I need help with iPhoto

[Rolacoy]

I am not sure where to ask questions about iPhoto. I lost about half of the 10,000 photos that I had, because I changed out my internal hard drive. I just did not understand where the pictures were on the computer. I thought they were in folders someplace on the computer. A few days ago a friend told me that they are all in the iPhoto file. I thought it just was the internal address file for the pictures in the folder someplace.

In the last couple of days I have been using iPhoto Library Manager to merge the libraries. Now I am back to almost 12,000 photos. A lot of them are duplicates. Yes, I did mark the box to not merge duplicates. But it still merged a lot of duplicates.

Question 1: there must be a way to run a program that will look at the photos and get rid of duplicates.

Question 2: How do I delete the Albums, some of them have 4 or 5 instances in the Albums column?

Question 3: If this is not the place to ask these questions where do I go?

In the past I used the Apple forum, but can no longer locate it, what happened to it?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Apple fanboy]

I am not sure where to ask questions about iPhoto. I lost about half of the 10,000 photos that I had, because I changed out my internal hard drive. I just did not understand where the pictures were on the computer. I thought they were in folders someplace on the computer. A few days ago a friend told me that they are all in the iPhoto file. I thought it just was the internal address file for the pictures in the folder someplace.

In the last couple of days I have been using iPhoto Library Manager to merge the libraries. Now I am back to almost 12,000 photos. A lot of them are duplicates. Yes, I did mark the box to not merge duplicates. But it still merged a lot of duplicates.

Question 1: there must be a way to run a program that will look at the photos and get rid of duplicates.

Question 2: How do I delete the Albums, some of them have 4 or 5 instances in the Albums column?

Question 3: If this is not the place to ask these questions where do I go?

In the past I used the Apple forum, but can no longer locate it, what happened to it?

Thanks for any help.

You can download an app that will check for iPhoto duplicates and remove them. Can't remember the name of mine, but I think it was something like iPhoto duplicates (sorry not on my Mac at the moment). This should help.

We get lots of iPhoto question's in the digital photography forum. Most of us use Apperture or Lightroom.
Other places to ask might be https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/2/

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Rolacoy, your photos may be in the iPhoto library, or they may be in their original folders, or they may be in both, it depends how you set iPhoto up.

If you look in preferences>advanced the first box is "copy items to iPhoto library".

If its ticked, then when you import photos they still remain in the original folder, and get copied into the iPhoto library and any edits you make act upon the copy in the library only, and whatever you do to your photos in iPhoto does not touch the originals.

If the box is unticked then the iPhoto library is just a pointer to the photos in their original folders and is empty of photos.


And if you changed the tick at some point, you have a mixture. IMO its best to have one or the other to avoid confusion. If they are all in one place, the iPhoto library, its easier to back up and know its all safe.

There is an app which will look for and remove duplicates. And lets be clear when you say that there are the same photos in many albums, do you really mean album and not event?

Because an album just holds pointers to the original photo. So one photo can be in say 10 albums, but there is just the one original. You could for example have a picture of a car on a beach in your "beaches" album and the same in your "cars" album but that picture only exists once. Its only photos in events that are really duplicated.

I dont think there is any way of sorting out multiple photos in albums, other than manually, because that's how its meant to be.

p.s. See post 2 in this thread which explains it nicely https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1582962/

 

[Rolacoy]

I have not been able to get back on iPhoto, I have preparing for a meeting. I am happy to know most all of my photos still exist. Your answeres will help me fix the mess I have got myself into. iPhoto is confusing.