iPhoto & Orphaned Pictures

[Hoven]

Hi all!

I have a few iPhoto issues that I've had for a while (since I upgraded to v4) and I haven't really seemed to find the solutions (if there are any). I'm hoping someone here can help.

Here's the thing... I have about 1,200 pictures loaded into iPhoto, half of which are not in any album. I also have hundreds that are loaded onto the drive which may or may not have been loaded into iPhoto (many not loaded for sure).

So, I want to organize all these pics (the point of iPhoto, yes?) My problem is two fold: 1) what's in iPhoto and where and 2) what's outside iPhoto that hasn't been loaded?.

As for part one (what's already in iPhoto), I can't tell which pics are assigned to an album and which aren't (the one's in the Library which are not in any album I'm calling 'orphans'). So, is there a way to tell where pics has been assigned or which one's are not in any album yet? I'd love to do a "Get Info" on a pic and have it list the albums it appears in, if any... wouldn't that be a great feature?

As for part two, importing pics will create dups. If a pic had it's name changed in iPhoto, it doesn't change on the hard drive, so when I import a dup under it's original name, how can I match them up and remove one?
Maybe I'm going about this job the wrong way. If I arrange the library by date (View: Arrange Photos: By Date), is that the date the photo was taken or the the date it was imported into iPhoto? I'm trying to figure out how to get dups to display next to one another in the Library or somewhere.

That's it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

p.s. I still really, really hate that that there's no FIND command. If I'm organizing photos and I know what I'm looking for, say I want to FIND "IMAGE0028", isn't it stupid that I can't have iPhoto do that for me? How dumb is that??

 

[jxyama]

So, I want to organize all these pics (the point of iPhoto, yes?) My problem is two fold: 1) what's in iPhoto and where and 2) what's outside iPhoto that hasn't been loaded?.

As for part one (what's already in iPhoto), I can't tell which pics are assigned to an album and which aren't (the one's in the Library which are not in any album I'm calling 'orphans'). So, is there a way to tell where pics has been assigned or which one's are not in any album yet? I'd love to do a "Get Info" on a pic and have it list the albums it appears in, if any... wouldn't that be a great feature?

As for part two, importing pics will create dups. If a pic had it's name changed in iPhoto, it doesn't change on the hard drive, so when I import a dup under it's original name, how can I match them up and remove one?
Maybe I'm going about this job the wrong way. If I arrange the library by date (View: Arrange Photos: By Date), is that the date the photo was taken or the the date it was imported into iPhoto? I'm trying to figure out how to get dups to display next to one another in the Library or somewhere.

That's it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

p.s. I still really, really hate that that there's no FIND command. If I'm organizing photos and I know what I'm looking for, say I want to FIND "IMAGE0028", isn't it stupid that I can't have iPhoto do that for me? How dumb is that??

i'll try to answer some of the points the best i can...

if pic is in iPhoto, it will show up in the "Photo Library" in iPhoto. that's about the only way to tell if picture is in iPhoto or not. going through iPhoto folder on the HD using Finder is next to impossible.

as far as i know, i don't think there's a way to tell if a pic has been assigned to an album or not. what you can do is change something, like the title, of the picture while in album mode. that change will be reflected in the Photo Library so any pics without modifications - you know they aren't in any albums.

the date used to sort is when the pic is taken (if digital and imprinted with date/time) or when the pic is scanned (if film and scanned). so if you import and sort by date, duplicates should line up next to each other. also, you may or may not get a warning and an option to import or not import any duplicates iPhoto detects. i'm not sure if iPhoto will recognize duplicates if the name or orientations are changed, but it's worth a try...

good luck.

 

[Hoven]

Part 2...
So, as I'm playing around, I try to set up a Smart Album.
I'm assuming that files that have IMG or IMAG are straight from the camera and haven't been filed into an album yet. So I set up a Smart Album with a filter that says the Title starts with IMAG or IMG (see attachment one).

What I get is an album with every photo in the Library (Smart Album shows 1143 pics, total iPhoto count is 1143 (See attachment two).

Is this a bug or am I missing something here? I'm really getting quite frustrated by iPhoto. Maybe I just don't think like it wants me to work. I'd give anything to go back to the previous version.
Any suggestions for an alternative app to do the same thing would be appreciated as well.

Thanks!

 

[Hoven]

i'll try to answer some of the points the best i can...
[...]
as far as i know, i don't think there's a way to tell if a pic has been assigned to an album or not. what you can do is change something, like the title, of the picture while in album mode. that change will be reflected in the Photo Library so any pics without modifications - you know they aren't in any albums.

the date used to sort is when the pic is taken (if digital and imprinted with date/time) [...]
good luck.

Thanks for the help! I went to the Apple store in Columbus, OH today (Easton Town Center) and left unsatisfied and rather torked... the guy I talked to was no help at all. He made it pretty clear he wasn't interested enough in my problem to even think it through and actually said "I don't know, I don't do iPhoto." Not what I'd call an Apple Genius by any stretch of the imagination.

Sorry, enough ranting....

I guess I'm thrown by the fact the the Title isn't the Filename. You can't see the Filename from iPhoto, only the Title (although they are the same when you first import a pic).

However, It's an excellent suggestion to work inside-out! I knew I wasn't thinking right about the workflow for this task . I've been trying to work from the Library. However, I could add a keyword to every pic in an album and set up a Smart Album for pics that ARE NOT marked with the keyword (assuming I can get Smart Albums to work (see previous post)). Thanks!

As for the date, that's good to know that's it's the picture date (from my digital camera). I'm not worried then about dups if the date used is the photo date and not the import date... then they will appear next to each other and I can remove the dups.

Thanks again!!

 

[jxyama]

i've become a bit of an iPhoto guru since i got my Mac a year or so ago...

one suggestion i have for you is to go to a public library or borders and get the missing manual: iPhoto by david pogue. very good read.

however, i have found that while iPhoto is very good at what it does, if you want to extend or do a little quirky stuff, it's very inflexible - as you undoubtely have found out...

i know it's not a short term solution, but i'd go to apple.com and send suggestions. they may be addressed in the next version... ahh, i can only hope...