I never could understand iPhoto. So I just copy my photos into folders in the Pictures directory, then view and modify them with Graphic Converter. GC lets me Browse any folder and displays thumbnails.

But in the beginning, I let iPhoto grab a bunch of photos and work its mischief upon them. So when I browse those folders, inconveniently divided up into days, everything is broken up into 'Data', 'Originals', and 'Thumbs' folders. Only sometimes 'Originals' is missing.

So how do I rescue my images from this peculiar dissection? How do I just reconstitute a single file for each photo, and then put them into easy-to-view folders, say by month?

Hard to imagine, but as far as I'm concerned, Apple has managed to create a totally non-intuitive application.

/Mr Lynn

---

"Hillbilly at Harvard"
Honky-tonk Country and Bluegrass
Founded in 1948 by Pappy Ben Minnich
Saturdays 9am - 11am Eastern
WHRB-FM, Cambridge, MA
Streaming at [www.WHRB.org]
Be there!
The HAH weblog: [hillbillyatharvard.wordpress.com]

Topical weblog: [walkingcreekworld.wordpress.com]

On the river in Saxonville.

It's only non-intuitive if you use the Finder to mess with your iPhoto folders. They should have a big fat warning on the front of iPhoto: "iPhoto is a finder for your photos...use the macintosh finder to mess with the iPhoto directories and you will turn into a pumpkin!".

There's no two ways about it...you either use iPhoto and only iPhoto to organize your photos, or you use the finder. You can't do both.

Anyway, it seems that you don't want to use the iPhoto, so simply go into iPhoto, select View by Date, then choose all the photos for each month and export them into your month by month labelled folders. This will create duplicate copies of each file so if you need the disk space, delete your iPhoto library when you're done. I really can't understand why you'd want to do this, since you will then be stuck with that crude organizational system, with none of the choices available in iPhoto. Ah well, each to their own!

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

What iPhoto? The new iPhoto can automatically divide your existing photos by week or day into events that you name . I had over 9500 photos and it was great way to finally get myself better organized. You can split or merge events to better sort them the way you like. Then in event view you can scrub the event to see thumbs like coverflow in iTunes. It took me a little while to fine tune my events (daily) but now I name them as I import. Photo adjustments are better too. You can adjust one and copy that adjustment to paste onto others. Go to Apple site to see video. You can import your other photos in your picture folder and they will be added to an event by date either by day or week.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2007 11:33PM by slbett.

iPhoto 08 has finally locked down the folder- to save you from yourself.

dave is right -- stay out of your pictures folder and export from iphoto

fwiw, iphoto doesnt do anything to your photos, it keeps all originals -- its an "organization" application, nothing more really

iphoto 08 has taken it to a higher level, and as an organizing tool it cant be beat

still confusing for me is how to add photos that arent from a camera... do you drag the photo into your "pictures" folder, and then add it to iphoto? or if you drag from your desktop, then where to put the original?

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

Quote

still confusing for me is how to add photos that arent from a camera... do you drag the photo into your "pictures" folder, and then add it to iphoto? or if you drag from your desktop, then where to put the original?

Drag-and-drop the photos (or a folder of them) onto the thumbnails pane of iPhoto. Once the import is complete, you can Trash the originals--they have been copied into iPhoto's Library



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2007 01:50AM by Article Accelerator.

I love iPhoto. I just let it import all of my photos. I right click on a raw photo and tell it to open in Nikon Capture NX and everything is all good. Even if you dug through the heirarchy, it's all separated by dated folders. When I open a photo in Photoshop, adjust it and save it onto itself, iPhoto reflects the change, AND stashes away my original photo in case I want to re-mess with it.

Since we are all praising iPhoto, how do you sync iPhoto folders on several machines (networked if they have to be)?Does iPhoto 8 do that?

How about the photo professionals on this board? Do you use iPhoto, too?

I like having the original photo in a place I can find it. Graphic Converter doesn't mess with the photos, doesn't add any 'meta-data', and lets me convert them to any size or type of file I want.

Apple tends to want to manage your life. I tried dot-Mac for a while, and found it presented me with all these canned options for web pages, photo albums, etc., all of which I found tacky or annoying. That's the M$ way, to my mind. Next thing you know they'll have a little cartoon dog offering to help you.

