Section 31.5. General Questions


31.5. General Questions

Finally, here's a handful of generalalthough perfectly terrifyingtroubles.

31.5.1.

31.5.1.1. iPhoto's wigging out.

If the program "unexpectedly quits," well, that's life. It happens. This is Mac OS X, though, so you can generally open the program right back up again and pick up where you left off.

If the flakiness is becoming really severe, try logging out (choose Log Out) and logging back in again. And if the problem persists, see the data-purging steps on the next page.

31.5.1.2. Man, this program's slow!

Installing more memory is by far the best solution to this problem. iPhoto loves RAM like Paris Hilton loves attention.

For an immediate (and less expensive) fix, keep your Photo Library a reasonable size and collapse your film rolls (Section 7.2.1.3).

31.5.1.3. I don't see my other Mac's shared photos over the network.

Chapter 11 covers network photo sharing in detail. If you're having trouble making it work, here's your checklist:

  • Make sure you've turned on "Look for shared photos" in the Sharing pane of iPhoto Preferences.

  • Is the Mac that's sharing the photos turned on and awake? Is iPhoto running on it, and does it have photo sharing turned on? Is it on the same network subnet (network branch)?

  • Do the photo-sharing Macs have iPhoto 4 or later installed?

31.5.1.4. I can't change the name of an album/book/slideshow icon.

Double-click its name, and then type in the new label.

31.5.1.5. When I try to choose a soundtrack for a slide show, my iTunes music collection doesn't show up!

First, try opening iTunes before opening iPhoto. That way, iPhoto will be sure to "see" the open iTunes library.

If that doesn't solve the problem, you might have to recreate one of your iTunes preference files, like this:

First, quit all iLife programs. Open your Home Music iTunes folder. Drag the file called iTunes Music Library.xml file to your desktop.

Now open iTunes and create a new playlist by choosing File New Playlist. (Doing so triggers iTunes to build a new .xml file, which is what you want.) Quit iTunes.

When you return to iPhoto, your iTunes library should show up just fine.

31.5.1.6. I can't delete a photo!

You may be trying to delete a photo right out of a smart album. That's a no-no.

There's only one workaround: Find the same photo in the Photo Library, the Last Roll icon, or the Last Months iconand delete it from there.

31.5.1.7. All my pictures are gone! (or)
My thumbnails are all gray rectangles! (or)
I'm having some other crisis!

The missing-pictures syndrome and the gray-rectangle thumbnails are only two of several weirdisms that may strike with all the infrequencyand painof lightning. Maybe iPhoto is trying to import phantom photos. Maybe it's stuck at the "Loading photos" screen forever. Maybe the photos just don't look right. There's a long list, in fact, of rare but mystifying glitches that can arise.

What your copy of iPhoto needs is a big thwack upside the head, also known as a major data purge.

You may not need to perform all of the following steps. But if you follow them all, at least you'll know you did everything possible to make things right.

Fortunately, setting things aright is fairly easy if you know what to do. Follow these steps in order; after each one, check to see if the problem is gone.

  • If you haven't already done so, upgrade to the very latest version of iPhoto . For example, version 5.0.1 fixed a host of bugs and glitches.

  • Rebuild the photo library . Quit iPhoto. Then reopen it, pressing the Option and keys as you do so.

    iPhoto asks you if you're sure you want to "rebuild your Photo Library," and warns that you might lose some data. What it's referring to here is corrupted dataphoto files that are slightly damaged, for example. Since these are probably what's causing iPhoto to misbehave, you probably don't mind losing them. Click Yes.

    In the next dialog box, iPhoto asks you to save the freshly rebuilt iPhoto Library folder somewhere. You can name it, say, "Rescued Library," and save it into your Pictures folder or wherever you like.

    Once you click Save, iPhoto works its way through each album and each photo, inspecting it for damage, repairing it if possible, and finally presenting you with your new, cleaned-up library.

  • Repair your file permissions . An amazing number of mysterious glitchesnot just in iPhotoarise because file permissions have become muddled. Permissions is a complex subject, and refers to a complex mesh of interconnected Unix settings on every file in Mac OS X.

    When something just doesn't seem to be working right, therefore, open your Applications Utilities folder and open Disk Utility. Click your hard drives name in the left-side list; click the First Aid tab; click Repair Disk Permissions; and then read a magazine while the Mac checks out your disk. If the program finds anything amiss, you'll see Unix shorthand messages that tell you what it fixed.


    Tip: Most Mac mavens, in fact, believe in running this Repair Permissions routine after running any kind of installer , just to nip nascent problems in the bud. That includes both installers of new programs and of Apple's own updates.
  • Throw away the iPhoto preferences file . Here we are in the age of Mac OS X, and we're still throwing away preference files?

    Absolutely. A corrupted preference file can still bewilder the program that depends on it.

    Before you go on a dumpfest, however, take this simple test. Log in using a different account (perhaps a dummy account that you create just for testing purposes). Run iPhoto. Is the problem gone? If so, then the glitch exists only when you are logged inwhich means it's a problem with your copy of the program's preferences.

    Return to your own account. Open your Home Library Preferences folder, where youll find neatly labeled preference files for all of the programs you use. In this case, trash the file called com.apple.iPhoto. plist .

    The next time you run iPhoto, it will build itself a brand-new preference file that, if you're lucky, lacks whatever corruption was causing your problems.

  • Trash your Thumb.data files. Open your Home Pictures iPhoto Library folder. Drag the three Thumb.data files to the desktop, too.

    These three filesThumbJPG.data, Thumb32.data, and Thumb64.datastore the miniature images of your photos. If they get scrambled, so do your thumbnails. Setting them aside forces iPhoto to start fresh.

If you undertook this mission because your photos seemed to be missing from iPhoto, and all of these steps still didn't restore them, all is not lost. Unless you somehow opened your Home Pictures folder and, while sleepwalking, manually threw away your iPhoto Library folder, your pictures are still there.

The tool you need is called iPhoto Extractor, and you can download it from www.missingmanuals.com. Its sole purpose is to rescue your "missing" photos from a discombobulated iPhoto Library, so it's probably exactly the tool you need right now.




iLife 05. The Missing Manual
iLife 05: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596100361
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 314
Authors: David Pogue

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