I just tried this and Disk Utility works just as you said it would. Please forgive my ignorance, but what is the benefit of having a "disk image" of a folder? I compared the size of the folder and it's disk image and they are almost identical.

There are several reasons you might wish to make an Disk Image

- Disk Images can be encrypted and password protected/
- The resource forks for any files inside the Disk Image will be safe if moved to a filesystem that does not support resource forks.
- Disk Images can be compressed.
- Disk Images can be saved for burning to CD later.

Also, it keeps things out of Spotlight queries and stops them being indexed by utilities like Quicksilver.
For instance, I keep my icons on a disc image. Many of them have the same name and icon as my applications, and it's a pain having Photoshop fire up with the iCal icon instead of iCal itself.

dogboy, thanks for pointing out that Spotlight tip. I keep lots of icons, too, as well as files with really long names that often include the name of the app I made 'em with [because I share them with others or put them on other computers]. I'm gonna stash the icons in a dmg from now on.

Also thanks to the original poster. I've been making dmg files the long way.

Here's my dmg tip: use an encrypted dmg to keep printed PDFs of any online receipts, bill payments, sensitive emails, text files with passwds ... anything you want to protect, yet have ready access to, on your Mac. When I'm about to pay bills online, I double-click my encrypted dmg, type in the password, and pay bills, printing the confirmation pages to PDF on that dmg. When I'm done, I eject the dmg [it's a .sparseimage, so it grows as I add files to it]. If I need to back up that info to put in the safe deposit box at the bank [in case there's a house fire or the Mac gets burgled], it's just one file to burn to CD.

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osxpounder

If you're done with a project and you've created many versions of parts of the project (or even if there is no duplication) you can make a disk image and later open the image and retrieve something you need without unzipping the whole mess and having to remember to delete the unzipped files.

If you upgrade a product like Photoshop with many files in the app folder you can dmg the folder and then go back and grab pieces you need.

In summary, you can use it the same as zip, but later look at the files (open or copy them from the disk image) without having to delete the unzipped file after a quick look. You can of course copy many small disk images to a archive CD or DVD and use it as described.

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Hermosa Beach, CA USA