/Mr Lynn

---

"Hillbilly at Harvard"
Honky-tonk Country and Bluegrass
Founded in 1948 by Pappy Ben Minnich
Saturdays 9am - 11am Eastern
WHRB-FM, Cambridge, MA
Streaming at [www.WHRB.org]
Be there!
The HAH weblog: [hillbillyatharvard.wordpress.com]

Topical weblog: [walkingcreekworld.wordpress.com]

On the river in Saxonville.

Quote
mrlynn
Next thing you know they'll have a little cartoon dog offering to help you.

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I work with photos professionally. I haven't dug deep into iPhoto in years. At that time it wasn't suitable. One thing I remember is that it greatly limited the number of keywords allowed. I do recommend it highly to my non-pro friends, though. To my non-mac friends I can only offer condolences.

Anyway, I use an app called iView Media Pro (now bought out by M$ and called Expressions Media). Many pros use this. Has some of the features of iPhoto but more options and no little dog offering help. Costs a few hundred dollars, though. iView has Sets (like the slideshows in iPhoto or playlists in iTunes), but below Sets you can see your photos in their folder structure. This is useful to me often.I ditto the sentiments above...its either iPhoto or the finder, not both.

this came up a few days ago, you might look a few pages back on the forum

iphoto doesnt mess with the photo either...

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

I hate iPhoto.
[forums.macresource.com]

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One thing I just realized is that Mr Lynn must be working with a quite old version of iPhoto since the "only sometimes "originals" is missing" issue would only apply to iPhoto 5 or earlier. Later versions are vastly improved over that version so I can understand how there might be a bit of frustration with you using that old software. The early iPhoto versions definitely left something to be desired, but the newer versions are great IMHO and the only reason anyone would ever use the finder to manage photos in lieu of iPhoto or Bridge is if they either don't have many photos or want to use their memory instead of a decent cataloging system or are a control freak. Also, iPhoto has never "messed" with the photos as was stated in a couple of posts. In fact, one of the very best features is that the original is always preserved, hence you can always "revert to original" if you foul things up.

For those of you all freaked out about the iPhoto file structure, here it is (sorry, no iPhoto '08 yet, but it's probably similar): [www.fatcatsoftware.com]

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

Thank you for that link, davester.

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From the thread that DavidDC linked:

Quote
M A V I C
[I use] The Finder. I like knowing exactly where my pictures are, and don't want an edited version here, the original there, all nested into some directory structure that changes with nearly every update of iPhoto. . .

I guess that's my thinking, too. Or maybe, as Davester suggests, I am "a control freak."

/Mr Lynn

I had a case of missing photos in iPhoto(blank placeholders). I rebuilt the library. What I got was duplicated photos everywhere and blanks still there.

Quote
Dakota
Since we are all praising iPhoto, how do you sync iPhoto folders on several machines (networked if they have to be)?Does iPhoto 8 do that?

I don't know. Does any application do that?

I use iView when I want a simple cataloger or want to create a quick web gallery. I use it mostly when I don't want to import images into iPhoto and then handoff the image to Photoshop.

I have Lightroom and Aperture on my machines and while nice, is kind of a lot of overkill. If Apple allowed one to directly edit RAW images in iPhoto, the game for many would be over. I can't imagine anyone needing to manipulate photos as much as I do. Between iPhoto, iView, Photoshop (and Nikon Capture NX cuz I use Nikon cameras), that's really all a little boy needs take care of bidness.

How about the photo professionals on this board? Do you use iPhoto, too?

I'm not a photo professional (unless you count the kind of retouching and scanning and so forth that I did for many years for an employer). However, I have never gotten to like iPhoto, for some of the reasons discussed. I have Photoshop and Bridge, as well as a version of Portfolio that isn't much use to me anymore because it can't work with my RAW files.

iView Media Pro would have been my first choice before M$ got their hands on it, if I'd had the money to spend on it. You can use AppleScript with it extensively: people have set up scripted workflows for catalog publishers using iView, Filemaker and Quark, for example.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2007 11:52AM by ka jowct.

Quote
mrlynn
I like having the original photo in a place I can find it.

OK, what do I do with the number of older pictures that show up as a blank white rectangle except for "Photoshop 3.0 is required to open this file" in seven languages?

Can I bring them back from iPhoto limbo?

BTW, at this time I don't have any version of PS installed.

GeneL, if those photos are jpegs and not .psd files, you can select one of the photos, "get info" on it and tell the finder to open those kinds of files in say "Preview." If they're .psd files, then you'd need "some" version of Photoshop or maybe Elements to open and convert them.

