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schmargle

Q: iPhoto 9.5.1: My Photo Stream downloads old photos automatically

I'm using iPhoto 9.5.1 and want to use My Photo Stream, as I have been doing for quite a while. Until recently, I would load new photos manually from my DSLR camera into iPhoto, and those photos would then appear in my Photo Stream. I then could view those photos on my iPhone.

 

But now something is going terribly wrong. When I turn on the "iCloud" setting within iPhoto, I'm given the option to use my existing iCloud account, and I choose "Use iCloud." Then I see the preferences with check boxes for....

 

My Photo Stream

--Automatic Import

--Automatic Upload

Photo Sharing

 

No matter what combination I chose, iPhoto starts to collect apparently random photos from the past four years and "download" them into Photo Stream. I see a note in the upper righthand corner of the window that says "Downloading 24,1399 photos." That process takes several days, occasionally stopping when I reach an "hourly time limit." At the end, there are 1,000 photos in my Photo Stream, but they aren't the 1,000 most recent. They are just 1,000 photos from my entire collection.

 

The worst part of this, though, is that the process of downloading takes up HUGE amounts of disk space, like 20-30 GBs. That's why I had to start again with My Photo Stream--I ran out of disk space and had to figure out what the heck went wrong. I made the disk space come back by de-selecting My Photo Stream, but now I can't get it working again correctly.

 

I'm wondering if there's some preference file that's corrupt on my Mac.

 

Or maybe if there's something I need to do on my phone...?  The only thing that has changed recently is that I had to restore my iPhone to its factory settings. Did I set something up incorrectly? And even if I did, why would that cause this weird process on my laptop?

 

Any help is appreciated.

Posted on Sep 13, 2014 7:42 PM

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Q: iPhoto 9.5.1: My Photo Stream downloads old photos automatically

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  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 13, 2014 11:35 PM in response to schmargle
    Level 10 (106,883 points)
    iLife
    Sep 13, 2014 11:35 PM in response to schmargle
    No matter what combination I chose, iPhoto starts to collect apparently random photos from the past four years and "download" them into Photo Stream. I see a note in the upper righthand corner of the window that says "Downloading 24,1399 photos." That process takes several days, occasionally stopping when I reach an "hourly time limit." At the end, there are 1,000 photos in my Photo Stream, but they aren't the 1,000 most recent. They are just 1,000 photos from my entire collection.

    PhotoSteam is supposed to show the last 1000 photos added to the stream. That may be older photos. in which order did you add the photos to the stream?  The capture date is irrelevant. Which system versions are you using on your iPhone and on your Mac?

  • by schmargle,

    schmargle schmargle Sep 14, 2014 8:59 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Sep 14, 2014 8:59 AM in response to léonie

    Thanks for the reply. My Photo Stream is not showing the most recent 1,000. It's showing, like, the most recent 20 or so plus just 980 random photos from over the years.

     

    In the past, photos have been added automatically to Photo Stream. So about a month ago, I saw a different, more recent collection of 1,000 photos. Now, after starting Photo Stream again, I see a different, random collection of 1,000 photos.

     

    The Mac is running 10.9.4. The iPhone is iOS 7.1.2.

  • by schmargle,

    schmargle schmargle Sep 14, 2014 9:34 AM in response to schmargle
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Sep 14, 2014 9:34 AM in response to schmargle

    I've also now tried deleting preference files, including...

     

    user>Library>Preferences>com.applie.iLifePhotoStream.importstatus.plist

    user>Library>Preferences>com.applie.iLifePhotoStream.plist

    user>Library>Preferences>com.iPhoto.plist

     

    No improvement.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 14, 2014 10:35 AM in response to schmargle
    Level 10 (106,883 points)
    iLife
    Sep 14, 2014 10:35 AM in response to schmargle

    Have you also removed the folder

    ~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/DataModelVersion.plist

     

    This folder holds the local copy of your My Photo Stream and the Shared Photo streams.

     

    Quit iPhoto, remove this folder, and restart your Mac. This will force the mac to download the current photos in iCloud again.

  • by schmargle,

    schmargle schmargle Sep 14, 2014 1:39 PM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Sep 14, 2014 1:39 PM in response to léonie

    The same thing happens: you're right, iPhoto "downloads" photos. But maybe that's the problem. Where are these photos coming from? From iCloud? I can't have 24,000 photos on iCloud, can I? I just have the free 5 GB worth of space.

     

    And if I do, somehow, have all those photos on iCloud for some reason, how do I get rid of them? Basically, I want to start from scratch and just have the most recent 1,000 photos (from my Mac's iPhoto collection) on My Photo Stream.

     

    I don't currently have any photos stored on my iPhone, though I suppose I might have uploaded photos from there to iCloud over the years.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 14, 2014 1:58 PM in response to schmargle
    Level 10 (106,883 points)
    iLife
    Sep 14, 2014 1:58 PM in response to schmargle

    I can't have 24,000 photos on iCloud, can I? I just have the free 5 GB worth of space.

