Saturday, October 27, 2007

Restore or move iPhoto '08 data to another computer

When I installed Mac OS X "Leopard" on my MacBook I wanted to do a "clean install", having been conditioned from my decade plus of time spent in the Windows world.  So after doing a complete backup, that was bootable, of my MacBook (used SuperDuper) I did an "erase and install" installation of Leopard.  I then installed the iLife '08 suite but wasn't sure on how to move all of my iPhoto '08 library (pictures, events, keywords, books, etc).
After doing Google searches I wasn't too hopeful either.  Importing the photos would work, but that only gave me my photos back, nothing else.  However, I remembered that Apple changed the way that iPhoto '08 stores everything, as a single library file (at least from the users view in the Finder).  So I deleted the current iPhoto library, then copied the one from my backup over, then opened iPhoto '08 to be greeted by all of my pictures, events, keywords, books, etc!  Awesome!
So, to move your iPhoto '08 library, this is what I did, assuming you have no photos imported into this new installation of iPhoto '08:
  1. Open iPhoto '08 for the first time, select if you want it to launch when you connect a camera to your Mac.
  2. Quit iPhoto '08 (Command key + Q)
  3. Open the Finder
  4. Open your Home folder (probably has your username like johnsmith)
  5. Open your Pictures folder
  6. Delete the "iPhoto Library" file
  7. Connect your backup drive of your old computer
  8. Open a new Finder window
  9. Open the backup drive
  10. Open the "Users" folder
  11. Open your old "Home" folder (probably has your username like johnsmith)
  12. Open your Pictures folder
  13. Find the "iPhoto Library" file
  14. Drag the "iPhoto Library" file from the Finder window of the backup drive to the Finder window of the current drive.
  15. Open iPhoto '08

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome tip Troy. One issue I had is that when I dropped the copy of the iPhoto Library to a user account that was not an admin the ownership of the file went to "nobody".

I fixed this by changing the admin access for this account and chowning the ownership on the file.

Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

This worked like a charm. Thanks Troy for the advice as I was struggling with the prospect of moving 11 GBs worth of pics from one computer to the next with no supported solution.