Quote
GeneL
OK, what do I do with the number of older pictures that show up as a blank white rectangle except for "Photoshop 3.0 is required to open this file" in seven languages?

How old is your iPhoto version? My understanding is that the newer iPhoto versions can view PSD files (I'm assuming that you're files are in photoshop's PSD format), though I've never bothered to find out. In any case, if needed you can simply go to my link above to figure out how to find those files with the Finder, then copy them to the desktop and find a converter to turn them into something usable by non-Photoshop apps (like a TIFF or JPEG) or to manipulate them with something like graphic converter. It may even be possible to use iPhoto's <File/Export> to move a copy onto the desktop, but we can't be sure if this'll work since we don't know what file format you have.

---

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

Quote
davester

Quote
GeneL
OK, what do I do with the number of older pictures that show up as a blank white rectangle except for "Photoshop 3.0 is required to open this file" in seven languages?

How old is your iPhoto version? My understanding is that the newer iPhoto versions can view PSD files (I'm assuming that you're files are in photoshop's PSD format), though I've never bothered to find out. In any case, if needed you can simply go to my link above to figure out how to find those files with the Finder, then copy them to the desktop and find a converter to turn them into something usable by non-Photoshop apps (like a TIFF or JPEG) or to manipulate them with something like graphic converter. It may even be possible to use iPhoto's <File/Export> to move a copy onto the desktop, but we can't be sure if this'll work since we don't know what file format you have.

IPhoto version 6.0.6

File Format: Photoshop Image?

Quote
davester
It's only non-intuitive if you use the Finder to mess with your iPhoto folders. They should have a big fat warning on the front of iPhoto: "iPhoto is a finder for your photos...use the macintosh finder to mess with the iPhoto directories and you will turn into a pumpkin!".

I like iPhotos organizational features very much. However, I am a little uneasy about being tied to iPhoto in order to see my photos. What if, for example, I wanted to view my library on a PC - is that possible?

Quote
Ammo
I like iPhotos organizational features very much. However, I am a little uneasy about being tied to iPhoto in order to see my photos. What if, for example, I wanted to view my library on a PC - is that possible?

Sure, no problem. Like I said, iPhoto doesn't "do" anything to your image files. The originals are stored unchanged, but they are located in iPhoto's relatively complex folder system which you should not mess with if you don't want to foul up iPhoto's cataloging. To view the library on a PC you can either: 1) (recommended) Use File/Export to copy photos into folders outside the iPhoto system, or; 2) (not recommended since you may accidentally move or delete something) you can go into the iPhoto folders with the Finder (after you read my link above on where to find them) and copy the files that way.

---

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

Quote
GeneL
IPhoto version 6.0.6

File Format: Photoshop Image?

I don't think you should be having a problem. Presumably "photoshop image" means PSD format. I'd suggest that you go into the iPhoto file system (as described in my prior post), copy the files to your desktop, and try to open them with Graphic Converter (probably was included free on your mac). If that fails, then the files may be corrupted.

---

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

Thanks davester.

I'll give that a shot.

You're a good explainer davester.

Quote
GeneL
OK, what do I do with the number of older pictures that show up as a blank white rectangle except for "Photoshop 3.0 is required to open this file" in seven languages?

Can I bring them back from iPhoto limbo?

BTW, at this time I don't have any version of PS installed.

Graphic Converter (bundled with Tiger) will open just about any image file.

/Mr Lynn

I exported one of the files designated as a Photoshop file to my desktop as suggested.

For some reason, I couldn't find GC on my main hard drive, so I dragged it over from my other internal drive. It said that there was an update and when I downloaded it I was asked for a registration #???

It did work as a demo, so I opened the file, but didn't have any success with turning it into a useable picture file.

I don't know what else to do.

That doesn't sound good. I'd guess that your files are corrupted. Do you know how you got them there in the first place? I'm wondering why you have Photoshop 3 files when you don't have the application .

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

These are pictures that I worked on when I did use an older Photoshop version.

They've been moved from one older Mac to another until they finally ended up in the iPhoto Library on my MacPro.

If faced with the Grey boxes and a bad iPhoto Library, you can try the "super-rebuild" function.
Hold down the Apple(command) and option keys while starting iPhoto, and selecting all choices.

Thanks Ken, I'll try that.