14.3. Managing Photo Libraries

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14.2. iPhoto Backups

Bad things can happen to digital photos. They can be accidentally deleted with a slip of your pinkie. They can become mysteriously corrupted and subsequently unopenable. They can get mangled by a crashed hard disk and be lost forever. Losing one-of-a-kind family photos can be extremely painful, and in some documented cases, even marriage - threatening . So if you value your digital photos, you should back them up regularly ”perhaps after each major batch of new photos joins your collection.

14.2.1. Backing Up to CD or DVD

The quickest and most convenient way to back up your Photo Library is to archive it onto a blank CD or DVD using iPhoto's Burn command, as described on the previous pages. (If you don't have a disc-burning drive, don't worry; the next section explains how to perform a complete iPhoto backup without burning a disc.)

If anything bad ever happens to your photo collection, you'll be able to restore your Photo Library from the backup discs, with all your thumbnails, keywords, comments, and other tidbits intact.

To restore your photo collection from such a backup, see "Merging Photo Libraries" later in this chapter.

14.2.2. Backing Up (No CD Burner )

Fortunately, even if you don't have a CD burner (and therefore can't use iPhoto's Burn command), backing up thousands of photos is a simple task for the iPhoto maven. After all, one of iPhoto's main jobs is to keep all your photos together in one place ”one folder that's easy to copy to a backup disk of any kind.

That all-important folder is the iPhoto Library folder, which resides inside the Pictures folder of the Home folder that bears your name. If your user name (the short name you use to log into Mac OS X) is corky, the full path to your iPhoto Library folder from your main hard drive window drive is: Users corky Pictures iPhoto Library.

As described in Chapter 4, the iPhoto Library folder contains not just your photos, but also a huge assortment of additional files, including:

  • All the thumbnail images in the iPhoto window.

  • The original, safety copies of photos you've edited in iPhoto.

  • Various data files that keep track of your iPhoto keywords, comments, ratings, and photo albums.

To prepare for a disaster, you should back up all of these components .

To perform a complete backup, copy the entire iPhoto Library folder to another location. Copying it to a different hard drive ”to an iPod, say, or to the hard drive of another Mac via network ”is the best solution. (Copying it to another folder on the same disk means you'll lose both the original iPhoto Library folder and its backup if, say, your hard drive crashes or your computer is hit by an asteroid .)


Note: Of course, you can also back up your photos by dragging their thumbnails out of the iPhoto window and into a folder or disk on your desktop, once you've dragged the iPhoto window to one side.Unfortunately, this method doesn't preserve your keywords, comments, album organization, or any other information you've created in iPhoto. If something bad happens to your Photo Library, you'll have to import the raw photos again and reorganize them from scratch.
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iPhoto 5. The Missing Manual
iPhoto 5. The Missing Manual
ISBN: 596100345
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 179

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