how to leave iphoto

Source

  • iphoto.app is certainly a nice tool, but it is also

    1. slow, unresponsive and locks you in some ugly closed-source format.

    2. also, try to look in forums when you want to share pictures on different {computers / OSs / iphoto versions / places / users} = nightmare!

    3. on top of that, the *cloud stuff is intellectually just very corrupted...

    4. what decided me to drop it entirely was a sudden corruption of the library. It took 2 days to recover my files and re-rotate correctly all pictures...

    5. last nail in the coffin was the fact that libraries are not backward compatible : you have to upgrade to the new product.

Warning

This post is certainly obsolete...

  • so time to take back possession of your pictures!

  • I found some supporting arguments here: http://accretiondisc.com/blog/2011/10/26/leaving-iphoto/

  • solution: put the files in folders according to a date organization of the type 2011/P0747444.jpg, other tools for tagging, etc... follow naturally (and you share as you share folders on dropbox or whatever)

  • first, let's set the default application for upcoming pictures from cameras:

    1. With your camera connected, open Image Capture

    2. You will see your camera under devices. Click the icon.

    3. Down at the bottom, you will see “Connecting this iPhone opens…” with a pull-down menu under it.

    4. select "autoimport" (I choose "delete after importation")

    5. another solution is to use a feature from dropbox...

  • then, let's export the data from iPhoto: File.../Export.... I kept the original file names but with the modifications (mainly rotations that were applied to my old camera without a gravity sensor). you should end up with lots of files in one directory. but it ... does not work as iphoto raises a completly unmeaningful error ('could not create file').

  • so, let's explore the library:

    1. it is package, and we can right-click in the finder to 'show package content'

    2. click the Masters folder to open it, and you'll see folders organized by year; inside are more folders organized by date and album, and inside them are photos in JPG format and video clips.

  • then I found https://github.com/BMorearty/exportiphoto and you just have to type

    python exportiphoto.py Pictures/iPhoto\ Library Pictures/Photos

    to achieve the export

    • I used the following commands to post-process all

      counting if everything was moved (there was some corruption in the library file with MOVies)
find ~/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/Masters/2012 -iname *MOV |wc -l
find ~/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/Masters -iname *MOV |wc -l
find ~/Pictures/Photos -iname *MOV |wc -l

# brute force to compare the content of the trees (brute force for the computer, you can get a coffee)
mkdir ~/Pictures/Photos/2011
chmod -R u+rwX ~/Pictures/Photos/2011
find ~/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/Masters/2011 -iname *MOV -exec cp {} ~/Pictures/Photos/2011/ \;
mkdir ~/Pictures/Photos/2012
find ~/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/Masters/2012 -iname *MOV -exec cp {} ~/Pictures/Photos/2012/ \;

      (for the last exampls, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xargs )

  • at the end, the great relief is to remove all this iphoto cr*p:

    cd ~/Pictures/
rm -rf iPhoto*
cd ~/Library/Caches
rm -rf com.apple.iPhoto

  • I'll be glad to help anybody with similar problem