i have over 6,000 photos in iphoto and recently the program has been fucking up a lot

i went through and deleted a bunch of duplicate pics and pics i didnt want or need

then they all showed back up and my deletion of almost 1,000 pics was for nothing

now when i'm scrolling through my photos, sometimes the thumbnail shows a different pic

example: the actual picture is of my cat, but the thumbnail shows rome, but when i enlarge the pic it shows the bigger pic of the cat

wtf??

the main reason i made the switch to mac was because i lost all my photos about 2 years ago on both of my pcs and i gave up.

i searched google and didnt come up with much. if nothing else, i'm looking for a suggestion for another program i could use to organize and edit my photos-- or how i can make some of my current problems either go away or minimize them

thanks in advance

[Edited on September 23, 2006 at 4:40 PM. Reason : kjghhg]

9/23/2006 4:39:39 PM

6000 photos... ..one for each day you lived on this planet?

9/23/2006 4:42:04 PM

9/23/2006 4:42:35 PM

i just opened it again and for the second time in 24 hours it asked me to rebuild my thumbnail caches to protect my photos

wtf?? i'm scared

yeah 6000 pics-- i travel a lot

9/23/2006 4:47:57 PM

Are you using the latest version?

9/23/2006 5:00:00 PM

^

9/23/2006 5:02:37 PM

1) iphoto f's up when you get too many pictures in one library. I don't know what the magic number, but i image 6000 is pushing it. so, try to seperate your photos into a few main libraries. with maybe 1500 or less photos in each.
To create new libraries and move pictures between them, download iPhoto Library Manager - http://homepage.mac.com/bwebster/iphotolibrarymanager.html
with that, you can create new libraries and drag/drop albums between libraries.
To switch between libraries when opening, there are several ways -
a) hold down CMD when starting iPhoto. That will allow you to select a library via the finder
b) use iPhoto Library Manager to set the "current" library, then launch iPhoto
c) download iPhoto Buddy http://www.iphotobuddy.com/ and use it to manage your libraries (it has a nicer interface than Library Manager, but has fewer features overall)

2) download iPhoto Diet and run that on all your libraries
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~fuhrer/personal/freestuff/iphotodiet/
it will go through your whole library and reduce the overall size using several methods, like deleting duplicates, deleting originals (i.e. when you crop or edit a photo, the original is still saved, in addition to the cropped version), deleting cached thumbnails (may get rid of your wrong-thumbnail problem) and emptying the trash. It will also help organize pictures by identifying which pictures aren't in an album. If you have a huge library, you should let iPhoto Diet run overnight because it takes over control of the interface, so you can't really do anything else when it's running.

9/23/2006 5:34:33 PM

^ this is exactly what i was looking for, thanks a lot

i was about to start a project and scan in all my old pics would would likely add a significant amount to my existing 6000+ collection

i'm in the process of rebuilding my photo library. i am taking all the photos and putting them into desktop folders then burning them onto CDs then putting them back into the library on named rolls so they're more organized-- because this wasnt done when i started

i'll def incorporate the different library things

i had no idea that was possible

thanks!

9/23/2006 6:18:01 PM

I thought that the new iPhoto could handle huge amounts of pictures, something like 100,000+?

9/23/2006 7:11:12 PM

"Did I tell you this guy was bonkos?!"

9/23/2006 7:42:13 PM

Supposedly iPhoto 2006 can support up to 250,000 photos.

When you delete pictures from iPhoto.. make sure you empty iPhoto's trash.
It's in iPhoto's menu.

9/23/2006 10:35:25 PM

^ thanks for the tip

i'm in the process of backing up all my photos on CDs before i delete everything in iphoto (including the trash) and start from scratch

250,000 pictures as a limit should be ok

9/23/2006 11:23:31 PM

Quote :

"When you delete pictures from iPhoto.. make sure you empty iPhoto's trash."

yea thanks for that. I never noticed that it has its own trash bin. I had 500 pics in the trash

9/23/2006 11:36:52 PM

You can also do a full rebuild of any iPhoto Library by holding down Command+Option when you start iPhoto. It's always fixed any assorted weirdness I've had (although I've only got about half as many photos as you do )

9/23/2006 11:36:58 PM

i had over 2000 photos in the trash (i ended up with 3 copies of everything at some point... not sure how that happened)

i didnt realize it had its own trash bin either

hoprefully the rebuild and seperate library method will work

9/24/2006 12:21:01 AM

is there an option to NOT cache the thumbnails? I'd check if so

9/24/2006 3:28:21 AM

what does it mean to cache the thumbnails anyway?

it asked me if i wanted to then scared me by saying i could lose my pictures if i didnt

scare tactics

and yes you can decline the cache but the scare tactic worked and i do it everytime

9/24/2006 11:39:41 AM

Before you do anything, I would definitely backup your iPhoto folder/library.

9/24/2006 12:03:04 PM

caching thumbnails saves a static database of miniture copies of all your pictures that's "mated" to your directory of pictures. the idea is that when you open a dir/gallery it won't take so long to create thumbnails.

9/24/2006 12:09:46 PM

^^ i did

i burnt all my pics onto CDs and i'm deleting the whole library and starting over again

while i was backing up the library i found more duplicates that i didnt know about-- soo annoying!

9/24/2006 12:22:29 PM