IPhoto and Flickr - disappearing photos and involuntary syncing

Question

After control-clicking on Check Now in one of my Flickr albums, within iPhoto of course, all of the pictures in the album disappeared, leaving only the name of the album in the list of Flickr albums in iPhoto.
The set made from that album is still present on the Flickr website (so far), even after navigating away from the page and coming back. I have no idea what is going on.
I assumed that Check Now would sync any changes I made to photos in that Flickr set back to the same photos on iPhoto.
I am worried that Flickr is now going to delete all of those photos entirely from iPhoto (as well as from the Flickr site). That would be a big problem. It hasn't done that so far, but who knows? I understand that the syncing between iPhoto and Flickr is two way - i.e. true syncing.
When your changes in Flickr sync back to iPhoto, does Flickr change your original in iPhoto (or whatever is serving as your original for Flickr's purposes - that is, the most recently modified version in iPhoto), or is there a separate version created just for uploading to Flickr, that is stored in the Flickr album on iPhoto, and that is the only version that is changed by Flickr when it is syncing back (to iPhoto)? I hope it is the latter. If not, many of us may be in for a surprise.
Should I delete the empty Flickr album from iPhoto, which should have the effect of deleting that set and its photos from the Flickr website, and start all over? This was a big, long upload, which is why I am hesitating.
I just started using Flickr yesterday and have had some trouble with it - for example, I've deleted albums/sets and re-uploaded them, for various reasons. Perhaps I've confused the poor thing.
I have Flickr Pro, if that makes a difference.
Confused.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Barb2008 wrote:
After control-clicking on Check Now in one of my Flickr albums, within iPhoto of course, all of the pictures in the album disappeared, leaving only the name of the album in the list of Flickr albums in iPhoto.
Hi,
The Flickr tool in iPhoto is both pretty neat and pretty frustrating. While I think it is a good start, it still needs work. I probably can not answer most of your questions, but I can clarify a few and offer my own experiences...
The set made from that album is still present on the Flickr website (so far), even after navigating away from the page and coming back. I have no idea what is going on.
That is weird. So the Flickr set in iPhoto cleared itself but the actual set on Flickr is still intact, right? Have you tried restarting your computer, going to disk utility and repairing disk permissions on your start up drive, then restarting iPhoto?
If that doesn't clear it up, you might try rebuilding the iPhoto library by closing iPhoto then restarting while holding down the Option key. Then try some of the rebuild options and see where that gets you.
I assumed that Check Now would sync any changes I made to photos in that Flickr set back to the same photos on iPhoto.
The syncing is two ways, but the Flickr sync back to iPhoto is more limited. For example, if you add keywords in Flickr those keywords will be synced back to iPhoto. However if you add a photo from your flickr account into that album, Flickr will send a small version thumbnail back to iPhoto, not the original photo.
But yes, to answer your question, all syncing between iPhoto and Flickr is more or less a two way sync.
I am worried that Flickr is now going to delete all of those photos entirely from iPhoto (as well as from the Flickr site). That would be a big problem. It hasn't done that so far, but who knows? I understand that the syncing between iPhoto and Flickr is two way - i.e. true syncing.
First off, Flickr can never remove anything from your iPhoto library. Perhaps a photo might be removed from a flickr album in your iPhoto, but the photo will still exist in your library. So you can not lose anything from your library using Flickr.
Second, if the Flickr album in your iPhoto is empty but the photos are still in the album in Flickr, then they will not be removed later. The sync tends to be a real time event where if you remove photos from an iPhoto Flickr album, iPhoto then begins to remove them from Flickr as well.
My own experience is that sometimes things happen like you experienced, where the iPhoto Flickr album gets "disconnected" from the on-line Flickr album. At this point there is no longer a connection and one doesn't effect the other. I have not found a way to relink the two which is one of the weak points of the new iPhoto Flickr syncing.
As a side note, a nice feature would be a menu item to actually do that, disconnect iPhoto from an on-line album, as it would be nice to be able to upload an album, then disconnect it so no further changes are made to Flickr regardless of what happens to the iPhoto album. Basically a "do not update" setting.
When your changes in Flickr sync back to iPhoto, does Flickr change your original in iPhoto (or whatever is serving as your original for Flickr's purposes - that is, the most recently modified version in iPhoto), or is there a separate version created just for uploading to Flickr, that is stored in the Flickr album on iPhoto, and that is the only version that is changed by Flickr when it is syncing back (to iPhoto)? I hope it is the latter. If not, many of us may be in for a surprise.
