iphoto help!

September 24, 2005 2:44 PM

I'm new to iPhoto and I need some help. Particularly with resizing and, uh, getting it to work in general.

I recently got a new ibook and uploaded some pictures on it a few days ago. Of course, they are big files (1-2 mb) and I want to resize them so I can upload them to flickr. I'm trying to "export photo" with a different size, but I get the message "Unable to create /users/myname/Pictures". I have no clue as to what I'm supposed to do with that.

Related to that - suppose I do actually get this thing to work without an error message...where am I exporting the photos to? I tend to take a lot of silly/not great photos and even if I don't want to delete all of them, I don't need the original size taking up space.

Furthermore, none of my pictures are showing up in the large edit/view area. They are in the little scroll bar thing at the top (sorry for my lack of tech. terminology), but not in the large square where you can actually do stuff to the picture. This was working the first time I opened the photos a few days ago. It appears that it's trying to do something, but it never actually gets it done.

I've checked the archives and I've found some good stuff for other options for both resizing and replacements for iphoto, but for right now, I just want this to work using what I have.

posted by jetskiaccidents to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

For Flickr, you can just drag pictures from iPhoto onto your desktop. Flickr will automatically resize them, if that's any help.
posted by interrobang at 2:48 PM on September 24, 2005

There is an iPhoto plugin you can download and install that will add "Flickr" as a tab in the "Export" window.
posted by Mwongozi at 4:17 PM on September 24, 2005

Oh sorry, bad URL. It's here now.
posted by Mwongozi at 4:18 PM on September 24, 2005

If you use the Flickr Export plugin for iPhoto, it will do the resizing for you. (This won't solve your other weird problems, which sound like the program wasn't installed correctly or like you moved some key system resource like your User folder)
posted by bcwinters at 4:18 PM on September 24, 2005

Flickr does the resizing, but Flickr Export lets you specify an "original size" (in pixels) for your photo that is different from the original pixel dimensions of the file.
posted by caitlinb at 6:03 PM on September 24, 2005

I know this isn't what you're asking, but just for your consideration: I have a PowerBook G4, and I love everything about it except iPhoto. In fact I got so frustrated with it that I stopped using it. So, I'm just warning you before you get all of your thousands of photos in there - there is a real possibility of crashes, freezes, dates being lost, etc. Based on the responses to this question that I asked a while back, I have moved all of my photos to my Windows machine and I now use Picasa.

Sorry for the downer, but I wish I would have known. Maybe others disagree.
posted by crapples at 7:40 PM on September 24, 2005

Response by poster: Don't worry crapples, it's good to hear. As for iphoto...so far, no good. Unfortunately Picasa is also a no-go...my windows machine is 5 years old and not in great shape.

Anyway...about the flickr export thing..definitely good to know it exists...except it doesn't work either. At first it seemed like it was working, except nothing showed on my flickr page. Now it just causes iphoto to crash.

Maybe when I restart and try again in the morning everything will work like magic? This is beyond frustrating.
posted by jetskiaccidents at 11:21 PM on September 24, 2005

It definitely sounds like something is messed up with your iPhoto--I've never had issues like that with iPhoto 4 or 5 (nor the issues crapples reports). This is on a newish PowerBook G4.

You might want to try reinstalling iPhoto on the off chance something got corrupted during the original install (especially if it was on your iBook when you first got it, it's entirely possible something went wrong with the initial imaging of your hard disk).

Any way you can provide screenshots of the error message and/or odd behavior? Might help figure out what's going on.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 9:41 AM on September 25, 2005

Best answer: Unable to create /users/myname/Pictures

This is bad, as it means iPhoto can't find the folder where your photos should be. Open your home, and then open the pictures folder. Is there an iPhoto folder in there, with pictures buried inside it? Did you do anything to the "pictures" folder before iPhoto stopped working?
posted by bonaldi at 10:22 AM on September 25, 2005

Response by poster: cyrusdogstar - reinstalling would probably be good...how do I do that? I'm pretty new to macs, so everything is confusing. As for screenshots, I don't think they're going to show much more than I've already said.

bonaldi - Yes, there is an iphoto library folder, with additional folders inside that (right now it's organized by date). As far as I know, I didn't do anything to the pictures folder.

Thanks for the help so far, by the way.
posted by jetskiaccidents at 10:59 AM on September 25, 2005

Response by poster: Okay, somehow I got it to work after messing with some folders...but I'm not sure why putting two folders into one renamed folder would cause all these problems. But whatever, it works now. Thanks again.
posted by jetskiaccidents at 11:04 AM on September 25, 2005