iPhoto 2: Where's the iphoto library

B

biscotte

Music writer
Hi!

In iPhoto 1, one could actually locate the individual photos and the albums in a file named iPhoto Library situated in the Pictures folder of the User.

I just started using iPhoto 2 and not only can't I locate that folder but a search on my whole disk for an album I just created comes out empty!

Can anyone help me, please?

Thanks!


biscotte
 
not sure what happened to you , but my iphoto librairy is still right where it was. i would guess your pics are still there somewhere. see this thread for a possible solution.
 
Obviously, edX, they're there, somewhere, since I can shut down the computer (iBook), turn it on again, and iPhoto 2 opens with the photos and albums intact. But a search on the whole disk for the name of an album or even the name of a photo doesn't get me anything.

I'm lost, really!
 
Files in iPhoto have "abnormal" names like 007_01A.jpg, this is what you have to look for. And the files are in folders that are named with the year (folder name: "2002").
 
must be a pref or something because all mine get named 'image001' etc. but yea, searching for your 2002 or 2003 folder might be a good start.
 
Unfortunately, I've tried searching by year also. Nothing works. The photos seem not to exist anywhere, but they appear when I open iPhoto 2.

I might resolve myself to re-install iPhoto in the hope that everything will come back to normal.

But before I do, I'll wait a bit in case one of you, guys, comes up with a miracle!
Until then, thanks a lot edX and chevy for your help!


biscotte
 
did you try to look for all ".jpg" files on your disk ?
did you try in all partitions ?
did you start searching from to level ?
 
I just had an idea. If I'm not mistaken, when one creates an album and takes photos from the main library and transfers them to an album, iPhoto creates aliases of the originals and places them in these albums.

Well, believe it or not, I do not have a single alias ending with .jpg on my entire disk. But yet, in iPhoto, I have 2 albums containing photos taken from the main iPhoto library whose namesall end in .jpg

Thought i'd tell you. Personnaly, I don't understand at all what's going on.

Let the comments and suggestions come in, though. I don't feel as lonely with my weird problem!


biscotte
 
have you done something as simple as running a disk repair program? sometimes files 'disappear' when directories or volume structures become corrupted. disk utility or fsck is a good place to start, or maybe diskwarrior or techtool pro if that doesn't work.

it might help if you give us more info about your setup - similar to what i have in my signiture. the more we know, the more we know about where you might look.
 
Originally posted by biscotte
I just had an idea. If I'm not mistaken, when one creates an album and takes photos from the main library and transfers them to an album, iPhoto creates aliases of the originals and places them in these albums.
Click to expand...
An Album is nothing more than a XML file on your disk. Pictures in an album are linked inside this XML, there are no Aliases on disk.
 
Hi!

Just got up and have to leave soon. I could not resist though consulting my computer to see if I had any new answers.

Thank you edX and Tigger. I can't do anything now, but as soon as I'm back, I will try a disk repair program and let you know what happens.

Thanks again!


biscotte
 
I'm back! Sorry for the delay!

Just to tell you that I have tried Apple disk repair program as suggested by edX. It did not detect anything wrong. I suppose I should get DiskWarrior. I've heard a lot of good about it.

Also, since I'm here, Tigger, I just want to tell you that I checked on another computer (iMac DV Graphite) where I still have iPhoto 1.1 installed and since the original photos all sit on a FireWire external HD, all the files in the iPhoto Library are aliases.

And to finish, I have another problem! I thought one way to maybe solve my problem would be to re-install iPhoto 2. The copy I have now was updated and installed through the software update application. Now, I don't know how to go at it. I thought I could just go to the OSX HD/Library/Receipts and doubleclick on iPhoto.pkg. But then I get an alert box saying (Litteral translation from french): It is impossible to open the "iPhoto" installation package... the selected pack has been received.

So, it's not as simple as I thought!

If someone could help me, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you!


biscotte
 
Well folks,

I'm proud to say that I might have solved my big problem... and in a simple way too!

I am not exactly a nerd familiar with OS X (I'm a 63 year old music writer) but, I suddenly remembered reading somewhere that the "com.apple.iPhoto.plist" file in the file HD/Users/Me/Library/Preferences/ had to do with the settings of the application and I thought it might force iPhoto to kinda start from scratch. So I got rid of it and, so far, everything seems back to normal. iPhoto 2 opened an iPhoto Library (which it didn't before) and started behaving just like iPhoto 1.

I'll play with it for a while before I cry Victory. And if anything unexpected happens, I'll let you know. But, so far... so good!

Thank you all!


biscotte
 
so are the files physically findable now? can you find them in the iphoto library folder again? i thought this was the real issue all along. not whether iphoto worked or not. at any rate, hope all is well and glad you're back in business. :)
 
biscotte,

I've got the same problem. When I start iPhoto it prompts me with:

missingiphotolibrary.jpg


However the other day my iPhoto worked fine. It loaded my album without any problem.

Quote by Tigger:
"An Album is nothing more than a XML file on your disk.:

I did come across this XML file in ~/Library/iApps/iPhoto/AlbumData.xml

But to no avail, when i attempt to select the xml file it is greyed out, thus not allowing me to select it.

Any ideas? I'd rather not have to start over.

Thanks,
Dixon
 
You're right edX, that was the issue, and yes, everything is back to normal, my Pictures folder contains an "iPhoto Library" folder with all the photos in it. Thanks again for your help and the help of everybody else who cared about my problem.

As for you, dixonbm, the first thing I think you should do is try and locate this "iPhoto Library" folder, which should be in ~/Pictures folder.

This "iPhoto Library" folder should contain folders of your photos organized by years, the "AlbumData.xml" file, a folder named "Albums" containing all your albums and two files named "Dir.data" and "Library.data".

Not being able to find this iPhoto Library folder is exactly the problem I had before. And as you know by now, by getting rid of the "com.apple.iPhoto.plist" file, I forced iPhoto 2 to create a new one which settled everything.

Let me know how you're doing.


biscotte
 
Originally posted by biscotte
the first thing I think you should do is try and locate this "iPhoto Library" folder, which should be in ~/Pictures folder.
Click to expand...


I was making things to complicated trying to select the xml file in the Library folder. I selected the iphoto library in ~/Pictures and it worked great.

Thanks for the tip.

-Dixon
 
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