How do I ACTUALLY delete stuff from iphoto

seriously if my "spotlight" can find the files in like 1millisecond, why can't I find their location in my computer? seriously regret buying a retina MBP. should have gone with a legit computer...

already did that. iPhoto trash is emptied. System Trash is emptied. Photos Still appear.

Also not my first mac. This is my third (and last) mac. I only switched to ubuntu for 1 year (due to better software for education) so I still know my way around mac osx!

Obviously not enough to FIND AND DELETE a file though....😠

ok I have deleted the photos from iphoto, emptied the iphoto trash, emptied the system trash, deleted safari temp files. The photos are still avaliable to select from the "sync" menu on my itunes, when I plug in my iphone, and they are still searchable in the top right searching thing (I think it is called spotlight) If I click on the file it opens iphoto which does not display the pictures. I cannot delete them from my iphone manually (so I am unable to "sync entire library"). I have confirmed that the pictures on my phone open up and are in high resolution ,even after I have deleted all photos, filled my phone with music, and then resynced with photos (so I KNOW they are on my computer, the full pictures, not just the thumbnails). The only place I ever would have saved photos would be in my photo folder, they are not there. Usually I just download the photos straight to iphoto.

When searching for the files in finder, nothing comes up. I have opened up my iphoto library and looked through the "masters" folders as well as the, "thumbnails" and manually checked all of the files. They seem to all start with "2012" in these folders, however this file is tagged to "2010-....". I have also attempted to search for the file from the terminal, and get no results there (although I might be doing this wrong, but I suspect apple has just mucked with that too)

These photos are not a big deal, but what is a major deal is that files that any reasonable person would expect to be deleted from a computer, are not deleted from the computer, AND they are seemingly hidden from the user so we cannot find them and delete them. If these photos were confidential, this would be a HUGE security threat.

oh and I have restarted my computer.

nope they sure are still on my computer. I can see them in "spotlight". I cannot see them in finder. I cannot seem to find them from searching the terminal.

I can delete them from my phone. then I can sync them back to my phone. This is how I discovered the issue.

what do I use in 10.8 for find/-name ? it tells me the command is not found?

when I say I have looked through my iphoto folders, I mean I went into finder, right clicked on "show package contents" and then manually expanded all of the folders in "masters" and "thumbnails".

When I say they don't show up in finder I mean when I search for all files, finder will not display any results. However if I type them into spotlight they show up as results. If I click on the spotlight results, iphoto opens and nothing else does. I cannot right click on the spotlight thing to "open containing folder" or anything. It also shows me no path. Just shows me a preview of the photo, and if I click on it it opens iphoto.

hope that is more clear.

they file are "not" (as far as I know) on my iphone right now. They ARE on my laptop.

It says I have two versions of it. Both seem to be the same (same filepath...). I have located the files through terminal. And well. Just check out this screenshot of what I get when I try to find them in finder... (for example, look at the second line in the terminal, now where is it in my finder?) Why is spotlight finding this, and why can I upload it to my phone, when I can't even see the file myself?

http://media.newschoolers.com/uploads/images/17/00/58/71/94/587194.png

so I know I could just delete this from terminal. my main concern though is how do I know what other images are on my computer if they are not appearing in my finder?

OK. I HAVE FOUND A POTENTIAL FLAW THAT SOMEONE AT APPLE MIGHT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT.

I was able to locate this file, in my finder, by entering the following command (to see hidden files)

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

and then restarting terminal.

THEN I was able to see the directory that contained the images I wanted to delete. This is the crazy part though. I went into the folder "03" which now appeared in the screenshot as above. In this folder I found multiple subfolders that all had images that I thought I had deleted, and did not want any of the folders. That's not the weird part though. I did not want to delete the folder, just in case it messed anything up, so I deleted a single image. from one of the sub folders and it instantly deleted everything!

the whole "03" folder dissapeared. Just from dragging a photo contained in a subfolder in it. I have confirmed that it is gone through terminal. I was stupid and did not see if it went to the system trash before I emptied it... I'm not one of those crazy conspiracy theorists who thinks apple is watching me 😁, I realize this is probably a bug, but it's a scary bug.

Now here is what I want to know. Will someone tell me how I can search for ALL FILES, EVERYTHING, through finder? I now have hidden files shown, but I cannot search them. I want to see a finder page with EVERY photo on my mac. If I search "all images" it shows 200 images, I know there are thousands of images on this mac. I want to see them all. I use my camera as a makeshift scanner for confidential documents and I want to make sure they are not lingering like these other photos were. Please tell me how to do this? in the last version of OSX I used, I just had to click "search system files" or somthing along those lines...

anyways my problem is half-solved, as now I know at least how to delete the photos once I know they are there. Now I just want to know how to find if they are there! 🙂