Blurry photos when imported from iPhoto?

I'm noticing that when I insert photos from iPhoto into a movie project, they are blurry and this is hurting the quality of my projects. Does anybody know if there are resolution issues or compatibility issues that will help me with this? I've tried just sharpening the image in the editing pane but it's never very good! What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Here's the deal a little more clearly. I'm simply taking photos on my digital camera on "super high quality" - 3072 x 2304, and when I import them into my iMovie project, they go a little blurry.
Not sure if you are referring to preview window, full-screen previewing, or the final output video being "blurry" here. Suggest yo start off by tracing the image flow. Start off by opening your project package by "Control-Clicking" it in the finder and selecting the "Show Contents" menu option. Then look for a movie file names "Still Images" at this level. Double click this file to open it in the movie player but do not "Play" the movie. Instead, use the right and left arrow keys to step through the file and examine your images carefully. These images should be scaled down from your source images as previously explained. These are the images that iMovie '08 will use when creating your export/shared movie file later. How do they look and what are their dimensions? If all looks okay here and your "softening" is only in the "preview" display, I would likely try making a test export/sharing to see if the actual output looks as "poor" -- i.e., try to determine at what point things may be "going bad." At this point I'm not sure if you are simply "hyper-sensitive" regarding you photos, if iMovie is actually introducing a "normal" loss in quality due to processing, or if you may have a more serious application problem unique to your install for some particular reason.
Can I change settings anywhere so that the resolution's match? How do I know for example, if my project is set at 1920 x 1080 (all I know is I'm working in iMovieHD. Is it possible to import photos so that the resolution isn't automatically scaled up or down?
You can of course pre-scale or crop/scale manually before import into iMovie. However, if you do so in iPhoto/Aperture, I suspect the same scaling algorithm will be used as in iMovie. Have not done so myself, but if I did, I would likely use Photoshop to do this since you can try various resampling options to see which you may prefer for the given content.

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Loss of quality of photos when importing from iphoto to imovie

A question... When I import high resolution photos from iphoto and look at the preview on imovie HD, the quality is the same great quality that I can see on iphoto. Once I import the photo clip onto imovie, however, the quality is very poor on the imovie playback. This drop in quality is regardless of whether Ken Burns effect is used or not.
I already checked the quality on imovie preferences and it is already selected as the highest quality (default setting)
Any clues as to why the photo image quality should drop to such a poor image when importing a photo from iphoto to imovie?

Hi L
There are a great difference on photos shown on a Mac with eg. iPhoto or
PhotoShop and what's going to video.
a. Different resolution. Just the number of lines as the selected type of project
eg: PAL 4x3 = 625 lines ≈ same in pixles (But square not elongated or visa versa)
b. iMovie "Viewer" is just an approximation. I connected my miniDV Camera
to FW and analog to a TV. Select in pref - Play back via Camera. Now I see
the final quality on my TV. Usally much better.
Yours Bengt W

Wrong photo will import from iPhoto window

During the normal course of editing, all of the photos that were in the movie were overprinted with a random movie clip still. The thumbnails in the project window still show the intended photo, but only the new clip still will show during playback. By right-clicking the photo and doing "Show in Finder", the correct .jpg file is referenced. When I try to drag the correct photo back in from the photo media window, a photo will be brought in, but it will be one that appears a few spots away in the list from the intended one. The thumbnail remains the correct photo. I believe something has become corrupted in my iMovie project that will not show the correct photo, even though the program is internally pointing to the correct photo. Very frustrating, as I have lost many days of careful editing. Made a copy of the project and have tried many things, to no avail.
Anyone have an idea? Is there a parameter file or something that I can delete that will reset things? Thanks very much.

