How I successfully upgraded from iPhoto '09 to iPhoto '11 - Glitch Free.

Question

I've been eagerly reading the forums PRIOR to installing iPhoto '11 and I'm about to dive in. I have an iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 6GB RAM running Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.4.
I'm currently running iPhoto '09 (version 8.1.2) with 1403 events, 41,133 photos, 24 Faces and 29 Places. I have dozens of Albums and Smart Albums, Mobile Me Galleries, as well as 5 Keepsakes-3 cards and 2 books. The library itself is 185 GB in size and resides in an Admin User account in /Users/User/Pictures
Here is what I've done PRIOR to installing iPhoto '11
_*Fixed Permissions:*_
1. Holding down OPTION+COMMAND keys and then launching iPhoto '09 and selecting "Examine and repair iPhoto Library file permissions." I also rebuilt the small thumbnails but nothing else.
2. Opening disk utility and repairing disk permissions on Macintosh HD
3. Downloaded BatChmod and changed all the permissions as suggested in the links below. Initially the checkmark for apply to enclosed folders and files was not available. I selected another file then returned and it was available.
Also my permissions for the iPhoto library (and a quick survey of the package contents -right click with mouse to do this) were set to Read Write for my User account, for Group (_unknown in my case) and for Everyone without running BatChmod. Select your iPhoto library and press COMMAND+I to check this. I chose to run BatChmod anyways to ensure every file was indeed wide open as far as permissions go.
http://www.macchampion.com/arbysoft/ *-BatChmod link*
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12507401#12507401
http://iphoto11.wordpress.com/
_*Repaired Fonts*_
1. Opened Font Book and selected all the fonts then from the menus:
-Edit > Resolve Duplicates
-File > Validate Fonts
I then deleted the most severely affected fonts marked with red. I still had several marked yellow "minor problems were found. Proceed with caution."
Backups
1. Time Machine Backup on External Drive, plus another Time Machine Backup on another drive but it's about a week out of date.
2. Copy of iPhoto '09 application on a different External Drive then the Time Machine Backup (Usually found at the folder /Applications)
3. Copy of iPhoto '09 library folder on a different External Drive then the Time Machine Backup (Usually found in the folder /Users/User/Pictures )
This way I've got two ways of going backwards to iPhoto 09 if necessary - using the Time Machine backups (which appears to be painful for some) and failing that option simply dragging back actual untouched copies of iPhoto '09.app and iPhoto '09 library with photos, preferences, keepsakes, events etc all intact. (iPhoto '11 makes changes to the iPhoto '09 library files and removes the '09 app as well).
I then turned off Time Machine to prevent it from backing up further.
Install
Then in went the iLife '11 disc. No problems with the installation. After the install I *immediately opened Software Update from the Apple menu, and did not open iPhoto.*
iPhoto Update 9.1 came up and I installed it. A restart was not required but I did one anyways. Interestingly enough when I did a COMMAND+I to get info on the new iPhoto '11 library it showed different permissions of User -read/write, and Everyone -read/write. No groups listed.
I then opened iPhoto '11 and got the following message with the options to Quit or Upgrade. I clicked Upgrade.
" *The photo library needs to be upgraded to work with this version of iPhoto* Your photo library will not be readable by previous versions of iPhoto after the upgrade. The upgrade process for very large libraries may take an hour or more to complete."
My fairly _*large 185 GB library took 28 minutes to upgrade*_ and showed a progress bar as well as the monochromatic spinning wheel.
Success! All of my photos, events, places and albums, smart albums, MobileMe books and cards and slideshows are present and I can even edit a book I started. My iPhoto library is the same size give or take a MB.
Was all this necessary? We'll never know. I certainly wouldn't expect a first time Mac user to do the BatChmod steps or the Font Book steps, or even the Permissions steps, however I would expect everyone to do the backup steps of at least Time Machine.
We are talking valuable photos which are not replaceable, some people run into burning buildings to save their photos, so a quick backup seems reasonable. Turns out I didn't need my backups but I had no hesitation doing the upgrade with them in place.
In Summary:
1. Repair Permissions on your hard drive and iPhoto Library (see above for specifics)
2. Remove duplicate Fonts and Validate and Remove trouble fonts in Font Book
3. Backup, Backup, Backup. If possible with Time Machine and also separate exact copies of iPhoto library folder and iPhoto app itself.
4. Install iLife '11 and restart.
5. _*DO NOT OPEN iPhoto '11 YET*_, but DO OPEN Software Upgrade and install iPhoto version 9.1 (iPhoto '11 is version 9 of the software, iPhoto '09 is version 8)
6. Open iPhoto '11 and wait patiently for the upgrading of your previous library.
This process worked seamless for me, and was headache free. I'm now also going to keep an offsite backup of my computer either in the cloud or at a friend, family or work location.
Hope this helps!

Answer 1

Thanks so much - Iphoto has been driving me nuts for a while now. Permanent spinning wheel in Places and requiring force quit almost everytime. Following the advice to repair Iphoto permissions removed the spinning wheel from Places and Iphoto is completely back to normal