share iPhoto-library with other user account?

I believe that an external disk is the best way to share. be very wary of using Dropbox to share. SOme folks have found issues with libraries based there.

Thanks again Terence. But if I use an external disk (maybe on my Time Capsule?) then how would I back it up via Time Machine?

That's a setting in the Time Machine preferencepane. It varies depending on the version of the OS you have.

And you should not have your iPhoto library on the same disk drive as your time machine backup - if you do it is not possible to back it up - it must be on a different external drive that the TM backup

LN

So, that eliminates creating a disk image/partition on my Time Capsule (where my Time Machine backups are stored on the Data volume)?

It does not eliminate it - it means that if the TC failes your lose your backujp and you only copy of the iPhoto library which means you are 100% sure to lose your photos sooner or later

Foe me that would eliminate it - you have a choice to make - risk losting all your photos or purchase another external hard drive

And I am not sure that TM will even access files on its backup drive to make any backup of them - that would be a discussion for the TM forum

LN

What Lukemacdonald says fixed it for me. I had the Unix group thing already, I was just missing the chmod -R g+s. Once I did that, everything worked.

3) Open the terminal application. Type these commands in successively; each may take a few minutes to execute.

• chgrp -R photoshare ~/Pictures/

  Explanation: this sets the group ownership to photo share (http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fileowner.html)

• chmod -R g+rwx ~/Pictures/

  Explanation: this gives all members of the owner group read/write/execute permissions (http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fileowner.html)

• chmod -R g+s ~/Pictures/

  Explanation: this makes sure that the group ID is set on execution and that new photos added will be visible to all users (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/what-is-the-use-of-chmod- g-s-245762/)

I'm trying to do option #1 (just see the other user's photo galary but not edit) and I can't find in the new iPhoto version the preference to share (only see Cloud sharing which is not what I want to use). Am I missing something?

No, that was removed in iPhoto 11 v9.5

So how to I grab a few photos easily from one user account to another (I don't want to have to share the entire library) in the new version?

My iPhoto library is under users/shared/pictures and I can't do the first command of lukemacdonald's instructions:

Rosss-iMac:pictures Ross$ ls

iPhoto Library

Rosss-iMac:pictures Ross$ pwd

/users/shared/pictures

Rosss-iMac:pictures Ross$ chgrp -R /users/shared/pictures/

usage: chgrp [-fhv] [-R [-H | -L | -P]] group file ...

Rosss-iMac:pictures Ross$ chgrp -R photoshare /users/shared/pictures/

chgrp: /users/shared/pictures//.DS_Store: Operation not permitted

Rosss-iMac:pictures Ross$

What am I doing wrong? I'm not OSX expert or have much in the way of Linux experience. Should I move my iPhoto library to my user's Picture folder?

Fisrt, define a group in system preferences-> Users & Groups. You will use that group name when you issue the chgrp command. Your first attempt above didn't specify a groupname before the folder. Your second attempt didn't use sudo, and it's not clear if you've previously defined the group "photoshare" before you tried to assign it to the folder. Your third attempt suggest to me that you need ot use "sudo" to execute this command.

Proper chgrp syntax is:

chgrp <command line switches> <groupname> <path_to_file/folder>

You will also need to prefix your commands with "sudo" to execute the chgrp with root priveledges.

For example:

$ sudo chgrp -R <groupname> /users/shared/pictures

Thanks cpragman. I moved the folder from /users/shared/pictures to be under my account and it seems to all work now. Thanks all!

BTW, after moving the library to the new folder under my account name I did go back and test using sudo and it worked. I've docmented that in my notes for future reference. Thanks again cpragman.

While my wife can now access this shared iPhoto library, we're still seeing one problem: everytime the other account opens the library it says:

After clicking Repair, it prompts for my account's password (since I have admin privileges, I guess). Once the repair finishes, all works as expected in iPhoto and if the same account opens it again the error is not seen. However, when the other user account goes to open it they see the same thing.

I think the permissions on the containing folder are right - it has read/write listed for the new group, 'photoshare'. The only difference I see is that the folder permissions do not explicitly list my wife's user account as it does for mine.

Did I miss something?