'Refreshing' iPhoto Library?

Hello,
<question>
Is there anyway to make changes to a photo outside of iPhoto (say, resize the image), then 'refresh' iPhoto to recognize the changes? I don't recommend saying iPhoto will do this automatically, because I'm sure my version (5.0.4) won't when photos are resized with Nikon Capture 4.1.
<story behind question>
In May I upgraded my camera to a Nikon D70, a dSLR. Each of my images are about 3megs. I've went through my entire library (~1000 dSLR images, ~1000 smaller images) and tagged my photos. I now want to resize my dSLR images so they aren't 6MP. I use a RevA G4 PB, and at the rate I'm going, I will run out of HD space in a few more months. Not to mention, iPhoto isn't the fastest when dealing with these images (sorry Apple!). I've backed up all the images to an external HD, printed the ones I want, and now want iPhoto just to see a smaller res photo.
I just tried resizing these photos in Nikon Capture 4.2.1 (my preferred app), and saving the files, both overwriting the original, as well as in a new location. When I overwrite the original, the resolution&filesize info in iPhoto is incorrect. I can correct the resolution by Opening and Closing the edit photo screen, but it doesn't update the thumbnail or filesize information. Deleting the thumbnail files really ticked iPhoto off, so I don't recommend that.
If I save the photo elsewhere and import it, I lose the tags.
So, is there a way to refresh iPhoto images? Create a new thumbnail, update information, but keep tags?
Thanks!

Hi robert,
The ONLY way to do it correctly is WITHIN iPhoto. You would go into iPhoto Preferences and choose an application as an external editor. Once you choose an application as an external editor and have it open when an image is double clicked in iPhoto, you can then edit the image with this application and then "save" the image with same name. The edits will be reflected within iPhoto.
Unfortunately, you now have two copies of that image within iPhoto. You have the original (6MP) and you have the smaller edited version. The original is tucked away in an Originals folder and cannot be seen in the iPhoto Library. It can be found in the iPhoto Library in the Finder though.
You now have to use a third party application to go through the library and delete the originals of these edited version. Your milage may vary on this.
iPhoto Diet is one such app and I think there are a couple of others. (search Version Tracker)
Two Apple kbs for you to read
Don't tamper with files in the iPhoto library folder
About the iPhoto Library folder

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How/When does iPhoto library refresh?

Does anyone know how to get the iPhoto library to refresh to the ATV2?
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I sure hope Apple can make this work better. In the meantime, any manual workarounds would be greatly appreciated.

bmoraski:
Users have reported libraries of up to 25,000. Free space on the boot drive is very important, a minimum of 15-20G is highly recommended for optimal operation of the system and applications. You'll be surprised how fast those photos add up when you have a digital camera.
For insurance against the occasional iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend that you make 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 you your library back. With that in mind by keeping it current I mean backup after each import and after any serious editing or creating that you might do in the library like making books, slideshows, 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.
Do you Twango?

HT1338 How to view iphoto library (version 9) in snow leopard

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I recently installed OSX Lion and then upgraded iphoto to the latest update.
My Macbook became so slow since the upgrade to Lion I backed up my iPhoto library and did a refresh install of Snow Leopard.
My Macbook works quickly again now but when I dragged my iPhoto library into the Pictures folder and then opened iPhoto I get a message saying my library has had changes to it and now I must install the latest version of iPhoto. I don't mind this but the App Store says I need Lion to get the newest version on iPhoto.
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Thanks for your quick response.
My back up was: I copied the iPhoto Library icon from the Pictures folder located on my hard drive.
All I want to do is copy all the events back into iPhoto. I opened the Package Content but all I see is folders labelled with numbers, years, months, days etc. That will be an absolute nightmare to re organise!
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How can I restore an iPhoto library from Time Machine (ML) - when I TM doesn't see the backup??

Hi,
I recently did a Time Machine backup of my MacBook Pro (Mountain Lion) onto an external HDD. Around the time of the last backup, my system was behaving funny so I decided to rebuild the OS X.
Because the last TM backup was of a system that as mentioned, was somewhat 'unstable', and I only had a few backups available (didn't have TM running too long beforehand) - I decided not to use TM to 'restore' my system. I just did a clean install of ML and planned on pulling files over manually. I'd done this before and it worked a treat.
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I installed the new ML OS on my MacBook Pro and that was fine too. I was able to pull most of my files over by going into the TM backup and copying what I needed.
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Alas, I found that you need to do a 'restore' iPhoto library file from whithin TM. So I fired up TM and noticed that it didn't recognise the old backup file located on the HDD. I.e. when I turned on TM, pointed it to the external HDD (where I copied the previous backup to), it started a fresh backup.
So ... my question is - "How do I restore the iPhoto library if I can't get to it from TM?"
Thanks in advance to anyone that can help! The last 15 years of photos are stored in this library!

Hi ...
I've found a solution to my problem.
Time Machine locates extenal HDD backups differently depending if they were done via a network or via a USB/FireWire/Thunderbolt connection.
My initial backup was done via a direct Thunderbolt connection. I ran into the above issue b/c the second time when I tried looking for the backup file the HDD was conencted to my iMac and I was accessing it via a network conenction.
I simply connected the drive directly to my MacBook pro and ... voila. I was able to see the backup, select the iPhoto library and begin the restore.
Hope this helps.
BTW - I found this out by reading the 'blue box' selection on this page: http://pondini.org/TM/E2.html
(Thanks goes to Pondini!)

