Advice for cleaning iPhoto Library?

Hello!
I will try to keep this brief. I got my first Mac 6 years ago when I switched over from Windows and obviously made some mistakes along the way in terms of dealing with files, etc. in Mac vs. what I would do in windows. Over the past 6 months or so (now that I am finally out of school and on to the "real world") I have trying to correct the wrongs I had done to my earlier versions of my Macbook in my naivety (including 7 different instances of Python floating around random places).
I am on to my last hurdle, my iPhoto library. I have some ~10,000 pictures and ~200 events including some images that have incorrect dates associated with them and therefore do not sit where they should in the library. I have set place and face data for all images in my library as well once those features were introduced.
Unfortunately I did not let iPhoto copy the master files into the library, instead keeping them in separate folders in my pictures folder.
I am now trying to figure out the best way to export all of my events and save all the metadata associated with them (except faces which I know there is no standard for and therefore cannot be saved) so I can set up a new entirely clean iPhoto library without any of the crap I put it through earlier in it's life. I have no need to keep the "originals" as they are all unedited (except for the metadata changes in iPhoto) and all JPEGs anyways.
In my testing of trying to export an event and then reimport into a new library instance, I noticed that the masters in the new library are all being sorted according to import date and not date photo was taken since I have tried correcting all my image dates using the iPhoto batch editing. This may just be OCD of me, but is there a way to have iPhoto deal with the masters according to photo date instead of import date? I tried using Exiftool to change the "Date created" file metadata to the same date as the Exif metadata, but iPhoto still sorted the Masters by import date.
And any tips about the best way to dump the current library and put it into a new one and keep all possible metadate added in iPhoto already would be appreciated.
Thanks!

leonieDF wrote:
So I found the best way is to simply export my library an album at a time, and use EXIFTOOL to make any other changes necessary before reimporting into my new iPhoto library.
That will not help with your original issue
The original issue with saving all possible metadata? Correct, I understand I definitely lose some information, but (except for the Faces information) I do not care about some of the other stuff being lost and most of what I care about (geotags, etc.) is still being saved to the EXIF/IPTC data upon export from iPhoto. It came down to a question of whether I care more about truly cleaning up all the original files metadata (or the newly exported ones from iPhoto that I will now treat as the "originals") in the event I ever move off iPhoto or care more about doing less work. iPhoto Library Manager is a great tool that I plan on making part of my arsenal, but to get my files where I want them now, I have to do this lengthier/more time-consuming process first because I screwed it up so much over the past ~6 years.
leonieDF wrote:
"his may just be OCD of me, but is there a way to have iPhoto deal with the masters according to photo date instead of import date? I tried using Exiftool to change the "Date created" file metadata to the same date as the Exif metadata, but iPhoto still sorted the Masters by import date."
iPhoto will always use the date of the import session for the "Masters" folder. That is a feature, not a bug. If you want a different date on the event in the "Masters" folder, there is no help but to change the system date and relaunch iPhoto before importing and to trick iPhoto into believing the current date is different. You really would not want to ressort to such measures.
I figured, given that it is Apple and a package contents things that most users should never touch, that was probably the case, but asking the user community for confirmation never hurts. And no, I do not care enough about it to try tricking it that way. .
leonieDF wrote:
So I found the best way is to simply export my library an album at a time, and use EXIFTOOL to make any other changes necessary before reimporting into my new iPhoto library. Tedious, but once it is all done I should never have to do it again.
and some weird issue where it could not find the original files for some albums
Exporting reimporting will not find the original files. If they are missing, you cannot export. You have to find them outside your library, if they are referenced, Inside your library rebuilding should find them for you.
I tried relinking inside iPhoto to the original images and running the rebuild again, but it still had certain image images. So when exporting those albums with a few missing images, the missing ones just copy an empty symlink, which I then replace with the actual original image I have on the hard drive. Then copy the metadata over using EXIFTOOL.
Thanks for all your help/comments!

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