Can't drag and drop photos from iphoto to desktop or anywhere!

I used to be able to drag and drop photos out of iPhoto, it would usually show me a green plus. But now, when I tried to drag and drop my photos out of iPhoto, it would not allow me to and give me a white circle with a slash in it. I am a photographer, so I really need to do this desperately. I was going to copy it onto a new folder on my desktop then transfer it into my hard drive. I can't even get it to go on the folder on my desktop. I did a little research and found out that the white slash is telling me I have no permission to do that, but why? How can I make myself have permission like before?
Please help!
Thanks!

Select one of the affected photos in the iPhoto Window and right click on it. From the resulting menu select 'Show File (or 'Show Original File' if that's available). A Finder Window should open with the file selected. Does it?
Regards
TD

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Really stupid that you can't drag and drop photos from Finder into Events

There is no way in iPhoto to do what I want and need to to, to wit, drag and drop photos from the Finder into existing iPhoto Events.
It really doesn't make sense that you can't do this. First of all, calling these groups Events to begin with is not smart; in my case, a group of photos in a folder on the Finder is rarely all from one photo session or so-called "event"--- instead of Events they should just be called Groups or something, and you should be able to drop individual photos into them. I have thousands of family photos that were accumulated on my hard drives over the years, some scanned in from film negatives, slides, or prints, others from digital cameras, and when I have changed Macs and hard drives over the years, every time a folder of photos was moved from an old hard drive to a new one, or regrouped into various folders, the photos seem to have acquired new dates of origin, etc.
Anyway, what I mean is, if Events are all time based, then somebody like me who has thousands of photos with all sorts of dates of origin, mostly unrelated to the date that the photo was actually shot, is screwed. I have old photos with new dates of origin and other mismatches between photos and the dates when they were actually shot or scanned.
My gripe is, again, that when I find photos on my hard drives that belong in certain iPhoto Events that have already been created, I cannot just drag these photos from the Finder and drop them into the Events they belong in. Instead, the stupid program creates a new Event from each photo I try to drop into an existing Event. That means I have to chase these new photos all over the place inside of iPhoto, trying to figure out where each new photo (now called an "Event") has ended up, so that I can drag and merge it into the Event I wanted it to go into in the first place. A real pain in the neck. It simply takes too long to do this for each photo added.
What this means is that iPhoto is not going to be a practical way to organize for a person like me until Apple makes it possible to simply drop any photo from the Finder into an existing Event. There should be an option to allow that. I'm really surprised there is not one. <edited out by Hosts>
Tom

Tom, iPhoto will not overwrite photos with the same name. I have plenty of photos with the same name in the same event. Each photo most likely has an internal handler that manages the photo, and not just the name of the file.
I agree with you that this is sub-optimal, and (IMO) I think what happened is iPhoto 6 had rolls, and they came up with a really cool interface for mousing over those rolls, and decided it was more consumer friendly (and because film is a thing of the past) to call them events, rather than rolls. I think it was worth a shot, but they just slightly missed.
Right now in iPhoto08, any serious organization is done in folders and albums. Personally, I think they need to combine the two concepts -- the great "mouse over" view of events with the organization abilities of folders and albums. I'd like an albums view where I can mouse over the albums. Actually, Aperture 2's interface for organization is more functional than iPhoto, so I am hoping some of that benefit creeps into the next iPhoto release.
What I do is: I use events for high level grouping (like Winter 2007) and I organize folders and albums to break that down further ("trip to Montreal" "Christmas" etc.). But I do it backwards. I fill albums first, then I organize events.
When I drag in pictures to iPhoto, first I make the target album in iPhoto that I want to populate, then I drag the photo directly to that album (not to events). iPhoto automatically puts the photo into the album I created and also into a new event. Later, I go into events, right-click on this new event to "open event in separate window" then I move around the events view, to drop in the pictures from the "import" event I just created. If I move all the pictures into other events, iPhoto automatically deletes the event I just emptied. You could skip the event organization all together if you wanted to, but you'd lose the cool mouse-over feature, which can be handy.
One nice thing about having events AND albums is you can have the photo just once in iPhoto, in an event, but then have the photo appear in as many albums as you want (as well as projects and web galleries) all while only having one photo on your hard drive. So, there are benefits to events, but I think iPhoto is missing just a couple little bits of organizational ability to make it perfect. (and yes, I've submitted this all to Apple as feature requests)
Just in case you don't know -- events don't have any hierarchy. That is, you can't nest events. But you can have folders with subfolders, and any folder can contain albums. Albums cannot have sub-albums, and folders don't hold photos. Only albums hold photos, and folders (or sub-folders) hold albums. Try create some folders and albums and you'll get the hang of it. One other issue that Apple needs to address. When you create a new folder or album, it doesn't put it right where you want it, but rather puts it at the bottom of the list, so you have to drag it up to where you want it. Try it out, and you'll see what I mean, then submit it as a feature request to improve that.
I agree it's not perfect, but it's not too bad once you get used to it. And the benefits of working with the rest of the features of iPhoto is worth it. I'm just really hoping they do a few tweaks on the next release. They are near greatness here. They could just use a little nudge on the last bits. (in my opinion of course. Others may disagree, but I've talked to enough people who have the same issues you are having to know we are not alone on this).

