Question : Problem: Decent way to protect potentially embarrassing photos?

My girlfriend allowed me to shoot and keep a whole bunch of racy photos of a very adventurous week we spent together. She is concerned however, that someone could embarrass her should the photos fall into the wrong hands, e.g., say my Macbook Pro or iphone gets stolen. I considered FileVault for my Mac (running Leopard) but I'm told it slows you down if you encrypt photos and music, and my MBP is already underpowered as it is.

What are reasonable steps to take to give my girlfriend at least a little peace of mind? I love having the photos on my notebook and on my iphone and it would be great if I took at least some steps to show her I care about her concerns.

Answer : Problem: Decent way to protect potentially embarrassing photos?

I agree FileVault is overkill .. encrypting your entire Home folder

There are a few different levels of security.

You can use simple utilities to "Hide" the folder of images but it is not secure in any relevant way.

You can try ApiMac - http://www.apimac.com/secret_folder/index.php which does a slightly fancier job of password protecting and hiding the folder.

RECOMMENDED
Use Disk Utility or DropDMG(http://c-command.com/dropdmg/) to create an encrypted disk image.  Drop your folder of images onto the encrypted disk image and you're done.
See the section in this article on creating a Disk Image from a folder and note the option to ENCRYPT the image.
http://web.reed.edu/cis/Help/software/diskutil.html#image

CAUTION
The AES128 encryption on the disk images is virtually impossible to crack so DO NOT lose the password.

To view the images you double-click the encrypted image file .. it will prompt for password and if correct will mount a disk image with your folder of photos inside in glorious technicolour.


On the iPhone requirement .. as far as I know you're only option here is to put the password lock on the iPhone as it doesn't support opening encrypted disk images.