Transfer iphoto library to new iMac

I recently bought a new imac. I transferred my iphoto library from my old mac to an external hard drive. Then, I imported that library to iphoto '11. After, my library ballooned to over 19,000 photos with tons of duplicates and triplicates.

Any idea what I did wrong? Any ideas how I can fix the problem?

Yes and yes

1 - NEVER import an iPhoto library into another iPhoto library - it does not work and creates massive duplications of photos - two or three different versions of each photo

2 - you simply move your iPhoto library to the new machine and let iPhoto open and upgrade it - so delete the iPhoto library on your new machine that you imported into (do not empty the trash until you complete the transfer) and Connect the two Macs together (network, firewire target mode, etc) or use a external drive to transfer the library and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity from the old Mac to the pictures folder of the new Mac - launch iPhoto on the new mac and it will open the library and convert it as needed and you will be ready move forward.

if you want to use the old library on the external drive with an older version be careful not to upgrade it as there is no way to go back

LN

LN

im want to make sure I do this correctly the first time
i to have just got a new imac, when using the old imac i moved my iphoto library and itunes to an external drive and now I want to bring them back from the external to the new imac drive
based on the info in this tread I click on the external drive then click on iphoto library, drag to the picture folder on the new imac. wait till it copies over then click on iphoto on the doc and all will be well???
pls advise if above steps are correct
cheers
Sean

Correct.

Regards

TD

thanks all well with iphoto

Cheers Prawn

To clarify your instructions further . . .

I'm the guy everyone cringes about in disbelief for having not backed-up his MacBook -- the dope who just learned the hard way, after paying a king's ransom to recover critical business and personal data from a catastrophic HD failure. As such, I need to reimport my prior iPhoto content from the external drive on which my recovered files are located.

Will the import method set forth herein ALSO reinstate all the original iPhoto face tags, location tags, event categorizations, et. al., for which I labored at least 8-10 hours to painstakingly configure on my prior hard drive? If additional setting files are required, can you explain how I could import them, as well? If a seamless import of my prior iPhoto content and related tags/settings is possible, it will spare me a day's work to have to do it all over again . . . for which I will sing your praises, while bowing at your feet like the dumb dog I am. 🙂

Thanks,
Scott

Basically unless you can recover your entire iPhoto library intact as a single entity you will lose everything you have done and start over with the original photos - while I guess it is theoretically possible to manually recreate a valid iPhoto library it just can not be done - the content and structure must be totally unchanged from the original to work -- hence the criticality of a good backup

So your choices are restoring the entire iPhoto library exactly as it was or creating a new one and importing the original photos into it and doing all of the editing, tagging, etc work again

LN

Thanks for your prompt response, Larry.

Not quite the news I had hope for. However, if you would be kind enough to detail how I might be able to restore the entire iPhoto library exactly as it was, I'd like to give it a shot.

Thanks,
Scott

I have a related question. What I want to do is copy my iPhoto library to an external hard drive then be able to use it on any of my three Macs (office, home, and Air), never copying it to any of the machines. The point is to be able to import and edit photos only once, but access all anywhere, any time. It seems like this same approach should work, just without copying them to a new machine, but I'm wondering if anyone has tried this or has an opinion?

Thanks in advance.

Yes. This is easy. Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and set to ignore permissions.

1. Quit iPhoto

2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.

3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library. Repeat for each machine.

4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.

A couple of notes:

Remember that if you launch iPhoto on a machine when the drive is not connected it will create a new Library, so when you do connect the drive repeat step three

You'll need to have the same version of iPhoto on each machine.

Regards

TD

Use your backup up software to restore the backed up file

LN

I did ok at the transfer from of iphoto from my old external drive to my new imac
All ok and worked well.
Then I wanted to put my wife's iphoto's onto the new imac so that we had all family photos on the one computer.
I connected the new external drive to the imac, opened it , found the iphoto library and copied it to my desk top.
once do copied it to my iphoto library on the new imac.
issue is instead of my 15000 photos + my wife's 25000 i now have some 149900 photos on my new imac.
I photo now is slow and freezes a lot
what can i do to:
1) get back to my original 15000 photos
or fix the problem?
Thanks
Sean

See my reply to your duplicate post.