Sorry I'm really new to this and every software seems it wants you to import all of your pictures to it but I would rather keep my pictures all on my external HD. Does this make sense? any suggestions?

 

[wanttolearn25]

When you say you just place your photos in folders. Mine automatically go into iPhoto, can you explain how to get around this because it makes the folders it creates a mess. None of the files are in order....ugh

 

[KmH]

I highly recommend getting The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers

 

[wanttolearn25]

Thanks for the responses.... If anyone has any other advice in the meantime. I'm going to read that but still open if there is possibly quick explanation, tips, etc. thanks tho

 

[CaptainNapalm]

I use lightroom on my 2012 MacBook Air and love it

 

[KmH]

No image files are stored in Lightroom.

Images are stored in your computer's memory, even when you use Lightroom to upload image files.
Because Lightroom is a database manager, what Lightroom stores is the path to where in your computers memory where the image files reside.
That is what Lightroom Catalog is - all the paths to the image files you have told Lightroom about.

Lightroom can then make 'virtual' Collections of images that may not all reside in the same folder in your computers memory.

If you move image files you have told Lightroom about, without doing so using Lightroom's Library module, Lightroom no longer has valid memory path information for locating the moved files.