Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with iPhoto

iPhoto problems after Time Machine restore

jammy — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:49:21 -0800

iPhoto no longer displays full view of photos after Time Machine restore. Nor will it upload photos from my camera. Help me figure these problems out. I have an iMac (27" 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM 1TB HD). Recently I had to get the hard drive replaced and so dutifully made sure I had Time Machine back it up to my external TB drive before I took it in for the replacement.

When the hard drive had been replaced I started the computer up from the Recovery system (Command-R at startup) and then used the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" utility.

Most everything came back working fine and there were no error messages. Unfortunately, iPhoto no longer displays photos in full view or edit view. It also reports not being able to read the file type ("unrecognizable format") when trying to upload new photos from my camera (same camera I've always used).

The photos themselves seem fine as I am able to open them in Preview to their full resolution.

Any advice or ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

(There is an issue with my Apple Care registration that is being worked out so I am not able to consult with them at the moment.)

Simple mass-tagging interface for photos

Zosia Blue — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 14:07:33 -0800

Suggestions for a photo management software that will allow me to quickly scroll through photos and tag them with keywords. I have thousands of unnamed, unorganized photos on a hard drive. I want to be able to tag each person in the photo, like Facebook. When I search the drive for, say, "Joe Dirt," I get all the photos of Joe Dirt from the past 10 years.

Which photo management software is for me? I realize what I want to do is time-consuming (and I'm OK with this), but I'd like to have the most efficient mass tool to do this. I'd like to be presented with a long line of photos that I can quickly tag and scroll through (once again, how Facebook allows you to move through photos to tag and add captions).

I don't want to use facial recognition software. I've found this processor-heavy and unreliable. And I'm not looking to quickly identify faces, anyway. I'm OK manually tagging each photo. I just don't want to click in and out of several screens to do this. I want to quickly fly through each photo.

I have a MacBook Pro.

I have iPhoto, though not the latest version. I've briefly dipped into Picasa, but I found the interface clunky. I may be missing something obvious with both of these, so please enlighten me if so. I'm open to all suggestions.

Thanks!

What happens if I turn on sharing in iPhoto 11?

The corpse in the library — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 18:40:17 -0800

If I allow iPhoto to share photos with my Facebook and Flickr accounts, will I regret it? I have hundreds, if not thousands, of photos on Flickr, and a handful on Facebook. The photos on both accounts have comments from friends and family, and the Flickr photos are largely organized into sets and with tags. There are some photos I put up on-line for a while then took down, but still have in iPhoto and want to keep.

I use iPhoto '11 on my Mac. It has an option to turn on sharing for Facebook and Flickr. What I would like to happen is for the tags, comments, and sets to be imported into iPhoto. What I'm afraid will happen is that photos will be deleted from iPhoto.

Should I turn on sharing?

Help Me Deal with Lots of Photos

GatorDavid — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:52:48 -0800

How do you use iPhoto on a regular basis if you keep your library on an external drive? I have a MacBook Air with a 250GB hard drive. My iPhoto library is currently 108GB of that.* I only have about 6GB free, and I can't continue this way.
I want to move my iPhoto library to an external hard drive. (I figure I'll grab a 2TB one.)
But that means I'll only be able to view my photos when I'm connected to the hard drive, which I'll almost certainly leave at my house. What will happen at work when iPhoto launches when I connect my iPhone? Do I simply need to tell iPhoto not to open when I connect my phone? Or is there a way to keep thumbnails on my Air but keep the actual photos on the external drive?
Anyone?

* I have a two year old son and take lots and lots of photos of him. He is, of course, adorable.

get out of here crap photos

splatta — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 07:50:53 -0800

What's the best way to get rid of unwanted photos in iPhoto for iPad (iOS)? So far I love using the iPad with iPhoto for editing my photos, but I haven't found a proper way to mange my photos. I use the camera connection kit to move photos from my camera's SD card to my iPad, and then reformat the camera's card. I then select and edit photos on the iPad. Any photos I edit I'd like to keep, but all the rest can be deleted, and that's where my problem lies. I can't figure out how to mass-delete all the non-flagged/non-edited photos. What's a good workflow? Do I need to connect the iPad to my computer in order to mass-delete unwanted photos? I don't want these things taking up valuable space on the iPad.

Is there a Cloud Storage for Dummies?

