Can't find original files after uploading photos through iPhoto

Question

I'm a recent "convert," and yesterday I uploaded some pictures directly through iPhoto for the first time. Then I tried to log onto Facebook to create a photo album and couldn't find the original photos in my "Pictures" file or anywhere else. I found I could access the "iPhoto Library" option but it distorted my photos by zooming in on the faces of people in the picture!
Where are my original files?

Answer 1

iPhoto used to place the photos in a standard directory "iPhoto Library" but this has now become a package, which hides access to the contents--just like in many applications--to keep you from rearranging them. You (or I) cannot directly access the contents but the "package" is just a specially marked directory. If you know a filename of one of the pictures or albums then you can search for that and it will find the file/photo. Then you have access to the directory and can go up, down, or over. It uses the same names in several of them.
The head shots you are seeing may be the "Faces" feature of the new iPhoto. They will be in a separate directory, as well as directories for original, modified, and others. Interesting, it did not find the photo names on the backup disk. Differing degrees of hiddenness? You can get there with Terminal. This is what I found in mine--notice the thumbnails used in album views:
2001 Dir.data Thumb64Segment.data
2002 Library.data ThumbJPGSegment.data
2003 Library.iPhoto face.db
2004 Library6.iPhoto face_blob.db
2005 Library6.iPhoto.bak iPhoto Selection
2006 Metadata Backup iPhoto.ipspot
AlbumData.xml Modified iPhotoAux.db
AlbumData2.xml Originals iPhotoLock.data
Auto Import Roll 249 iPhotoMain.db
Data Roll 251
Data.noindex ThemeCache
Your best bet is to select the photos you want and export them where you can have the JPEGs.
After import, I export so I can use shootShifter to adjust the names to be their exposure dates in yymmdd hrmise format. (You did set the camera's date.)
-Ken