iPhoto images offline after move, but locatable in Finder

What you're seeing in the Finder are the thumbnails. Not the original files.

This is the correct way to use Photoshop with iPHoto:

Using Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) as Your Editor of Choice in iPhoto.

1 - select Photoshop as your editor of choice in iPhoto's General Preference Section's under the "Edit photo:" menu.

Click to view full size

2 - double click on the thumbnail in iPhoto to open it in Photoshop. When you're finished editing click on the Save button. If you immediately get the JPEG Options window make your selection (Baseline standard seems to be the most compatible jpeg format) and click on the OK button. Your done. 3 - however, if you get the navigation window

Click to view full size

that indicates that PS wants to save it as a PS formatted file. You'll need to either select JPEG from the menu and save (top image) or click on the desktop in the Navigation window (bottom image) and save it to the desktop for importing as a new photo.

This method will let iPhoto know that the photo has been editied and will update the thumbnail file to reflect the edit..

NOTE: With Photoshop Elements 9 the Saving File preferences should be configured as shown:

Click to view full size

I also suggest the Maximize PSD File Compatabilty be set to Always. In PSE’s General preference pane set the Color Picker to Apple as shown:

Click to view full size

NOTE: If you want to use both iPhoto's editing mode and PS without having to go back and forth to the Preference pane, once you've selected PS as your editor of choice, reset the Preferences back to "Open in main window". That will let you either edit in iPhoto (double click on the thumbnail) or in PS (Control-click on the thumbnail and seledt "Edit in external editor" in the Contextual menu). This way you get the best of both worlds.

You would be much better off using a "managed" library on the EHD and have a smaller "traveling" library on the Air. You could use iPhoto Library Manager to copy events and/or albums between the two libraries as needed and that would also include keywords, titles, comments and places. That way you could use Photoshp in your Air library and then transfer the photos back to the main library on the EHD.

You might be able to create a new, empty library on the EHD and use iPLM to copy/merge your current library into the new one with the iPhoto preference set to copy photos into the library during import. That will give you an managed library except for the keepsakes, books, slideshows, etc.

I think iPhoto can copy a reference library into a new, managed library. Give it a try with one or two events and see if I'm right.

OT

I just tried copying the events of my referenced library into a new managed library with iPhoto Library Manager and it all went as expected. The referenced soruce files were imported into the new library as the new masters. But don't use the Merge option. Do it like shown in this screenshot:

Drag the Events from your alias library onto the new library's icon in the left hand pane.

You can create the new managed library on the external HD with iIPLM without having to move anything back to the Air.

If you found a solution, please post. I have the same exact problem.

People are missing the point that iPhoto actually knows where the original file is because you can say "Reveal original in Finder" and it will locate the original file. However, iPhoto still won't let you edit.

That's the same problem I have.

So you're using a referenced library? Where are the "source" files located?

Old Toad wrote:

So you're using a referenced library? Where are the "source" files located?

Yes, I was using a referenced library. I got a new MacBook Pro and copied everything to the new machine's. The file structure is the same as before. The files are in /Images/..., so iPhoto found the files. I just want to convince iPhoto that I should be able to edit them as well.

I double checked that I have write permission in the directories.

I tried rebuilding the library to no avail.

I need a "really that's the same file" button.

Old Toad wrote:

I think iPhoto can copy a reference library into a new, managed library. Give it a try with one or two events and see if I'm right.

How is this done? I stil have my previous machine and I haven't made many changes in iPhoto on the new machine (hey, coz like, I can't edit!). I'm thinking of converting from referenced to managed on the old machine and copying the managed library over.

-R.

P.S. on the new machine, if I export an event, the full-resolution files are exported. So, iPhoto definitely knows where the files are. It's just hopelessly confused.

Set the Library to Managed in the iPhoto Preferences -> Advanced.

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.

How is this done?

With iPhoto Library Manager.

Terence Devlin wrote:

Set the Library to Managed in the iPhoto Preferences -> Advanced.

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.