BlahLaLa — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 17:09:59 -0800

I have about 8,000 photos on my home computer and I'd be bummed to lose them. It's time for me to learn about cloud storage. Halp? I'm using a Mac Mini, running 10.6.8 and my photos are, of course, in iPhoto. I do have everything backed up to an external drive, but I'm thinking about cloud storage for the additional level of safety. The issues:

-- I really need this explained in the simplest possible way, as if I were mentally handicapped.
-- I would like this not to be expensive. Not sure if the large amount of photos makes that possible.
-- If there are companies offering similar services, but one has a simpler interface, I'd gravitate towards that. I am not particularly computer savvy.
-- Because I know so little about the topic I'm not even sure about what sorts of questions I should be asking when considering this, so lay 'em on me, please.

(I have looked at previous questions; the most recent similar ones are from about six months ago and I'm guessing things might have changed since then.)

Thank you.

DEC (Device Ecosystem Failure)

VikingSword — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:44:38 -0800

Ipad 2 - how to transfer a SUBSET of photos in a folder to an iMac. Problem: can transfer ALL photos, and can transfer handpicked photos, but not a folder of selected photos. Tried iPhoto and Image Capture. [Asking for a friend]. There are 1500 photos on the iPad 2. From those, there's a folder of 500 photos ("Selected Photos"). How to transfer just the "Selected Photos" folder to the iMac?

Extracting iPhoto from iPad?

u2604ab — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:15:21 -0800

How to extract iPhoto data from iPad? Hard drive failure in a primary laptop hard drive means that many photos of 'sentimental value' are on an iPad and nowhere else. How can I copy these photos off of an iPad?

iTunes appears to allow only syncing from Computer -> iPad, and not vice versa. Most other solutions revealed by Google don't necessarily appear robust. I welcome your suggestions! (It'd be great to use terminal.app to get into the iPad file system, but I don't see how to do this easily.)

Need to share photos between two iPhoto libraries

wenestvedt — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:43:54 -0800

Is there a way to share pictures among two iPhoto users, preferrably on a NAS? My wife and I keep separate iPhoto '11 libraries, and both use our cameras a lot. Is there any way to share pictures besides sticking our SD cards into both computers every time we load new pictures?

I want to buy a NAS for this (and to store music & movies) but I have read that Synology NAS devices will eat the iPhoto Library and/or your pictures. I have read that Dropbox is a way to share two copies of one iPhoto Library, but that this, too, will eat the iPhoto Library and/or your pictures -- and it would require one of us giving up their library.

Is there now a solution to this that lets me still use iPhoto? (I just got my wife to go from PS Elements 5 on Windows XP to iPhoto 11 on a Mac, and I don't think I can get her to make another big move any time soon.)

(One MacBook Pro on 10.7, one older iMac on 10.6.something.)

IPhoto Confusion

JPD — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 09:36:11 -0800

Be easy on me I'm basically clueless about Macs, but my PC died and I'm forced to work off my wife's computer 1)Where is my wife's Mac storing our pics? When I point Adobe Bridge at our Iphoto Library folder it doesn't see any pics. Instead it opens Iphoto. (note our IPhoto Library is in a dropbox folder). If I want to open them in Photoshop I have to drag the pic from IPhoto. How do I make this not be like this? 2) Can I use Dropbox as a remote library for the pics? I.E. delete them from the drive and just point Bridge at dropbox? Or is there a better solution? Would be happy to pay but need something that requires at most the ability to fog a mirror.

How can I keep iphoto from cutting off the margins of photos when they print?

SpicyMustard — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:32:21 -0800

I have to print very detailed photos for my job. At times, the photos taken have information near the margin of the photo. When I import photos into iphoto and print them--whether or not I use preview--the margins are cut off. Is there a setting I can change to make sure that the entire photo is printed? This is driving me crazy. Thanks.

Oh and I also don't know how to store animated GIFs and NSFW photos!

acidic — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:29:01 -0800

I collect images on Tumblr, Evernote, iPhoto, and my harddrive. Please help me organize this process! I'm having quite a bit of trouble organizing my ever-growing collection of images and I wonder how other people do it. Aside from personal photos which are easy to organize, I also collect a lot of TV/movie screencaps, fashion photography, illustrations, and other interesting stuff. Some of it I publish or "like" on Tumblr but I much prefer to have stuff organized on my own computer.

Evernote
I use it to store recipes, annotated books, image-heavy shopping lists, and TV/movie screencaps. It's good because each note can contain multiple photos along with text. It's bad because it's annoyingly difficult to publish images to Tumblr (or I'm doing it wrong). Also, the clipping service can be agonizingly buggy.

iPhoto
I like the organization of iPhoto, although I don't take a whole lot of personal photos so the distinction between Events and Albums feels very silly. Dropping non-personal images into iPhoto is annoying because it creates a new event for every image and it's a pain to merge everything. Also, navigating the iPhoto library in Finder is an absolute disaster (the folders named by dates, distinction between modified/original, occasional refusal to update the list of flagged images).

