iPhoto duplicates

[javabear90]

Before I got iPhoto '04 I had several iPhoto libraires to ease the slowing. However now that it is faster I imported all of the photos and now i have duplicates of everything. There is a thumbnail image and the full size one. Then there are the originals and the thumbnails of those. So I have 4 and 5 copies of a lot of the images. So I'll cut to chase... How do I get rid of the duplicates. I would at least like to delete all of the thumbnails.

 

[jxyama]

thumbnails are not "duplicates" even if they "look" alike to us... so i am not sure how easy they would be to isolate, except for going through manually...

i'd start over, if possible. burn the library to CDs and import from those to consolidate into one library. (this is what i did when i made a similar transition from iPhoto 2 to iPhoto 4.)

i assume you simply dragged iPhoto 2 library folder (in Finder) to iPhoto 4..? that will grab every picture in those folders including, as you saw, all the thumbs and full pictures as well as "originals."

 

[javabear90]

accaully I just figured out away to sort them by name. And scicen the thumbnails are named just by numbers I could delete them. However I still have the problem of duplicates. I now, (after deleting the thumbnails) have ~1600 photos and many of them are duplicates.

 

[jxyama]

accaully I just figured out away to sort them by name. And scicen the thumbnails are named just by numbers I could delete them. However I still have the problem of duplicates. I now, (after deleting the thumbnails) have ~1600 photos and many of them are duplicates.

they aren't exact duplicates... whenever you make changes to pictures in iphoto (including rotations), iphoto keeps the original so you can "revert to the original." anyway, just something to note before you start deleting them...

btw, good job with thumbs. that's a good way to organize them...

 

[steve-not-jobs]

thumbnails are not "duplicates" even if they "look" alike to us... so i am not sure how easy they would be to isolate, except for going through manually...

i'd start over, if possible. burn the library to CDs and import from those to consolidate into one library. (this is what i did when i made a similar transition from iPhoto 2 to iPhoto 4.)

i assume you simply dragged iPhoto 2 library folder (in Finder) to iPhoto 4..? that will grab every picture in those folders including, as you saw, all the thumbs and full pictures as well as "originals."

I need to do this too - do you have to select each photo when you reimport them or do you import just the subdirectory (eg each month?)

 

[jxyama]

I need to do this too - do you have to select each photo when you reimport them or do you import just the subdirectory (eg each month?)

say you have two iPhoto libraries, A and B, and you want to bring all the photos in B into A.

launch iPhoto with library set to B. select the entire iPhoto library (on the list on the left) and burn a CD. this will burn a CD with all the pictures with all modifications intact, including names, dates and comments. (i am a bit fuzzy about the albums.)

relaunch iPhoto with library set to A. insert the CD. CD will show up on the list on the left. drag that CD to iPhoto library (A in this case). done. you may have to rebuild the albums, but i think that's a lot easier than having to erase all the duplicates and/or renaming all the pictures...

if library B doesn't fit into one CD, then choose some subset of the library, by month, if you wish...

 

[javabear90]

Could I export all photos from Library B into a folder and then import them into the other library. Or could I just import the Months indvidually ( there is only 2)
Thanks,
Ted

 

[jxyama]

Could I export all photos from Library B into a folder and then import them into the other library. Or could I just import the Months indvidually ( there is only 2)
Thanks,
Ted

you can, but then you'd lose any iPhoto related customizations such as comments. but if you don't have too many pics, then that's a quick and good way to consolidate libraries without introducing thumbs and duplicates.

 

[wPod]

i just had iphoto 2 crash and lose 90% of my photos (even thogh they were still in the iphoto folder of my home directory. upon importing them the same thing happened, i got many duplicates. i deleted iphoto and every preferance file that contained 'iphoto' then imported the same files from a backup. for some reason the same 90% of the photos that were gone when it crashed did not show up when i imported the back up copy. so there must be some file somewhere that does not say 'iphoto' that contains iphoto data. so i ended up painstakingly importing each individual picture. so man if im going to have similar importing problems with iPhoto 4. . . i dont want to rush out and buy iLife. i guess ill wait till i get a new mac and it comes free (which will be a while since i got a 12" PB not too long ago) im pretty disapointed in apple with iPhoto. . . it seems to be the one program that just doesnt flow as nicely as the rest of their software.

 

[jxyama]

i just had iphoto 2 crash and lose 90% of my photos (even thogh they were still in the iphoto folder of my home directory. upon importing them the same thing happened, i got many duplicates. i deleted iphoto and every preferance file that contained 'iphoto' then imported the same files from a backup. for some reason the same 90% of the photos that were gone when it crashed did not show up when i imported the back up copy. so there must be some file somewhere that does not say 'iphoto' that contains iphoto data. so i ended up painstakingly importing each individual picture. so man if im going to have similar importing problems with iPhoto 4. . . i dont want to rush out and buy iLife. i guess ill wait till i get a new mac and it comes free (which will be a while since i got a 12" PB not too long ago) im pretty disapointed in apple with iPhoto. . . it seems to be the one program that just doesnt flow as nicely as the rest of their software.

how did you back it up? external drive or CD made via iPhoto?

iphoto is notoriously picky about its hard-to-decode picture organization scheme. it is annoying and i can see how a crash could severely cripple it... to over-generalize a bit, any attempt to fix/modify anything within iPhoto Library without going through iPhoto is asking for trouble...

if you've backed up on an external drive, use iPhoto library manager and point at the backup as one of the libraries. iPhoto *should* be able to pull it up. once that's done, you can make CDs (via iPhoto) and restore to your main HD from there...

 

[javabear90]

yay

It's working! I exported the Photos into a folder, switched over to the other library and imported them. Unfortunatly iphoto doesn't seperate the thumbnails and the originals from the good copy.
-Ted

 

[jxyama]

It's working! I exported the Photos into a folder, switched over to the other library and imported them. Unfortunatly iphoto doesn't seperate the thumbnails and the originals from the good copy.
-Ted

i guess that's one way... but i've been recommending burning CDs because iPhoto burnt CDs will contain pretty much the exact copy of the photo library as iPhoto shows it. that's why importing from an iPhoto CD is a lot less painless...

edit: now that i've re-re-read your post, i think it's ok the way you did it. (in fact, i should try it with mine just to see how it works. did it preserve comments?) i think i'm being a bit over zealous about CDR backups...

 

[Inkmonkey]

i guess that's one way... but i've been recommending burning CDs because iPhoto burnt CDs will contain pretty much the exact copy of the photo library as iPhoto shows it. that's why importing from an iPhoto CD is a lot less painless...

edit: now that i've re-re-read your post, i think it's ok the way you did it. (in fact, i should try it with mine just to see how it works. did it preserve comments?) i think i'm being a bit over zealous about CDR backups...

I'm really confused in following many of these instructions. I'm not too smrt. Here's my dilemna:
How do I back-up my whole library to CD(s)? Be aware that not all of my pics will fit on 1 CD. Is there an easy way to do this within iPhoto 2?