    The photo stream does not count against your cloud storage, but all documents are saying that iCloud is is only holding one month worth of photos and the Photo Stream on your devices will show a running collection of the last 1000 photos. Did you upload more than 1000 photos to Photo Stream during the last month?

     

    Then try to delete the photos in iCloud by deleting each and every photo from the photo stream album in iPhoto, until no more photos will appear from iCloud,  see:   iCloud: How to delete photos from Photo Stream

  • by schmargle,

    schmargle schmargle Sep 14, 2014 2:06 PM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Sep 14, 2014 2:06 PM in response to léonie

    Thanks again for the suggestion.

     

    I haven't uploaded that many photos in the last month. The photos that are appearing were taken over the last 3-4 years and, if they were uploaded at all to iCloud, they were uploaded at that time.

     

    I have followed the instructions for deleting the photos from within iPhoto. I go to the iCloud icon on the left within iPhoto, select whatever photos appear in the right window, then control-click and select "Delete from My Photo Stream." But the photos continue to download.

     

    I've also turned off My Photo Stream within iPhoto, which deletes all the photos. Then I turn it back on, and the photos start to "download" again. I'm completely puzzled.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 14, 2014 2:23 PM in response to schmargle
    Level 10 (106,883 points)
    iLife
    Sep 14, 2014 2:23 PM in response to schmargle

    Then create a new empty, iPhoto library and enable the Photo Stream for this library.  The Photo Stream can only use one library at a time.

     

     

    You have really not upgraded your phone to iOS 8 Beta, cross your heart?

     

    Are you Mac and your iPhone the only devices using Photo Stream?

  • by schmargle,

    schmargle schmargle Sep 14, 2014 4:24 PM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Sep 14, 2014 4:24 PM in response to léonie

    Interesting idea about creating a new iPhoto library. I tried now, but the same dang thing happened. I enabled iCloud and it immediately started to download 20,000 photos. Something is screwy.

     

    I really haven't upgraded the phone to iOS 8 Beta. Ha!

     

    I do have a spare computer, which runs OS X 10.8 and an earlier version of iPhoto. So I went on it and turned off Photo Stream. But when I go back to my main computer I still have the same problem.

     

    I'm wondering if this is an issue with iPhoto 9.5.1 or with iCloud or both.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 14, 2014 4:44 PM in response to schmargle
    Level 10 (106,883 points)
    iLife
    Sep 14, 2014 4:44 PM in response to schmargle
    I'm wondering if this is an issue with iPhoto 9.5.1 or with iCloud or both.

    Perhaps with iCloud.

    Try, if you can delete the My Photo Stream photos from your new, empty iPhoto library.

     

    Is anybody else using your AppleID for iCloud?

  • by schmargle,

    schmargle schmargle Sep 16, 2014 5:33 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Sep 16, 2014 5:33 AM in response to léonie

    Okay, I've been able to delete the My Photo Stream photos. I waited until they all downloaded (took a few days), then I deleted everything, from my primary library. I added one photo back, and it worked. No additional photos are downloading.

     

    ...Now I'm just waiting for the "daily limit" to expire so I can upload more. That daily limit was imposed yesterday, but maybe it's a 24-hour clock or something.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 16, 2014 6:05 AM in response to schmargle
    Level 10 (106,883 points)
    iLife
    Sep 16, 2014 6:05 AM in response to schmargle

    That is good. Thanks. Please let us know, if this did fix it or if the photos do come back. It may help the next one with the same problem.

  • by schmargle,

    schmargle schmargle Sep 17, 2014 5:54 AM in response to schmargle
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Sep 17, 2014 5:54 AM in response to schmargle

    Well, it's a few days later, and things are still not working correctly. I deleted all my photos from My Photo Stream. I added just one back to test it, and that seemed to work. Then I tried to drag the most recent 1,000 or so photos back into My Photo Stream. But as soon as I did that, I saw a message that said "daily limit reached."

     

    So I waited a day. The next day: Same message.
    Then at some point, the message became "hourly limit reached." So I waited some more.

     

    This morning, two days after receiving the first "daily limit reached," I opened up iPhoto again and saw that it said "Uploading 1,200 photos." ...But then only one photo uploaded and the message "daily limit reached" appeared again.

     

    I think it's time to call Apple.

  • by schmargle,

    schmargle schmargle Sep 17, 2014 6:17 AM in response to schmargle
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Sep 17, 2014 6:17 AM in response to schmargle

    Okay, spoke with Apple. (The computer is relatively new, and I have AppleCare.) Apparently, there were still more photos to download and clear off of iCloud. We're not sure why this was causing uploading problems, since my photo limit is like 25,000 photos, but whatever. So, I turned off My Photo Stream, then turned it back on again. And 8,000 more photos are now downloading from iCloud. Once they are downloaded, I will delete them all so that I have 0 photos on my iCloud account. Then I'll start dragging photos back into My Photo Stream and see if everything syncs correctly.