Hard drive
This is the least well-organized but easiest method. Most convenient for screenshots and saved images. But I hate using Quick Look.

So what's your preferred method of storing screencaps and saved images? Or am I ignoring some fantastically simple solution to any of my problems outlined above?

I just want a shoebox.

sexyrobot — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:33:18 -0800

iPhoto replacement for Windows 7...NOT PICASA! switching from a mac (iPhoto 6) to a pc and having the damnedest time finding a good photo archiving app. Tried out Picasa, then immediately uninstalled it. Hate it. Here's why:
1) I just want a place to put photos, I don't need a sidebar full of categories of other kinds of media files. that's what my hard drive is for.
2) autoscanning. i don't need a photo archiver to scan my hard drive and pollute my photo database with folders full of pix that came with the computer...i want to see the shots i took with my camera, not instructional images for how to use 'web to fax', or stock desktop wallpapers
3)'People' ...i don't want or need auto-recognising anything.
4)'synching', 'upload to web', 'online storage', 'connectivity' anything.

Here's what I want:
1) the eqivalent of a giant hole in the ground i can throw all my photos into, divided into 'rolls' or 'albums' or whatever that I control, that I can choose where things go, and that I can rename or reorganize as I choose...and without simultaneous multiple organization schemes...I don't need 'rolls' AND 'albums'
2) the ability to move and delete pix

and that's IT.

other than possible bonus features:
1) rotate
2) ability to change background color to dark, neutral grey (seriously, Picasa? White? Srsly?)
3) made by a company that isn't some fly-by-night that's going to go belly-up and strand me with their file system and i have to do this all over again.

maybe it'll help to explain my workflow. an example:
1) i went to the beach and took a bunch of pix, while coming home i stopped and took some pix of some pretty flowers.
2) i come home and hook the camera to the computer and import the pix into iPhoto
3) they pop up at the top under the heading 'roll #xxx'
4) i select the pix of the flowers and move them to the 'pretty flowers' roll (already there, created by ME)
5) i rename 'roll #xxx' to 'beach pix'
6) the roll stays at the top...reverse chonological order, not alphabetical.
7) done.

as such, it basically acts as contact sheets, and i can then choose which shots i want to work on in photoshop or whatever, and then (and only then) choose to publish.
does software this simple even exist anymore? or is everyone now Insisting on becoming 'your one-stop all-media browser-player-editor web-publishing-empire integration-solution-suite'?

How can I sync iPhoto across two machines?

ascullion — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:07:51 -0800

I have a MacBook and an iMac and would like to keep the same iPhoto library on both machines. I'm comfortable with making sure I only change the library on one machine at a time. I've done research and it seems the only way to keep the library on both machines is to use rsync, but despite following some online guides I can't get it to work. Does anyone know of a user-friendly link that will help?

iJust want iPhotos on my iWall.

liquado — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:02:00 -0800

I can't *possibly* be the only person who would like to pull photos wirelessly from my iPhoto library and display them on a reasonably-priced wifi picture frame -- am I? I've had a digital photo frame for years that I've used rarely, mostly because I have a lot of photos that I manage using iPhoto on my Mac, and I don't want to buy huge SD cards, or have to re-copy files as they are added to the library. I'm revisiting digital photo frames again, and am still stymied.

I want a frame that has wifi, and can load a shared library/album from iPhoto, and rotate through it continuously. Oh, and it would be nice if it didn't cost $850. And, my Google-fu is failing.

I know that there are potential workarounds via a Pro Flickr account and a Flickr-enabled frame, but this seems silly -- I don't want my photos online/public, I just want to see them at home.

Am I asking too much? Is anyone doing this? Will an iPad or an Android tablet do this instead? Please don't tell me the only suggestion is an AppleTV/Mac Mini and a monitor.

Argh. Thanks for anyone who can link me up, or suggest a solution.

iPhoto 9 told me "This is what happens when you meet a stranger in the Alps!"

blueberry — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 01:00:31 -0800

iPhoto 9.0 trashed two years of photos. Although I've gotten some images back, any final recovery suggestions before I need to write over the drive? So I installed iPhoto 9 back when it came out in October. Turns out it had a bug that could delete a bunch of your photos and that's what happened to me.

