My photos in iPhoto are living on the wrong disk - how do I move them without pain?

December 19, 2006 11:22 PM

I've imported photos to my iPhoto library, but left the originals on the wrong disk (external HDD). How can I move the originals to the iPhoto library without having to start over?

I've made a fairly silly error. In organizing some 7000+ photos I've imported them all to iPhoto from a folder on an external HDD called "pictures". Only after a few days of organizing and adding meta deta, etc, do I now realize that the "Copy files to iPhoto Library folder when adding to library" check box was NOT checked when I did the import.

So, I'm left with iPhoto working (it sees all the photos, has all the correct organization, etc.) but pointing to files on the external HDD. My intention is to have them all stored on the internal HDD of the machine.

My question is, can I fix this without either A) Having to redo everything I've done so far, or B) Having every picture duplicated in the library if I do another "import" the correct way?

I know, I know - pay attention to what you're doing. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

posted by jcummings1974 to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Response by poster: meta deta = meta data. Also, to clairfy, in the iPhoto Library on my main hard drive, I have an alias for each photo that exists on my external hard drive. What I really need to do is turn each alias in to the original photo - all without corrupting the library and losing the orginzational changes (meta-data, etc.).

If I "import" again with the "Copy files" check box checked, I know I'll get dupes - and I'm not sure how I'd reconcile that without going through each pair and deleting the "wrong" one.

Hope that makes sense.
posted by jcummings1974 at 12:01 AM on December 20, 2006

I believe iPhoto Library Manager will do this for you.
posted by nathan_teske at 12:25 AM on December 20, 2006

There are two options you could try… Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether the first one will work, and the second one is kind of a pain.

First, make sure you back up your iPhoto Library folder so you can restore it if things go awry.

If you hold down option & command while iPhoto starts up, it will give you the option to rebuild the library. If you had the "Copy files to iPhoto library folder" option set before you did this, it might straighten things out for you. I'd try that first.

Then again, I haven't tried that, so it might not work.

Another option is to back up your photos to CD or DVD, using the Share > Burn option. iPhoto can generally preserve its metadata when you do this, and then you can delete your originals from the library and re-import them from the disc. This is probably your best option, and it's good to have a backup anyway.

The third option will work, but I don't recommend it. You can select all of your pictures and rotate them 90°. Then rotate them back 90° the other direction. iPhoto considers this "editing," and it will create copies of all your photos in your iPhoto library, like you want. Unfortunately, if you ever try to "Revert To Original" after doing this, it will try to go back to the images stored on your external HD, and probably erase the photo altogether.
posted by designbot at 6:35 AM on December 20, 2006

I'm not sure if iPhoto does lossless JPEG rotations now, but it used to re-compress them. If it still does that, doing the rotate/rotate-back may result in significant reduction in image quality. So I'd double-recommend against it.
posted by kindall at 1:14 PM on December 20, 2006

Actually, it looks like rotation is done entirely in metadata in iPhoto 6 -- rotating a photo does not generate a new file until you actually edit it. Also, it looks like it still does recompress it rather than doing a lossless rotate. So, that's out.

How about this (assuming iPhoto 6):

0) Back up your existing library!
1) In the iPhoto preferences, make sure "Copy files to iPhoto library" is selected in Advanced tab
2) Also in the preferences, create a new keyword called Duplicate
3) In the main library, Select All
4) Photos > Duplicate. iPhoto duplicates all the selected photos into its folder (including metadata) and leaves the duplicates selected.
5) Get Info and add the Duplicate keyword to the selected photos.
6) Create a new Smart Album with "Keyword is not Duplicate". This smart album will now contain all the original files.
7) In this smart album, Select All and press Command-Option-Delete. This should move all the photos to the iPhoto Trash.
8) Go back to your library. Right-cilck and Show File on a few of them to make sure they're in the iPhoto library folder, where you want them.
9) Now you can right-cilck the iPhoto Trash and empty it.
posted by kindall at 1:52 PM on December 20, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks to all for the suggestions. What I ended up doing was doing a "Share>Burn to DVD" of the entire library. I then shut down iPhoto and deleted the library from disk.

Then, I just copied the library I backed up from DVD back to disk, and when I opened up iPhoto it picked this up as the new library, with everything in it's place.

Appreciate all the tips.
posted by jcummings1974 at 4:24 PM on December 20, 2006