The distortion/blurriness may arise due to the size of the photo being imported from iPhoto.
iMovie HD 6 appears to have problems handling very large photos - these should be resized (not cropped) in iPhoto before being imported to iMovie HD. The process is described in this post by Karl Petersen on 14/04/2007:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4389924#4389924
Karl describes the process very thoroughly (as always) in Point 3 of his post.
Doing as Karl suggests may not, of course, help in your particular case but it's certainly worth a try.
John

Wrong capture time when importing from iPhoto to FCPX

I am experiencing a strange problem when importing from iPhoto to FCPX. If I open the info panel in iPhoto I see the real date/time when the picture was taken, but if I import them to an event in FCPX using the PHotos Browser and I check the info it shows the time when the image was imported to IPhoto and everything gets messed up.
I have search for somebody with same problem but I have not found anything so far.
MY workaround is to import directy onto the timeline, but it is... well, a workaround.
Thanks in advance

Why is knowing that important during the edit?
Yes, FCP only shows the date imported" date metadata. Future updates of FCP X I assume will add more metadata support, such as Creation Date and Modification Date, since metadata is vital to FCP X and there are some metadata handling features that are on the way.

How can I compress photos when emailing from iphoto? current photos are 7-8Mb each

How can I compress photos when emailing from iPhoto?
current photos are 7-8Mb each if I just attach them directly

Aperture won't delete the photos from your iPhone. Most users have settled on using Image Capture ater importing into Aperture to delete the photos from the iPhone.

Get an error message when importing from iPhoto says, "There is not enough free space on your Aperture Library volume to import the selected items. It is estimated that you need at least 44GB of free space."

I get an error message when importing from iPhoto that says, "There is not enough free space on your Aperture Library volume to import the selected items. It is estimated that you need at least 44GB of free space." the drive is empty, I just reformatted it to Mac OSX journaled.

I'm guessing this is an extrenal drive, correct? If so make sure the library you're importimng into is really located on the external drive. By default Aperture creates its library in your home pictures folder.

All the photo i import from iphoto (JPEG) to imovie is blank.

Hello..!
I need some help..!
I using powermac G4 cube, i just upgrade to tiger n ilife 06, when i want to import my photo from iphoto to imovie all the image is blank. But i unclick the ken burn effect, i can import the photo i have image...!
Got someone know how to solve the problem..!
Thank..!

I appreciate all of your responses to my problem. There is no doubt that I have a lot to learn about Aperture. I guess the first thing I need to do is learn the correct process to import my existing photo events from iPhoto. When I conducted the import operation, I imported by selecting my individual events from iPhoto browser. Is my problem the result of incorrectly importing from iPhoto? Where can I find the appropriate import steps into Aperture from iPhoto?
Several of you recommended that I may need to execute a repair against my iPhoto library. How do I run the repairs on the iPhoto library?
I am confused as to why every single photo is duplicated with one version being the original and the other as an edited version. I am confused since I have not attempted to edit all of my photos within iPhoto. Granted I have edited a few photos, but no way every single one. More than likely I am importing the photos incorrectly from iPhoto. I may try to import from my photo cards rather than attempting to copy from iPhoto. Perhaps iPhoto automatically sends two copies of the same photo to Aperture as a default???

Missing Audio / Sound in imovie with .AVI files when imported from iphoto

fortunately i don't need this answered, eventually figured it out my self, just thought it would be helpful to share the solution to this problem as I'm sure others have experienced it. The problem makes more sense when explained chronologically.
My wife has a Casio digital camera, and had recorded many Movies on it, they all sat in iPhoto all worked fine until i upgraded to Quicktime 7.5, then the audio disappeared. i tried in vain to fix (reinstalled QT 7.5, removed plugins, reinstalled etc.), but to no avail, so i left it - this was all under Tiger, i decided I'd upgrade to Leopard and see if the problem went away.
Before upgrading to Leopard i got iLife 08, when i first launched iMovie08 it pulled in all the movies from iPhoto, but they too had no sound.
Then i upgraded to Leopard, now the quicktime missing audio issue got fixed, so i could hear the audio again when launching quicktime via iPhoto (turns out the issue was with how quicktime was handling adaptive PCM audio stream) - i expected all would be fine in iMovie... but it wasnt.
after much experimentation i realised that i had to force iMovie to re-import all the video from iPhoto, this fixed the issue, but with no obvious way to do this, this is what i did:
- opened finder, navigated to iphoto library, right click and chose 'show package contents'
- navigated to the data folder and did a search on this folder only for all movie files (when imovie had originally converted iPhoto movie files into thumbnails it dropped all the thumb size movie files in this folder)
- deleted all the movie files from the Data folder, making sure not to delete the movie files in any other folders & emptied trash
- launched imovie, now all the iphoto movies were missing.
- re-launch iPhoto, whilst holding down shift, option + command keys
- checked 'rebuild the iphoto library database' only, once done, closed iphoto
- re-launched imovie, this forced it to re-import all the movies from iphoto
... and then the sound was back.
FYI
this worked when using...
OS 10.5.4
QT 7.5
iMovie 7.1.4
iPhoto 7.1.4
jb