Okay, that "worked" but was rather painful. Apple Events just can't cope with that many requests. I have a library with ~20,000 and 800 events. It took several hours for the process to run and it can't be unattended, because every once in a while either iPhoto or iPLM asks you to click on something. Sometimes iPhoto would crash for no reason. Also, iPhoto claimed (erroneously) that ~1,000 files could not be found. I had to identify which events were missing photos, delete the partially imported event and add it from the old library. (I found out belatedly that searching for "Error: missing file" in the log is really helpful.)

Incidentally, since iPhoto actually knows where the originals were (just won't let me edit), I was able to do this on my new computer (which is a good thing since it is a good deal faster).

Anyway, thanks for the tip. I now have a managed library. I'm still convinced that there's a bug in iPhoto that won't let the user edit even though iPhoto has already figured out where the referenced images live.

P.S. lost a lot of the rotations from the previous library. I had to go and redo a bunch of the portrait images.

Hi Guys,

Actually, there is a less painful way to sort this out...

I've hit the same issue here and it was driving me nuts, tried about everything (used all 4 repair options offered by apple) and I've been looking everywhere online for a solution but nothing really helpful in my opinion....

I managed to sort out this problem in a matter of a few minutes on my library of just over 20,000 pictures...

The reason for all this is simple, if at some stage iPhoto realizes that a picture is missing, it goes about writting in the database that the file for that picture is missing... Note to apple ppl, maybe iPhoto should actually check if the picture is there when one want to edit it instead of relying on old info stored in the DB...

Weirdly enough, reparing or rebuilding the database don't even fix this...

Anyway... The fix for this is simple... (I only have a mac here so i can't really comment on software or file location on a PC, but the principle would be exactly the same...)

Make sure all the pictures that are supposedly offline are where they should be and then set the ismissing flag in the database back to 0... If you are not sure where the file should be, you can easily find the imagePath in the database too...

While viewing/editing iPhoto database, make sure iPhoto is closed... (Now would be a good time to close it if it's still running 🙂)

iPhoto library is using SQLite 3, on a mac, you can use SQLite Database Browser (SQLite Database Browser | Free Development software downloads ...) It's completely free...

First things first, let's make sure we have a backup of the database first...

Go to your iPhoto Library, usually it would be in your user folder in the pictures subfolder. right click (ctrl + click) on iPhoto Library and select Show Package Contents. Open the database folder and make a backup of the apdb folder. Once done, open the apdb folder (the original folder, not the backup). The file we will be working on is Library.apdb.

Now, Open SQLite Database Browser.

Drag and drop Library.apdb on SQLite Database Browser main window to open the database.

Once the database is open, go to the Browse Data tab and select the RKMaster table.

If you scroll to the right you can see both the ismissing field and imagepath field.

The image path are relative path to the Masters folders in the iPhoto Library package...

From here, you have 2 options:

1) Go and edit by hand one by one the database entries where you have ismissing set to 1 and change it to 0

This can be useful if you want to "fix" only a few images... To do so, just double click on the cell you want to edit, a new window will open... replace the 1 with a 0 and click Apply Changes... Repeat for each pictures you want to fix...

This could obviously take hours if you have a huge database with a lot of missing/offline images... In this case, the option 2 is probably the way to go...

2) Click on the Execute SQL tab and enter the following code:

UPDATE rkmaster set ismissing = 0;

Then click the Execute query button. What this does is set for every entries in the database the ismissing flag to 0 basically telling iPhoto that the file is not missing...

After doing either option 1 or 2, make sure you save the database...

You can now close SQLite Database Browser and reopen iPhoto... Problem solved...

No need to spend hours copying your database to a new database and spend money on any software...

In a matter of a couple of minutes, everything is back to normal... Everything is just as before except that now iPhoto can see the original pictures again and you can have fun editing them again 😀

Have fun guys and if you have any questions, just drop me a line...

TripDesign,

I tried your approach but I found that all pictures have isMissing = 0, even those that are showing as offline in iPhoto. Another table I should be looking at?

This is how I solved my problem:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3216539?start=0&tstart=0