iPhoto Ate My Pictures

I updated to a new MacBook 13′ from a PowerBook 12′ and had some issues with the migration assistance. After some time as you can read here, I thought all was well and went about using my new MacBook.

The other day while importing some pictures, I decided to scroll up in my rather large iPhoto ‘roll’ list and look at some older photos. As I got closer to the top, I started noticing blank icons. Small gray squares with a dotted white outline where the pictures should be. The roll info was there, but the thumbnails were not (sorry, I did not screen grab this before I stared working on it.) Double clicking on the icon did nothing. The pictures here were simply not there. But why?

So I took out my old PowerBook 12′, and decided to re-import all those pictures by hand into iPhoto on the MacBook again. I mounted the PowerBook’s drive as a remote volume on my MacBook, went to iPhoto, and did an import of the iPhoto directory. This took a lot of time, and I was surprised to not EVER be told that I had duplicate photos, even though I know I did. After a long time, the import finished. But the pictures I wanted to see were still not in iPhoto on the MacBook. There were thousands of duplicates now, none of which I was warned about, because one picture was named ‘photoxxx.jpg’ and the other was simply ‘photoxxx’ so they had different names! Seriously Apple, these are different names because one machine has ‘Hide extensions’ set on? Suffice it to say that I now have a real mess on my hands that I will get into here later.

So, back on the PowerBook, I launched iPhoto and scrolled to the top of the roll list, and there were all the small little thumbnail picture smiling at me as I expected. Where, on the new machine, there was originally a dotted white blank square (I deleted all them), here was a thumbnail photo I expected to see. So I double clicked on one of them, and the little spinning icon stated to circle, and circle, and circle. The picture never appeared. It seems, that the photos do not actually exist on this machine either. WHAT? But I can see the photos, and I know I imported them on this machine. The interface lies?

After some searching and digging, I discovered and option I was not fully aware of inside iPhoto. Inside the preference of iPhoto, in the advanced tab, is a small check box that reads ‘Copy items to the iPhoto Library’ which was NOT checked on my 12′ PowerBook. Why, I am not sure, but because of this, the photos I was seeing did not actually live in the machine in the first place. But I had not discovered all of this quite yet.

OK, a little iPhoto lesson here. There is a good reason for that setting, and I hope by default it is set on, but you should go check anyway. This setting is here for several reasons. First for people who want to arrange their photos themselves in folders and such, this allows you to add photos to the library without the photo actually being copied or moved. OK, I get that. And secondly, as in my case, I had two Macs, and wanted to keep all my photos in one place and allow both Macs to use the same photos from the same location. So I must have turned it off to save local space a long time ago. Still OK with that, but a little help here Apple.

I forgot that once upon a time I had an external drive on a server (today you would have a NAS) and to gain space back on my small PowerBook drive, I moved all the photos onto that external drive. I must have switched this ‘copy’ setting off when I did that to make space on my machine. So all the photos I thought were on my PowerBook actually were not anymore, but the interface does not really tell me that, and I simply forgot. Also, some photos WHERE on the local drive to make things even more confusing. Also, it seems that iPhoto keeps a separate thumbnail photo locally so the pictures can be seen in iPhoto rolls when the actual source is ‘off line.’

During the migration, I am guessing the assistant moved the libraries over to my new machine, but, it seems, did not move over the thumbnail photos. It also must rebuild the library when done, and none of the pictures existed now, so nothing shows up in the library space but a blank square. I am guessing here, but it seems to make sense.

Now to the duplicates on my MacBook: I had to move the new ‘re-imported’ photos by hand to the same rolls as the already imported pictures to find duplicates. It was then easy to see that two pictures side by side were the same, so I started deleting some of the duplicates. Unfortunately, the interface does not tell you where the picture lives, so I just started deleting any duplicate. After a long time doing this, I was back, mostly, to where I was after the migration, so I thought, so I turned off the PowerBook, and started to look for the lost pictures elsewhere.
Some time later, I opened my MacBook again, and went to iPhoto. I double clicked on one of the photos (for which I had removed the duplicates) and I got the spinning circle of death again, followed some time later by a message that the remote volume could not be found. Oh crap! It seems, in deleting duplicates, I deleted the ‘local copy’ of the photo, and left in the library the ‘remote’ copy, the one that lived on my PowerBook, and that damn ‘Copy’ setting was still not turned on, so there was no local copy of the picture again.

What a mess I had now, some pictures that did exits on my hard drive, and some that live on the PowerBook, and no way to know by looking other than click on each picture one at a time. I have thousands of pics, and that gets to my gripe. The interface on iPhoto truly lacks for managing photos, especially on multiple drives, and needs a lot of work. When viewing a photo, nowhere does it indicate where that photo lives. You can see the photo name, but the path is not visible ANYWHERE. Had it been, I would have been able to delete the proper duplicates, the ones that iPhoto should have warned me about in the first place, that were on my PowerBook, and left my local copy intact.

Secondly, why are there not warnings when you think you are importing a photo, and actually, you are just adding an item pointer to the library? Apple software is supposed to be intuitive and easy to understand. Apple has ALWAYS copied a file when it came from a different drive or network, why not now? It copies when you import from a camera, but not from an external drive or server regardless of this setting? Confusing!

Thirdly, how about some indicators under the thumbnails to tell me the status of this picture? I can think of a number of indicators I would like to see, and I am sure many of you can think of more: Is it local or server (HD symbol or server symbol)? Is it on-line or off (Green dot or red dot)? They already have a movie icon, how about icons for JPEG or RAW? Seriously, if I had looked at my iPhoto library on the PowerBook, and seen an icon to indicate that the pictures shown were off-line and did not actually living on the computer, I would have known to look elsewhere for the pictures, not spending hours trying to figure out where they went. But seeing the photo in the library would seem to indicate that the photo existed on that machine, and this is not the case.

Lastly Apple, how about some real info here about the file? Not just the name, but the path to the file as well. Again, if I could see that the image source was not on the local machine, I would know what to do. And seriously, ‘Photo01.jpg’ of type JPEG, and ‘Photo01’ of type JPEG (where the file name actually IS ‘Photo01.jpg’ but hide extensions was enabled on one of the machine) might just be the same image, so warn me of duplicates here. This is just stupid.

Everyone else, take warning here. You might think you have all your pictures on your machine, but maybe you do not. Check that copy setting in preferences if you truly want you photos living on your local machine. Go back and double click on some old photos to see if they are really there. Lucky for me I have many backups (tape and disc) so I should (I hope) be able to recover all of the missing photos after I clean up my library. BTW, the photos were NOT in Time Machine since they never lived on my local drive, so you could loose many memories without even knowing it.

We need a little help here Apple. The interface needs some serious updates and the file storage problem needs to be addressed as well. And what is with hiding all the photos now inside a single library file now? If you have a setting to let people arrange photos in their own way, then at least go back to the folder method of storage. It was intuitive and easy to understand. How may novice users know how to see the contents of a ‘library’ file anyway?