Deleted iPhoto 5, do not have backup iphoto disk, where to go from here?

Question

I deleted iphoto 5 on my ibook G4 because it kept crashing and wasn't responding properly. I cannot find the iphoto disk to re-install it, and have tried installing 6, yet since it reads that I do not have any sort of iphoto app on my computer I cannot use the upgrade. I can get the iPhoto 4.0 disk, will that work for me???

Answer 1

Hi Kerry,
From what you wrote it seems like you deleted photos from the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder. When you opened iPhoto, the thumbnails were still there because you did not delete the photos from within iPhoto (the proper way to do it) When you click on the thumbnails of deleted photos to delete the thumbnails, iPhoto cannot find the photo to delete (thus the spinning ball)
Is this your situation? If it is, then you will have to deal with the spinning ball each time you want to delete the thumbnail of a photo that you already deleted from the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder.
You do need to get the version 5 library working well before upgrading to version 6. I suggest you follow the next directions for creating a new library.
Close iPhoto
Rename your messed up iPhoto Library to "iPhoto Library_old"
Drag this library to your desktop
Hold down the Option key and launch iPhoto
This is the window you will get
Create a new library or choose a library to open
Choose to create a new library
Once this new empty library is open it is time to import the images from your old library
Go to File>add to library
Navigate to the old library on your desktop and highlight it in the window, then click the "open" button.
iPhoto will start importing the images from your old library
This is what to expect:
Your images will be imported in nice dated rolls. (make sure your view is set to sort by rolls to see it) There are a couple of caveats to this. You will get rolls named "Originals" These rolls will contain your video clips and your original images that you had edited. If you had RAW files they would be in those rolls too (I don't do RAW, so I don't know for sure) Delete what you don't want from those rolls. You will also get the jpeg pointer files to your video clips imported. They will just be jpegs and will not point to the video clips anymore as iPhoto made new ones when the clips were imported again. You can delete those. they should be in a roll right next to the newly imported video clips so they are not hard to find. The thumbnail files don't get imported as iPhoto makes new ones when the images are imported.
Once all you images have been imported, check through the library and make sure everything looks ok.
You can now start making your Albums, and do your keywords or any other organizational steps.
You can also delete the old library on the desktop.
It is also a good time to backup this new library to CD/DVD by burning the iPhoto LIbrary folder in the Finder, or copying the iPhoto Library folder to an external drive formatted for Macs, or copying the iPhoto LIbrary folder to an iPod.
Good luck!