Applesript finding phantom photos in iPhoto

Question

I am trying to build an AppleScript based app for analysing iPhoto Libraries and have fallen on the following difficulty with the following simple script
tell application "iPhoto"
set all_pictures to every photo
end tell
Run against a test library containing 6 events and 257 photos, returns 14 events and 416 photos.
Now the test library was obtained by massively deleting (in iPhoto) from a large (4000 photo) library.
- The trash has been emptied,
- All possible <command-option> rebuilts have been done
- the "Originals" folder in the test library has 435 photos in 26 subfolders
So 2 questions
- why is there such a discrepancy between what iPhoto shows and what it stores?
- why is there a 3-way discrepancy between info displayed in iPhoto, given by Finder and returned by Applescript?

Answer 1

Thank you for this interesting suggestion. Unfortunately I have encountered two difficulties while carrying it out:
1) dragging 'the folders' is proposed. Now these folders are buried inside the iPhoto library, and not readily accessed although they can be found by using 'view the contents of the package' on the library folder. Once dragged I notice that (predictably) all modified images, keywords, albums, folders slide shows and so on are lost. This is a bit too radical for my purposes since I value the work put into transforming a bunch of photos off the camera into an organised collection.
2) my workflow involves
a) duplicating the complete Libray when it reaches a DVD's worth,
b) that up and keeping the duplicate as an on-line archive and then
c) trimming the loriginal library to keep the last month or so of pictures for ongoing work. In this way the keywords are allways available as well as all other added value to the Library.
The suggested method does not work with this.
I now have 15 iphoto 'archive' libraries and I wanted to perform a full inventory at album level (# of photos, time period). Hence the applescript mentioned in the first post. So the question remains: why is the - apparently deleted - stuff still lying around in ALL the libraries?
Sorry if long-winded but it is a simple problem leading to many complications