SimonD

I'm trying to move my photo library from an external hard drive to my new iMac. Every time I drag a directory of photos into iPhoto it creates an "event" containing all of the pics and also sets up a separate event for each individual photo. I understand that iPhoto also creates a back-up file of every photo. Does this mean that I am creating four copies of each picture every time I do this?

I tried moving the entire library across in one move but it said that there was not enough disc space.

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance for any help.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Very easy this.

1. make sure iphoto is up to date

2. Attach hard drive to mac, it will show up

3. Then when iPhoto is open, simply use the Import to library command from the File menu

4. It will ask for the location of the folder that has the pictures in. Choose the top of the folder not each individual ones.

5. iPhoto will import every photo and yes it will create events based on the date stamp of the photos but dont worry the photos section has them all a single list.

JackClark

Try importing them rather than drag and drop.

SimonD

Weird. I used the import function but the same thing happened. I had an event for the group of 26 photos and 26 events each with two copies of the individual photos. When i moved these to trash there were 52 items in trash.
When I looked in Photos it also showed a group of 26 photos and pairs of individual photos.

I can go through all of the pictures doing this but it would take all day!

I searched a few forums yesterday which suggested that iPhoto makes back-up copies in the background that I can't see. I'm concerned that all this importing and deleting is using up huge amounts of disc space.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Trash the iphoto library which is located in your user folder/pictures/iphoto library

Trash the com.apple.iphoto.plist which is located in your user/library/preferences folder


Then holding down the alt key, launch iphoto. You will be prompted to create a new library.

Then using the import function import just a folder at a time if the photos are arranged like that in your pictures folder from the PC

See how the pictures arrive in iphoto

SimonD

I've already downloaded some photos direct from my camera. Will these be lost if I delete the iphoto library and com.apple.iphoto.plist?

I've had a look around and can see that I have thousands of photos under "all images" that are presumably the result of previous attempts to import. None of these are visible in iPhoto.
Apologies for my ignorance but I'm used to the file structure in windows and am having difficulty working out what I have actually imported.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

What version of OS are you running on your iMac and what version of iphoto.

On my iMac running 10.6 , I use iPhoto 11
On my mac in the pictures folder there is only one library and no other folder of pictures. The iphoto library is one huge database.

If you delete your library, yes you would lose all the photos that you have imported, downloaded etc. So I suggest you export the ones you need to keep into a single new folder on the desktop.

Then do as my previous instructions and start again with a fresh clean library.
1st import the exported photos. then try some of the photos from the PC

SimonD

Thanks for taking the time to help Tony.
Unfortunately, I've deleted the library and plist file, reloaded the exported photos and imported a directory from the external drive and the same thing has happened. I also tried it without reloading the exported files so that I was importing to a clean iPhoto but still the same happens.
Time to step away from the computer before something goes through the screen I think!!!

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Why are you importing a directory. On the pc you have my pictures folder yes ?
In that folder will be i guess a bunch of folders with different sets of photos in.
Simply import one folder at a time.

If you are trying to import from some third party photo solution on the pc then it may be screwing up things

SimonD

Bad wording on my part. I meant folder.
I have simply copied all the picture folders on our old PC onto an external hard drive and connected it up to the Mac. I've been copying one folder at a time with approx 20-30 pictures in each folder.