Luckily, I had backed up my drive before installing the new version. Unluckily, somewhere in dragging the backup library back to my main drive, I must have accidentally launched iPhoto again, because the iPhoto library on the backup drive was opened and corrupted as well. Yay!

After swearing profusely, I unplugged the backup and emailed DriveSavers for a recovery quote. They said it would be at least $700 and anywhere up to $2700—which is laughably impossible for a student.

I've run Data Rescue 3 and while it rescued some files (to another old smaller backup disk), I wound up with a bunch of folders containing about 25,000 jpegs of varying size; I need to wade through these, deleting out things like thumbnails, cached web images, et cetera. The recovered files all have new names, so any grouping of event photos is gone.

So, although I know I have some files, I don't know—and maybe won't ever know, due to the re-namings—if I got them all.

The problem I have now is that I haven't backed up in about two months (the backup drive has been sitting in a corner until the school term ended and I'd have time to deal with it). Now is that time.

I'm wanting to start backing up my laptop again, but I guess I'm just asking if anyone has any last final suggestions to try before I back up my laptop to the drive (which would thus remove any future possibility of recovering any (more) of the lost files).

(I think I might try an alternate recovery software tonight (FileSalvage), on the off off chance that it might catch some files that Data Rescue might have missed—although I'll probably just wind up with 25,000 duplicates.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

PS Elements to iPhoto migration

wenestvedt — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:54:36 -0800

How can I migrate my wife's digital pictures from Photoshop Elements 5 on WinXP to iPhoto 8 and preserve the albums? There aren't many pictures with tags, which the "Write tags to file" command would address. Instead, saving the albums (I think they're called) is most important, as she has sorted out her pictures into many small groups.

I see this Apple Support discussion, but it doesn't affirmatively mention the albums. Would importing the (Windows) folders of pictures one-at-a-time create new iPhoto Albums/Events?

Thanks for any advice, or any clarification: I don't have much experience with PSE, other than rebuilding its catalog periodically for her, and running full exports to an external drive for backups.

Problem with iPhoto and EXIF rotation

arniec — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:03:33 -0800

iCant be alone with this auto-rotation EXIF issue in iPhoto but how do iFix it? I have a Canon DSLR and an iPhone both of which I regularly use to take pictures for a web site.

In the past 4 months or so something has changed, and it's not my workflow.

My workflow is, and has always been, take picture on device, import into iPhoto, edit, export from iPhoto as JPEG, post to web. But lately images are showing up sideways and sometimes upside down on the web but look perfectly fine in my software (iPhoto, finder, Picasa, etc).

Research is showing me this is a problem that has something to do with an EXIF tag not being interpreted correctly somewhere... and when I open the pictures in GIMP it tells me "The EXIF tag says the image is rotated 90 degrees, what do you want to do" with options "keep the rotation" or "show in original format". If I choose "keep the rotation" it shows in the correct orientation, and then if I save it in GIMP as a JPG it displays correctly everywhere...but this is a painful time-absorbing solution to do.

Given that iPhoto is in use by millions of people, and I'm pretty sure those people post photos online, there must be a fix somewhere, but my Google-fu is weak on this one.

(And for the record, I used iPhoto 09 forever, I did upgrade to iPhoto 10 in the summer, which MAY coincide with this issue. I just ordered iPhoto 11 and I'm HOPING it fixes this but I'd like to know).

iLife on PC

lemur — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:18:32 -0800

I want to use iPhoto and some of the other iLife software, but I don't want to buy a Mac. Can I run this software effectively using software such as VMWare on my Windows 7 PC? I suppose the other option is a Hackintosh, but the process looks hopelessly convoluted and I would have to buy what amounts to a new computer. However, I can replace a single component (CPU) of my existing PC and meet the requirements for VMWare. Does iLife run okay on VMWare, or will this pursuit be fruitless?

Easy way to select keepers from exposure bracketed photos on Mac?

pasd — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 08:58:29 -0800

I often use exposure bracketing with my Panasonic DMC-FX01. But now I have a problem, a huge chunk of my iPhoto library is taken up by trios of the same shot only one of which is actually needed for my archive. Is there some easy way to review bracketed sets and select one while deleting the rest?

iPhoto Keeps Killing My Library!

shew — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 06:53:18 -0800

iPhoto Help Filter: About six months ago I opened iPhoto to the horror of little black boxes instead of events. Photos were exhibiting the same problem. I had ample backups so I browsed back in time to find the version of my iPhoto library that wasn't corrupt. I restored it. It happened again. I restored it. You guessed it... it keeps happening. I don't know if this is a 'standard' iPhoto library corruption problem or what. The files and everything are all there if you inspect the library.