Hi MGW,
I do not no how things are handled when using HDV and technical documentation is hard to find on this topic of how photo are handled using HDV but in iMovie and most non HDV video editing software the picture is always 72ppi regardless of what is was/is on the outside and the images that appear the worst are the ones with less.
On a side note I don't use iPhoto because of all the superfluous files and thumbnails it creates and it disorganises my photos according to criteria that is completely irrelevant to me. I have had these thumbnails pop up in the browser in the past primarily with any photos that existed in the library prior to any updates. With what I have been working on as of late can understand how and why this could happen.
If you scroll through the media browser dose it appear that the library you are working with duplicates itself somewhere along the line or do you see double images side by side?
What are you machine specs and please include you screen/display size and graphics card information as this is the most relevant information at this point with what you are doing.
W1

Blank (black) photos when inserting from iPhoto

When trying to insert photos from iPhoto in a recent iMovie project, some photos rendered as black while others inserted with no problem. I first thought this was related to enabling /disabling the Ken Burns effect, but could not verify that. However, after some puzzling, I found that if I reduced the size (dimensions in pixels) the photos would insert fine. I checked the photos using Get Info and the only pattern I could see was that the larger photos (3072 x 2304 pixels) would insert as black while the smaller (2592 x 1944) would insert ok. So I used Photoshop Elements to crop the larger and, WA-LA, they inserted fine.
Any one else have this situation or can verify if I am on the right track or if this is even a consistent problem? I noted on one of the other boards that some people have been having problems of photos showing as black in slide shows using iPhoto.

Yes, we've seen a few reports recently of certain imported images arriving as black clips. It's not entirely clear why. Resizing as you did has helped some.
It's not clear whether it's the resizing that helps or simply editing the photo — any editing — that causes the modified image to be saved in a format iMovie handles correctly. I suspect the underlying problem is tied to the image source — the camera — instead of the image size, and that saving the image in an image editor may fix the problem. Anything you can discover that helps identify the cause would be very helpful.
Here's one with problems with images from a Kodak:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1989357#1989357
(For what it's worth, I cannot reproduce the problem on any image, no matter what size. Images much larger than 3072 x 2304 import just fine.)
Please say what camera model you use.
And to test whether the problem is related to the camera or to the image size, try resizing a 3072 x 2304 image LARGER to see if that imports okay. If it's okay, it's not a size problem.
Then to see if it's an image file format problem, try doing a Save As with NO changes. If that doesn't import correctly, try changing one pixel and saving.
Yes, it may be important whether the Ken Burns checkbox is on or off. When importing BMPs, for example, a red color shift occurs when the KB checkbox is ON, but not when it's OFF.
Anything you can discover would be very helpful.
Karl

Duplicates when importing from iPhoto

When i imported pics from iphoto got a lot of duplicates Why does this happen and how can I prevent it?

Using both Organizer and iPhoto will create duplicates on your hard drive. You need to stick to one app for managing your photos although you can set up the Elements Editor as your external editing tool in iPhoto preferences.
http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/photoshop-elements-iphoto-mac-os.html

Why is Lightroom 5.4 not recognizing existing photos when importing from another catalog?

I have lightroom 5.4 now updated on my studio desktop computer and my laptop when working in the field. I have a folder of images on both computer catalogs and that inlcudes the negatives on each computer. I made a bunch of edits and changes on my laptop of that folder of images and then exported the changes as a catolog to import into my studio catalog but lightroom doesn't recognize the photos when I import from another catalog. Lightroom tries to add the photos as another folder even though the negatives are there and they are already imported into the desktop catog. Why doen't lightroom recognize they are the same images when I'm importing as catalog? I've always done this with past versions of Lightroom with no problems. I'm just exporting the previews since the negative files are already on both computers. What is wrong?

