Why don't my albums and book in iPhoto 5 appear in the iPhoto 6 library?

Question

I deliberately upgraded to OX10.4.9 so that I could get iLife 6 with iPhoto 6. Everything seemed fine until I realized that the albums and book I made in iPhoto 5 (but the book was not yet published) were no longer there. I can't find it anywhere in the libraries for my current iPhoto 6, and Spotlight can't find it on the computer. I do have the original photos in the Originals list, but in order to make the book I had to sort and weed out the pictures. Then I made custom captions for the book's pages. I was hoping to publish the book using the upgraded iPhoto6. Now it looks as if I will have to go through the whole process again.
Maybe there is hope because I did a back-up of my whole system on an external hard drive before I loaded in Tiger and the new iLife. But I don't know how to get the photo book out of there and export it to the iPhoto6 library.
What is the best way to get the book back----or is it possible at all?
PowerMac G4   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   733MHz, 640MB of RAM

Answer 1

valtuff:
Welcome to the Apple Discussions. Did you let iPhoto 6 do the conversion of the iPhoto 5 library? Do you still have a copy of the iPhoto 5 library. If so try the following;
1 - move the current V6 library folder to the desktop.
2 - copy the V5 library into your Pictures folder.
3 - download and run BatChmod on the iPhoto Library folder with the settings shown here, putting your administrator login name, long or short, in the owner and group sections. You can either type in the path to the folder or just drag the folder into that field.
4 - make sure you've updated iPhoto to 6.0.6. To do that you'll need to apply the updaters in the following order:
a. run the 6.0.4 updater
b. download and run the 6.0.5 updater (will only run on 6.0.4)
c. download and run the 6.0.6 updater (will only run on 6.0.5)
d. run Disk Utility and repair disk permissions.
That should give you a converted library with the book and albums intact.
The book and albums would be virtual entities and you wouldn't find them in Spotlight. But if they didn't get converted you'll have to recreate them from scratch.
Hint: I use iPhoto Library Manager and create a separate iPhoto library for books. I put the photos I want in the book in an album and then copy that album to the book library with iPLM. If I need more photos I copy them in a new album as the book progresses. Once the book is done and ordered I copy the book library folder intact to a CD. Then at a time in the future if I want to order another book just like it, I can. I just copy that library folder to the desktop, open it with iPhoto and order. It preserves the original book as ordered.
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 (requires Tiger), 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.