Why does iPhoto 11 show both modified and original photo files for items I've never modified?

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Level 1

8 points

Why does iPhoto 11 show both modified and original photo files for items I've never modified?

I have been looking through some recent photos and noticed that File > Reveal in Finder displays a modified and an original file for images I've never modified. The originals are in subdirectory iphoto > Masters and the Modified files are in subdir iphoto > previews. This appears to happen strictly with photos taken on my iphone. Any ideas? It's eating up a fair amount of HD space, for no reason as far as I can tell.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.0.1

Posted on Feb 17, 2012 1:41 PM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Feb 17, 2012 1:49 PM in response to joeyb

1 - it is advised to not go into the iPhoto library - there is no reason to and there are no user servicable parts in it

2 - the most common cause of un-expected "modified" versions is having the autorotate feature set on your camera - this causes a rotate flag to be set so that when yu import iPhoto does that and as always keeps the original and keeps the rotated version as mopdified

LN

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Answer 2

joeyb Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 17, 2012 1:58 PM in response to LarryHN

#1 is patently untrue; I go in there all the time via File > Reveal in Finder so that I can grab images to pull into other applications, mail clients etc.

#2 - I thought maybe that was it too but it's on images both vertical as well as horizontal. There's even images in there that are just still frames of videos taken on iphone.

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Answer 3

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Feb 17, 2012 2:21 PM in response to joeyb

#1 is patently untrue; I go in there all the time via File > Reveal in Finder so that I can grab images to pull into other applications, mail clients etc.

Actually it is patently true - what you are doing is not supported, is not necessary and is dangerous - you should only access the photos using the supported methods

#2 - I thought maybe that was it too but it's on images both vertical as well as horizontal. There's even images in there that are just still frames of videos taken on iphone.

2 - the most common cause of un-expected "modified" versions is having the autorotate feature set on your camera - this causes a rotate flag to be set so that when yu import iPhoto does that and as always keeps the original and keeps the rotated version as mopdified

Given that you provided no information about your work flow one can only guess at common reasons

The jpeg preview of each video is also a modified version - as to why both vertical (portrait) and horizonal (Landscape) photos would have modified versions more information would be needed - the most likely cause is that you have made changes of some sort to them

LN

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Answer 4

joeyb Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 17, 2012 2:36 PM in response to LarryHN

I was clear in my inital post that this is happening to images which I haven't modified so that is not the 'most likely cause.' All I'm doing is importing photos from my iphone into iphoto. For some reason unmodified photos have a 'modified' version with identical filesizes to the originals in subfolders (iphoto > previews > dates > then another subfolder with a long string of numbers then the images themselves)

Also don't condescend to me and tell me I'm doing something 'dangerous' just to get me to click over to your blog (which btw doesn't include anything about iPhoto 11). I'm curious as to how using a feature provided by the program itself - File > Reveal in Finder - could be 'dangerous'. I'm not an idiot, I know how to go into a folder that contains nothing but .jpgs and copy one of them out or attach it to an email without being 'dangerous.'

If you don't know the answer that's cool; it's not a huge issue, I just don't like having duplicate files eating up HD space for no reason.

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Answer 5

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,402 points

Feb 17, 2012 3:23 PM in response to joeyb

Simply, the reason iPhoto is creating a Preview for these files is because it's seeing an edit or some Exif display tag (such as auto-rotate, but there are others). You need to figure out why that is. Then you'll know what to do about it.

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