iPhoto library's modified folder..

[Xylian]

Hi,
today I was looking for 1-2 GB of space that "disappeared" from my hard disk after synchronizing part of my iPhoto '09 library with my iPhone... I've found (I think) that it saved a copy of the foto in the iPod Photo Cache folder within the iPhoto library, so I've solved the mystery... but then, I've noticed also a 1.18 GB folder named Modified within the iPhoto library.... I'm sure I've not modified more than 20-30 photos within iPhoto (I've rotated some images) and changed the location or date settings of 2-3 events, but there are about 800 photos within the Modified forlder... what is iPhoto doing? Does it like to duplicate photos even if it is not necessary...? Is there a way to avoid the duplication (can I tell it to modify originals instead of duplicating them?) or at least a way to consolidate the changes by moving the modified versions of the photos onto the original ones?

Thank you in advance for any help!

 

[telecomm]

Is there a way to avoid the duplication (can I tell it to modify originals instead of duplicating them?)

No, and

a way to consolidate the changes by moving the modified versions of the photos onto the original ones?

No.

The way iPhoto handles changes makes sense. If you get one of the myriad of better image manipulation programs and you actually do want to make more serious edits later on, you'll want the originals intact. iPhoto makes one copy of your image each time you make a change. (If you then make more changes, iPhoto replaces the first copy with another, so there's always only one modified version of your photo, and you've always got a "final image" available.)

I'm not sure how syncing to an iPhone changes things, but I suspect iPhoto might simply resize your images appropriately (which may explain the extra modified images you're seeing).

By the way, it's really not a good idea to mess around inside the folder structure of iPhoto. There's nothing you can do in there that you can't do through the iPhoto interface, with the exception of messing things up like this.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Do not ever try and manually manage your iPhoto folder. It's doing it's job just right and you'll do nothing but screw your library up.

If you don't like the way iPhoto handles photo manipulation (the fact that it doesn't destroy your originals is a god send) then don't use iPhoto.

In the grand scheme of things hard drive space is incredibly cheap. losing some gigs because your photos are duplicated when they're modified is far from a problem. Especially now that you can get hard disks that are well under a gigabyte per dollar.

 

[Xylian]

Do not ever try and manually manage your iPhoto folder. It's doing it's job just right and you'll do nothing but screw your library up.

If you don't like the way iPhoto handles photo manipulation (the fact that it doesn't destroy your originals is a god send) then don't use iPhoto.

In the grand scheme of things hard drive space is incredibly cheap. losing some gigs because your photos are duplicated when they're modified is far from a problem. Especially now that you can get hard disks that are well under a gigabyte per dollar.

Thank you for your answers.. I was not going to do anything by hand within the iphoto library folder, I was just trying to understand how it was eating up space... It's a beautiful thing that it preserves originals but 1) I'd like to have a choice (make a copy or modify original photos?), 2) it should give you the option to consolidate the changes, 3) it makes copies of the original for what? I did not change or manipulate 800 images, so it must have decided by itself to make some changes.. I have no other explainations.. Finally 4) we all know that disk storage is cheap, but this does not mean that we should waste space for things we do not need (as unnecessary copies when we do not need originals)... Btw, I just like to know how the iLife suite works under te cover and I try (with your help) to understand the logic that lies behind her behavior

ps: the iPhone syncing mystery was already solved, as I said, iphoto makes resized copies of the photos uploaded to te iPhone... Uh, if you decide to stop syncing some photos previously synced with the iPhone, the resized copies are not deleted from your hard drive.. Again, few space lost, but it should be avoided in my opinion ;-)