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OT

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No
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I followed Apple's support team's instruction to create iPhoto on the new external hard drive (My Passport) - and then drag and drop the existing iPhoto library onto it from the Master file.
Don't know who told you that but it would be difficult to be more wrong.
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
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3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
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Regards
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Multiple users on multiple macs sharing iPhoto Library

How can different family members (using personal logins) all access the same iPhoto library, regardless of which of our two iMacs they happen to be logged into?
I thought the solution would be as simple as:
Plug an external hard drive into the Airport Time Capsule.
Copy our iPhoto library onto the external hard drive.
Log in as each user, open iPhoto and point to the iPhoto library on the external hard drive.
I've searched the support forums and can't find a successful example of this. Does it work? If not, is there another elegant solution?
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Equipment
x2 iMacs (<12 months old) running the latest OSX and iPhoto software versions
2TB Airport Time Capsule (brand new) with a 1TB USB external hard drive plugged-in (not sure of the formatting).

How can different family members (using personal logins) all access the same iPhoto library, regardless of which of our two iMacs they happen to be logged into?
I thought the solution would be as simple as:
Plug an external hard drive into the Airport Time Capsule.
Copy our iPhoto library onto the external hard drive.
Log in as each user, open iPhoto and point to the iPhoto library on the external hard drive.
This cannot work, unfortunately, for several reasons:
iPhoto is strictly a single user database. Only one user at a time can open it.
An iPhoto library needs to be on a locally mounted volume. It cannot be on a network share.
The file system of the drive needs to be MacOS Extended (Journaled).
Apple's only recommendation to share an iPhoto library is this: iPhoto: Sharing libraries among multiple users
If you want to share photos and not the library, see this: iCloud: iCloud Photo Sharing FAQ
Trying to put the iPhoto or Aperture library on a network volume, will result in library corruption or data loss:
Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library

As a new member to the mac world could some please tell how i can get my imac, macbook and iPhone to share the same iPhoto library

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Regards
TD

How do I successfully upgrade my iPhoto Library from 7.1.5 to 9.5.1

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I've also tried copying the old library to an external hard disk, same results (on file systems formatted to ignore case as well as those formatted to respect case, in all cases it was a MacOS Extended partition).
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I've tried dragging individual folders of the Originals and Modified directories over. That got my photos transferred, but the events were all messed up and the assiciation between the Original and Modified photos was lost. Since I have 43,995 photos, 23747 of which have been modified, I don't find this to be an acceptable migration path.
I tried posting this to another thread on failure of iPhoto to upgrade properly to Mavericks, but was requested to post a new thread due to protocol in these forums, so here is the new thread after making an admittedly snarky comment that Apple totally dropped the ball on this upgrade path and that it totally doesn't work. It should be this hard for a clueful computer professional with 30 years of experience to get it right.
Yours In Frustration.

There's actually an option to iPhoto Library Manager that makes this all almost work flawlessly (and work well enough for me). With the exception of Photo Albums that the pictures are part of, if you select "Library > Rebuild Library..." and then select "Scavange Orphaned Photos" check box, then it will put all the Photos and Movies into the "Scavanged Photos" album. It matches the modified pictures to their originals. It preserves all the event names and photo groupings. All the meta-data I could spot check it got right (although with 44k pictures, I only checked a few). If you fail to select this option, however, it will find no pictures at all when it goes to rebuild the library (this was true of the small test libraries I tried as well as the big, monster 280GB library I just finished converting). The conversion process took 5 hours to run, but in the end produced a library my new iPhoto can read and that I can interact with. I'll be suggesting to the iPhoto Library Manager folks a notation that would estimate the number of Orphaned Photos and display that number as a hint to the user that the option would be useful.
Edited: Thanks to Old Toad and LarryHN for their help in finding which of the many options to transition this library to 9.5.1 I needed to use. Sorry if I took my frustration of the past several months out on you guys for generously trying to help me.

I opened original iPhoto Library (from iMac 10.8.5) on new MBP and now it won't open on iMac

As my main computer I use an iMac which is not yet updated to Mavericks and I'd rather not update for now. I recently bought a MBP retina which has Mavericks on it.
Whilst I was using the shared network to copy over some files to my new macbook I opening the iPhoto library off my iMac onto my MBP. Everything worked fine. However when I tried to open that library on my iMac it doesn't work. I just get a pop up saying:
The library “iPhoto Library” cannot be opened.
To open it, you must upgrade to the latest version of iPhoto.
Quit
I've tried updating but of course I cannot. I can't even double check what version of iPhoto I am running as everything is greyed out. When I go to the app store and click update I get:
Download an older version of this app?
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When I download the older version it doesn't do anything unfortunately. Is there a way to get my iphoto library back on my iMac as there's a LOT of images on there that I need.
Thanks

You will need to restore your iPhoto Library from a back up of your iMac prior to when you opened it on your new MBP Retina.
The iPhoto app for OS X Mavericks upgrades the iPhoto Library DB and you can't go back. There should have been a message displayed when you first tried opening it from your MBP Retina warning you that the libary will be upgraded.
So, as long as you have a back up of the library prior to opening it with an OS X Mavericks Mac, you can continue using it with your iMac running OS X Mountain Lion. What this means is, until you upgrade your iMac to OS X Mavericks and the newer version of iPhoto, you will have to maintain 2 iPhoto Libraries and not share it.

'Refreshing' iPhoto Library?

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