iphoto too bogged down to delete photos

[jacksavacaca]

I have about 2400 photos on iphoto on my G4 1.25mhz 17" imac. Although I put in an extra 512mb of ram, the computer essentially grinds to a halt when I open iphoto. I have no more slots to upgrade to, so I figure my only choice short of a new computer is to move some photos to my external drive. The problem is that even to highlight a photo and move it takes me about two minutes. I just can't see that I will be able to move enough photos to make a difference, without quitting my day job and doing nothing all day but painfully moving photos.

Is there some way to more quickly move individual photos, rather than drag and drop? I'd like to go through and pick the photos that I don't like , rather than, say, deleting 500 in a row blindly.

Also, is there any way to display all photos ranked by file size? When I view "details", all I get is a lot of subfiles, and I can only see file size for a given subfile, rather than having all 2400 images ranked in one group by size.

Finally, am I correct in my diagnosis that my cpu is overwhelmed because of too many photos? I watch the activity monitor and it goes haywire whenever I do anything on iphoto.

Thanks for any help

 

[ImperialX]

Can't you just drag the whole iPhoto Album into your External Drive, move it to a better Mac, then sort it out there, then move the photos you want back? It would be faster than doing it on your G4.

 

[cheffy]

That is very strange. I had 9000+ photos on my Powerbook G4/1g Ram. Everything ran fine in iphoto, a little slow sure but never any freezing issues. Of course once I burnt them to a dvd everything flew along quicker.

I’ve found that emptying the trash frequently helps speed things up.

 

[jacksavacaca]

Well, if I had a better mac, I wouldn't have this problem.

As for why it happens with only 2400 photos, I guess it's because some are big. My hope was to get rid of huge photos that I don't really need, but I the program is too overwhelmed and disabled to effectively do that. It doesn't quite freeze; it just get's so that any mouseclick takes 10-30 seconds. Frustrating.

 

[ImperialX]

Well, if I had a better mac, I wouldn't have this problem.

As for why it happens with only 2400 photos, I guess it's because some are big. My hope was to get rid of huge photos that I don't really need, but I the program is too overwhelmed and disabled to effectively do that. It doesn't quite freeze; it just get's so that any mouseclick takes 10-30 seconds. Frustrating.

What about borrowing one at a nearby Apple Store?

 

[harcosparky]

Couldn't you search through the photos in FINDER and delete them from there?

I have over 9,500 right now and I would say 50% are from a 6 Megapixel DSLR, 30% from 8 Megapixel, and the rest are scans from film negs.

Of course I am on a new iMac but the library started out on a G5 iMac/G4 Powerbook.

ALSO ---- you could split the library in two.

Inside the library there should be at least two folders to look at .... ORIGINALS ( everything you imported is in here ) and MODIFIED ( where everything you modified with iPhoto is kept )

Look for those two and do a GET INFO ..... compare and see how many are there versus how many modified.

If you look inside them you should see folders named with YEAR .... 2000 , 2001 , 2002 ....

They get sorted into folders by creation date. Inside each YEAR are more folders, depending on how you imported them

 

[ntrigue]

!Do Not Manually Delete As Suggested Above!

Sounds as though there is some corruption in your database. You must rebuild your iPhoto library. Hold Option + Coomand and Click iPhoto icon to launch the iPhoto rebuild options. Place a check next to every item that appears and press ok. This process will take approximately one hour.

Search "Rebuild iPhoto" and you will find an Apple Document

As always backup!

 

[harcosparky]

!Do Not Manually Delete As Suggested Above!

Sounds as though there is some corruption in your database. You must rebuild your iPhoto library. Hold Option + Coomand and Click iPhoto icon to launch the iPhoto rebuild options. Place a check next to every item that appears and press ok. This process will take approximately one hour.

Search "Rebuild iPhoto" and you will find an Apple Document

As always backup!

I'm curious, what happens adversely when you manually delete?

I've done it frequently with no obvious adverse effect.

Of course I guess having a corrputed database to begin with might cause a problem.

I usually do a manual delete if I move from one machine to another, such as when getting an new machine or if the library gets too fat.

When I restart iPhoto it tells me it cannot find the library, I point it to the new location and it runs for a bit but all seems OK.

Oh and of course everything is backed up .. iPhoto library is duplicated on 3 different drives.

It would kill me to lose 9,500+ image files.

 

[jacksavacaca]

well, I rebuilt the library

I was quite excited about it while it was happening. But it didn't make a difference. I can barely move the cursor on the right of the thumbnails - it takes about a minute for it to move. To delete one photo takes about thirty seconds. Again, I'm reluctant to delete photos when I'm not looking at the thumbnail because they might be good ones. I suppose I could write down the file numbers of the ones that can be thrown out, but I'd have to do that several thousand times.

I carted the whole damn machine to the mac store, by the way. They just said I should buy even more memory. When I did the research, it turns out that I can't put any more memory in. So I wasted that trip to the apple store. I would have thought the dude there would have come up with this library rebuilding idea, which seemed like a good idea.

 

[bluedoggiant]

Is this iPhoto 08? Do you have money for at least a a core duo imac? I would think you would see a lot of issues solved, faster processor, faster ram etc.

or even opt for a brand new al imac!!! or a white one, but core 2 duo