The folder hierarchy has to be exactly the same; the slightest thing can throw it off, an upper case on one machine and lower case on the other or a misspelling.

How do I keep the time and date stamp of my photo when exporting from iphoto

Hi,
I notice the time and date stamp changed when I exported the photos from iPhoto 11 to a external HDD.
When I looked at the information about the exported photos on my external HDD the time and date changed to the time and date of when I exported the photos form iPhoto instead of keeping the time and date information of when the photo was taken as it appears in iPhoto.
I thought the time and date stamp is in the meta data of the photo file and can't be changed, am I correct?
Thanks,

Kyzelios,
How can view the meta data from "finder" or do I need a 3rd party app?
"Get info" function only gives me the creation date which is the export date and time.

Grayed out, weird photos when importing from Camera Roll

OK, wondering if anyone else is experiencing this? I use Photoshop's Bridge import to pull my photos of my iPhone 3Gs. When I do, I often have these weird photos - I'm not totally sure why they are happening. And, the good news is that once they are pulled, they appear to be fine, but I'm just looking to see if I'm not the only one.
They seem to be possibly related to:
a) being taken by an alternate camera app (I've tried several, Camera Genius, Snapture, CameraFlash and CameraZoom - yep, trying to get a better photo!),
b) being altered in some way (I've used Photogene to improve some, but it makes a duplicate?), or
c) being copied or saved to the CameraRoll from another program (I'm a Phanfare user and their Photon app is phenomenal).
So, some pictures of examples below, but as long as they images are OK when they come in, is it just fine? I always worry when something is not what it should be on an Apple device or within an Apple software.
Thx - Alexa
(Saved to Camera Roll from Photon - you can see though that others saved the exact same way are fine?):
!http://www.alexacorcoran.com/misc/Picture4.png!
(Photo taken in Genius app)
!http://www.alexacorcoran.com/misc/Picture2.png!
(Photo edited with Photogene - is still vertical when I pull it off and obviously color, etc.)?
!http://www.alexacorcoran.com/misc/Picture3.png!
Message was edited by: akcorcoran

Hi Lawrence -
Thanks for your response! I'm on a Mac so my options are different, but I think about using a more basic viewer and went to iPhoto and looked at the pictures on my phone as a device, and they all look fine (or some are not duplicates) - so maybe it's just a Photoshop import thing or ghosting issue?
Alexa

Missing photos after importing from iPhoto

I have a big iPhoto library that span from 2002 until today.
Launching Photo for the first time started the import of the default iPhoto library, when finished the problem is not everything has been imported.
I have not done photo by photo check, but for instance all 2014 photos are missing and since I see less photo in previous years and in 2015 also photos from other years are missing.
I can't reimport the iPhoto library (I have not been able to find how), so my question is how can I import the whole iPhoto library to Photos?

First off that is a bad practice - never have any computer program delete things - import photos and keep them - after at least one successful backup cycle has taken place and you are sure your photos are safely on the Mac and backed up then use the camera's format command to erase and reformat the card
You can try to backup your iPhoto library and hold down the option and command keys while launching iPhoto - repair permissions and rebuild the database form the resulting first aid window - that may recover your photos - if it does not then photo recover software like media recover is the next step
LN

Missing photos when importing from a Fuji s602zoom digital camera

I noticed that when I import the photos from my digital camera (as above), sometimes there are some missing. No error messages displayed and the import seems to finish OK.
This makes life difficult as I cannot now trust iPhoto and have to check every import.
Any suggestions would be helpful.

Neville:
On those occasions where the camera drops some photos are there any movies on the card?
A workaround is to use Image Capture to upload either to a folder on the Desktop first or directly into iPhoto. It's not recommended that you have iPhoto erase the card after import as there have been too many cases, yours for one, that have incomplete uploads and complete erasures.
Do you Twango?
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've written an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.
Message was edited by: Old Toad

Blurry photos when imported from iPhoto?

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