PLEASE HELP - my wife is going to kill me! Cannot locate her "books"

Question

OK - Here is the scoop! (Call me stupid!) We have about 14 blazillion pictures in iPhoto and I was attempting to manage them alittle better so I downloaded the freeware "iPhoto Buddy" to help manage the pics. Well, I obviously did not know what the heck I was doing and the next time I opened up iPhoto, it appeared that all our pictures were gone. I re-imported them into iPhoto and everything was great, except that I was not able to locate the phot albums that my wife has ordered and made via iphoto and mac.
Well she was OK with that (if she had to be) and so she proceeded to create the new "grandmother's" Christmas books and then I got stupid again and tried to find all the old albums she had made. Well, I saw on IphotoBuddy's help info that if you wanted to go back to y our original library - go to "Use Default Library" and that is what I did. Once that was finished - it appeared all was OK again, with all the OLD albums loaded back in iPhoto again, but now the one that she had spent HOURS on was missing. I had to reload the last month's pictures, but that was fairly painless.
SO - FIRST of all - how do I get rid of iPhotoBuddy (if and when that is appropriate?)
SECOND - how can I find the photo album that she has just made? She has nt ordered it yet, but she spend HOURS on it.
THIRD - can I "streamline" the "album" issues that I have? What do I need? iPhot library? 2003 library? 2004 library, etc? Please advise-
Please help a man from being murderized! (not that I don't deserve it...)
Sproles

Answer 1

thesproles:
Welcome to the Apple Discussions. It's apparent that you have two iPhoto libraries in your Pictures folder, the original one and the new one with the new book. You can use iPB to move between the two libraries until the book is completed and purchased. Then delete the book library and go back to the original with all the albums.
You can use iPhoto Library Manager to move between the two also but iPLM will let you rename the libraries to better identify them. You can call the library with the book "Book Library" and the folder in the Pictures folder will be renamed Book Library.
OR, the paid version of iPhoto Library manager will let you copy rolls and/or albums from one library to another and keep keywords, comments, etc. intact. So you could copy all of the albums from the old library into the "Book Library" and let it become your primary library.
Do you Twango?
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've written an Automator workflow application, iPhoto dB file backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.