To the best of my knowledge, Flickr does not sync back actual changes to the photo itself. It will sync back things like album name changes, title changes, keyword additions, and stuff like that. However I have never actually tried publishing an album to Flick then editing a photo in that album in Flickr to see what it does. I should try that to see. Generally, if I have used iPhoto to publish photos to Flickr, then I use iPhoto to make any edits to the photo, not Flickr.
Should I delete the empty Flickr album from iPhoto, which should have the effect of deleting that set and its photos from the Flickr website, and start all over? This was a big, long upload, which is why I am hesitating.
As I mentioned above, if the album in iPhoto is empty but everything is still intact on Flickr, then likely the album in iPhoto was "disconnected" (link lost) from the Flickr album. When you go into that album in iPhoto, does it still show a Flickr link in the upper left? If so, what happens when you click that link? Does it take you to the album?
I just started using Flickr yesterday and have had some trouble with it - for example, I've deleted albums/sets and re-uploaded them, for various reasons. Perhaps I've confused the poor thing.
Flickr is pretty good. It is the iPhoto to Flickr interface and syncing that is a bit weak. It sounds like your issues are with iPhoto's syncing with Flickr than with anything to do with Flickr itself.
I myself use a number of tools with Flickr and I find iPhoto doesn't offer many choices on how it works with Flickr. Actually it doesn't really offer any choices, you get one method of interaction and that is it. So for many tasks I use other tools to get photos onto Flickr.
That said, if you have a full album/event you want to put on Flickr, the iPhoto interface is very handy for publishing a set on Flickr with keywords, map data, etc. and allows you to edit photos later and have those updates automatically go to Flickr as well. But with that comes some problems like being able to edit a photo in iPhoto for a different purpose, perhaps forgetting you added it to a Flickr album since you are accessing the photo elsewhere in iPhoto than that Flickr set, and then having those edits updated to Flickr without you realizing or intending.
Barb2008 wrote:
More info about my question - there is an emanating wave or broadcast signal icon beside each Flickr album name in the iPhoto source menu. It looks a bit like the Airport signal icon along the top bar of the computer screen. When you click on it, the sync symbol appears and goes round and round for awhile. So that is how you manually sync Flickr albums and sets I guess.
Yes, even if you just click on the set to look at it in iPhoto, you will usually see the little "broadcast" icon indicate it is checking the set against the Flickr set. Usually you see one of several icons. The little broadcast icon like the airport signal simply indicates that the set is synced to a Flickr set but is currently idle. When you click that icon or the set, the icon changes to a circle. A couple of swirling arrows in the circle indicates it is checking online. If there are updates then the circle goes blank and you start to see an advancing pie piece indicating how much of the sync is complete. If the circle just sits there blank for a long time, then the sync has stalled or not working.
One album has the symbol, and two don't. These are the two I had trouble with today (deleting and re-uploading, etc.)
The album that has the symbol also has a link at the top of the photos to the page on Flickr containing that photo set.
The two albums that don't have the symbol do not display a link to the appropriate Flickr page. The corresponding sets are both visible on Flickr, however, as I said.
Perhaps I should start all over?
Ah, ok that answers the question I asked above. Sounds like the two albums somehow got de-linked from Flickr. Both sets show up on the left side under the Flickr listings?
If that is the case, you have a couple of options.
One is if you are satisfied with the set as it appears over in Flickr and don't really have a need to keep a live link between the two (Flickr and iPhoto) you can probably delete those sets from our of iPhoto's "Flickr" albums and your Flickr sets will stay.
On the other hand, if you wish to keep a live link to the two albums so you can continue to edit or update the album, keywords, photos, etc. then you probably want to redo those two.
Unfortunately as I said above, I don't know how to get an album to RE-link back to Flickr once that link has been broken and where it has happened to me I either have removed the set from iPhoto, removed the set and all photos from Flickr (using the Flickr web site tools), then recreating the set in iPhoto and clicking the Flickr upload button again to recreate the whole thing. Or I leave the set on Flickr and continue to work with it directly at Flickr using other tools to add additional photos and doing all my edits on the set or the photos from the Flickr website itself.
Regards,
Patrick