Can't drag and drop photos in iphoto version 6.0.5

for some reason iphoto won't let me drag and drop photos into albums. i tried restarting, checking fonts etc but it still won't work. can anyone help? it used to work fine

miss sho
Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
What do you mean by 'checking fonts etc.'
The usual cause for this issue is that the Helvetica font is unavailable. The usual cure is to make sure it's enabled with Font Book - sometimes it's necessary to disable it and then re-enable it.
Other than that, you're not trying to drag into a Smart Album, are you?
If none of the above apply, go for the troubleshooting basics:
1. Repair Permissions using Disk Utility
2. Delete the com.apple.iPhoto.plist file from the home / library / preferences folder. You'll need to reset your User options afterwards.
3. Create a new account (systempreferences -> accounts) and create a new library there. Import a few pics and see if the problem is repeated there. If it is, then a re-install of the app might be indicated. If it's not, then it's likely the app is okay and the problem is something in the main account.
Regards
TD
Regards
TD

Why can't I drag and drop photos from iPhoto on my iMac to my iPad?

I have thousands of photos on my iMac and often want to copy a few dozen to my iPad to bring to my relatives. It seems that I should be able to create an album on my iMac and drag it to my iPad but I can't. Didn't Apple get where it is by making things simple like drag and drop? Why is it like a state secret to get some photos moved over? I'd really like to know the reason. I don't want a convoluted work-around. This isn't Windows!
Come on Apple, give us simplicity or at least a USB port to copy stuff!

Thanks for the reply. I guess I was a bit steamed. I know how to sync photos but object to having to treat my photos on the iPad in such an unintuitive way. Maybe I'm alone ( but I doubt it ) but I have photos on my iPad and iPhone for several different purposes. I keep photos of things I want to paint, photos of friends and relatives, photos of items I saw that I may want to buy and snapped the ISBN code. Photos of book list of authors I like that I want to read so if I see one in a used book store I remember which ones I haven't read yet. I don't think this is unreasonable or even something that only I want. I don't want to delete all of this every time I want to add another photo. I know I can back it up to my iMac and restore it plus the new photo later but this is not what I expect or want from Apple. I have had Apple products since the Apple II and Macs since March 1984 and it was because Apple always seemed to try and figure what the user wanted first and foremost but this seems to have changed. I would prefer most iPhoto and iTunes app versions from ten years ago to those coming out now because they valued intuitive interface over exotic features. Apple is the product 'for the rest of us' but not anymore it seems.
Maybe there are some good reasons why Apple is doing it, security, contracts, etc but I'd like to know. Maybe some of the users know and will give straight answers.
Thanks, for the info though.

Why can't I just drag and drop photos from iPhoto on to my iPhone?

This has been something on my mind for a long time. For some reason I can't just drag and drop certain photos from my computer on to my iPhone. Why? There both Apple products. Shouldn't it be easier? For some reason I have to go through iTunes to select which albums I would like to import, but I'm working with raw files. My computer has over 250 gb of storage space. My iPhone has 16 gb. One of my even folders is 14 gbs. That would take up all the space on my phone. Is there a way to get around this? Why do I have to go through iTunes to put files on my iPhone?

Only Apple can answer that question, so you'll need to ask them.
But will your phone work with Raw files? If you're syncing from iPhoto via iTunes then that's not the raw file that's going over, it's the Jpeg preview from iPhoto.
As for the space issue, make an album of the photos you want to sync.

Trying to click and drop photos from iPhoto into an Empty SD card. all I am getting isThe item "IMG_0346.JPG" can't be copied because there isn't enough free space. Card is 156 MB Photo is 1.56MB. Help please.

Trying to click and drop photos from iPhoto into an Empty SD card. all I am getting isThe item “IMG_0346.JPG” can’t be copied because there isn’t enough free space. Card is 156 MB Photo is 1.56MB. Help please.

Select the photo(s) in iPhoto and export to a desktop folder (file menu ==> export) - see this user tip for export options - then be sure the card is not locked and in the finder verify available space and if it is adaquate drag that folder to it
LN

I reinstalled iPhoto 9.1 and now I can't drag and drop photos to the desktop. The photos have a grayed out flag in the upper left corner and a pull down menu in the bottom right. Please help.

I reinstalled iPhoto 9.1 and now I can't drag and drop photos to the desktop. The photos have a grayed out flag in the upper left corner and a pull down menu in the bottom right. Please help.

