iPhoto Library Screwed
I basically screwed up my iPhoto library and spent the past two nights rebuilding it.
The main reason for the catastrophic failure was the inconsistent way I was managing the photos. I could not make up my mind between allowing iPhoto to copy photos into it’s photo package or whether it should simply “refer” to photos found in my library. So, I had photos in both places.
For a while, this worked fine. However, I began to worry about duplicates so I went on a duplicate file witch hunt and found that I had loads of duplicate files haunting my cramped 500GB drive.
Yes, I’m suffering.
However, most duplicate file finders are essentially brain dead. In my head, finding and effectively removing hundreds or thousands of duplicates in tens of thousands of files is impossible with any of the tools I’ve found. The reason for this is because tools are only good enough to list the duplicates side by side, but unable to give you automation commands such as allowing you to eliminate all duplicates found in a particular directory.
For instance, you might get a duplicate report like so:
iPhoto Library:Originals:2007:Marco’s 4th Birthday:DSC05678.jpg iPhoto Library:Originals:2007:Marco’s 4th Birthday 2:DSC05678.jpg iPhoto Library:Originals:2007:Marco’s 4th Birthday:DSC05679.jpg iPhoto Library:Originals:2007:Marco’s 4th Birthday 2:DSC05679.jpg iPhoto Library:Originals:2007:Marco’s 4th Birthday:DSC05680.jpg iPhoto Library:Originals:2007:Marco’s 4th Birthday 2:DSC05680.jpg iPhoto Library:Originals:2007:Marco’s 4th Birthday:DSC05681.jpg iPhoto Library:Originals:2007:Marco’s 4th Birthday 2:DSC05681.jpg
In this situation, “Marco’s 4th Birthday 2” is the folder that has the duplicate files. Imagine I had 90 files in this directory and I found duplicates in 300 similar folders.
Happy hunting.
First, the tools I’ve found generally only allow you to delete 1 duplicate record at a time. I could delete the duplicate directory but it might just have some files that are unique. Plus, I generally can’t delete the directory right form the GUI, I have to go back to Finder, navigate there, delete it, and re-do my duplicate file search to trim down the list.
Repeat until done.
Second, if I could select one duplicate and simply tell the tool “Delete all duplicates in the parent directory” we’d be done. Extra credit for nixing the directory if all files wind up being nuked.
Oh, but I digress.
I stupidly tried to consolidate and settle on storing all photos within iPhoto. Hoping that iPhoto would detect the dupes. It seemed to have this functionality, but it simply did not work.
(Sample duplicate photo dialog)
I somehow wound up in a situation where half of my files were symbolic links and none of them pointed to a valid location. So… I essentially failed at this task.
I then tried to hold down Ctrl+Command or perhaps Option+Command when iPhoto started in an effort to correct this. Holding down these keys upon startup invokes an undocumented feature that screwed up my library even more.
Yay Apple!
In the end, I decided to start over. I cracked open the iPhoto Library file (by Option+Click on he iPhoto Library file) and selected “Show Package Contents”.
I then copied the “Originals” directory to my desktop and deleted the iPhoto library. Yes, I lost any “modifications” that I made to the photos (such as brightness/contrast adjustments or cropping) but I could not give a rat’s ass at this point.
So, I fired up iPhoto again. It shook it’s head in surprise and wondered where the library file went. I instructed it to create a new empty library and off I went into a 2-hour import. 20 minutes of event auto-splitting later and I was back in business.