Check out screen shots of the problem here and here.

What's going on here? Last time I restored the file, I decided to do nothing (add no pictures, make no changes) and just watch the file (load it daily). After about a week, it's happening again.

Stats:

iPhoto Library file ~15.6gig
Mac OS, version 10.5.8
iPhoto '08, version 7.1.5
Mozy and SugarSync are running on this (and other) files

Picturing the outlook of an art director.

Gordion Knott — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 01:36:06 -0800

The art director of a magazine I submit photos to seems to be rejecting my iPhoto adjustments in favor of the originals. Should I discontinue sending in the adjusted photos? The photos are part of a photoessay on travel-related subjects. We're not talking National Geography here--the bulk of the pix are taken with my Nikon D40 camera and a zoom lens.

High-level tricks with Photoshop would go against the grain of the essay series (and magazine), so I shoot the pictures in raw and modify them with iPhoto. Usually, my adjustments are fairly basic. Typically, I click "Boost Color" on the Effects screen and then reduce the saturation a bit. Sometimes I increase the exposure on low-light photos. Then I export the raw photo into jpg and deliver the photo to the publisher.

It's hard to tell on the final, printed page, but it seems that the art director, in most cases, rejects my changes and returns the the photos to the original appearance for printing.

In the case of this magazine, have I committed a faux pas by sending in these iPhoto-altered pix? What's the proper protocol for submitting photos to magazines that rarely, if ever, publish heavily photoshopped pictures? Should I discontinue making changes, or is it okay to "brush up" the photos to make them more to my liking before I send them in? Finally, would it be better to submit the photos in raw format--and if so, how might I do this using iPhoto?

Best (OS X) solution for remote photo editing?

wheat — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:04:38 -0800

What's the best way to set things up so my wife can edit our iPhoto library (currently on the iMac) from a new MacBook that I plan to buy? I have an iMac (24", 2.8GHz, OS 10.5.8). All of the family photos are in iPhoto, stored locally on the iMac's internal drive. I have an external USB2 drive for Time Machine backups and I use Backblaze for remote backups. I'd like to get my wife a MacBook Pro. Besides couch surfing and the occasional trip out of town, a primary use of it will be for her to edit the photos w/o being chained to my desk.

What's the best way to set that up? A networked hard drive would be nice, but Backblaze won't back up networked volumes. It's limited to internal drives and drives attached (FireWire or USB) to the same machine. And I don't want to give that up, because I sleep better at night knowing everything is backed up to two places, one offsite.

I have WiFi (WRT-54G) running and wireless printing + music (AirPort Express). I'm assuming there's some way to share the iPhoto library or, barring that, some way (like LogMeIn, which I use to hit my iMac remotely) of granting remote access to the iMac. Any tips on exactly how much MacBook I need to make this a pleasant experience will also be appreciated.

How to painlessly share photos on a local network?

hijinx — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:26:53 -0800

What's the least painful way to have a shared pool of photos on a local network which can be synced to multiple computers? Our network: two MacBooks, Time Capsule with an attached USB HD, two Airport Expresses.

My wife and I each take myriad photos (and video) of our son. She offloads hers to her MacBook, and I offload mine to mine. From there we may distribute them privately online (Facebook, etc.) However if she ever needs to access my photos... she's out of luck if I take my computer with me.

It would be ideal for each of us to have a complete copy of the library on our machines which then magically syncs up over our network when possible (or when we tell it to.) For reference I use Lightroom for photos, and she uses iPhoto.

The solution for this has gotta be easy to use or my wife won't touch it. I'm willing to do a little AppleScript-fu if necessary. She wasn't a fan of Dropbox, so as transparent as possible would be great.

The ultimate destinations for these photos will be prints and the web, but I'd rather not store *everything* on the web... I mean, we have a network and all.

Feel free to ask more questions... thanks in advance.

On second thought, I do want a billboard made of my neighbor's dog

mccarty.tim — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:13:29 -0800

What's a good way to batch compress images in OSX, delete the originals, and keep iPhoto working the same as it did before? While uploading images to Flickr, I noticed that I have a ton of photos on my hard drive that are about 5 MB a piece that I will never get massive prints of. The largest prints I will ever get of any photo will probably be eight by eleven. Is there a program that will look at my iPhoto library, automatically compress all the images, and correct iPhoto to keep the compressed photos in the same albums/events/etc?