Do you get any error messages?
Regards
TD

I reinstalled Lion and now I cannot drag and drop photos from the internet to my desktop

My Macbookpro was giving me a startup disk full message so I emptied out my photo library and itunes library to an external drive. By then I think the damage was done because I was still encountering the spinning color wheel all the time. On the advice of he Genius bar I reinstalled Lion. It worked well except for this one glitch. I can no longer drag and drop photos from the internet. Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks.

That sounds like a browser issue so what browser and what web sites?

Can not drag and drop photos in Lightroom 4 map module

In Lightroom4 map module, I can not drag and drop photos onto the map from the filmstrip? I select the photos, and then try and grabbing them to drop them on the map and when I click on one of the pictures to grab, it deselects the others I've selected and only hightlights the one photo, ironically, I can not even drop the one photo onto the map.

Thank you Victoria. I thought I was grabbing it on the thumbnail, but I must not have been, I must have been as you said on the border. Sorry.
Thank you again for the help.

Error while drag and drop photo from Iphone to PC

My PC OS: Window Vista 32bit
when I connect iphone to PC. I can access iphone by Portable device->My Iphone-> Internal storage-> DCIM->100apple-> xxx.jpg
and when I copy the pic and paste it to my PC, or drag and drop photo from Iphone to PC, it fail and show below error and force to close all explorer.
Problem name: BEX
Program name: explorer.exe
problem version: 6.0.6001.18164
Error module name: wzshlex1.dll
Error module version: 4.1.8477.0
blah blah
and now I cannot delete DCIM file. while I try to delete it, a message said the device no response.
and I found one thing, I use a "iphone photo" program to check photos in Camera Roll, it show 2 pics that cannot be show when I use explorer browse the folder.
who can help me?

hmm fixed by uninstall winzip
thats interesting..

HT203128 I can't drag and drop music from iTunes 12 to iOS 8 iPhone 5s. How do I move music now?

I connect the iPhone to itunes. that works. Everything shows up fine, but I can't drag and drop music from the 'music' section of iTunes 12 on my new mbp or my iMac. I used to be able to. Also, when I slide to delete songs on the iPhone, they still appear as 'ghosts' in the list on iTunes when the phone is connected - if I double click them, a exclamation mark in a circle comes up on the left of the track and it doesn't play. Can anyone help? Kind of need to get this sorted - it's bloody frustrating. I've restarted iPhone, iMac, MBP, downloaded the latest versions of iOS, OS X 10.10.3.

you iphone does not work like a regular ipod, where you can drag and drop music, you must sync it with itunes. plug it into your computer, click on the icon that is labeled iphone. when you do this there is a section on the top that says music. click on that, then you can select playlists and artists, etc. then click apply. it should work then

Can't drag and drop anymore in iPhoto

Today I was trying to rearrange some photos and found I could no longer drag photos from my library (or any other album) and put them in a new album. I could select but they wouldn't move over. I tried copy and paste but those functions didn't work either.
I was able to make a smart album that would move photos over based on the conditions I set. But I can't drag and drop.
Anybody know how to fix this issue?
Thanks in advance.

Steven:
Welcome to the Apple Discussions. In case there is an access problem with some of those files try the following: download and run BatChmod on the iPhoto Library folder with the settings shown here, substituting your account name for mine. You can either type in the path to the folder or just drag the folder into that field. See if that will help.
The reason I'm thinking an access problem, you can do an edit and move the modified version which it creates and would have the correct access. Worth a try anyway.
Do you Twango?

IMovie - Can't drag and drop photos or transitions

Everything was working fine. I was creating movies and loving it. I then ran out of hard drive space and did some cleaning up. I removed old files and cleaned up iMovie. Since then I can't seem to create a new movie. I can't rename the title, drag and drop photos, or put in a transition or title. I can however put in videos that are housed in iPhoto. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to get a few movies done for the holidays.

Select one of the affected photos in the iPhoto Window and right click on it. From the resulting menu select 'Show File (or 'Show Original File' if that's available). A Finder Window should open with the file selected. Does it?
Regards
TD

I can't drag and drop songs from library to playlists

Unable to drag and drop songs from library into playlists, however I can drop them above or below playlists. That is no help in editing playlists! Seems to be after last iTunes up date.
Tkank you

My mistake totally!!! I confused a new playlist folder with a new playlist.
Just wanted to pass that along.

Can't drag and drop music from itunes to Iphone

my brother recently updated to a newer version of itunes and i can no longer drag and drop music from my itunes to my iphone! ive tried everything that i know and nothing is working! i tried checking the 'manually manage music' box, but everytime i do that it asks me if i want to erase and sync and doesnt give me another option. I dont want to do that! my songs that are on my ipod are not on my current itunes! they are lost ;( . i turned on home sharing (not sure what that did but i tried it) and i also authorized the computer... help please!

you iphone does not work like a regular ipod, where you can drag and drop music, you must sync it with itunes. plug it into your computer, click on the icon that is labeled iphone. when you do this there is a section on the top that says music. click on that, then you can select playlists and artists, etc. then click apply. it should work then

Can't drag and drop photos from iphoto to desktop or anywhere!

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