iPhoto Chaos!

[konfuzion]

I just discovered the beauty of iPhoto...

I added all my pics and organized them into albums.

but i didn't want two copies of the same file, so I told it to copy all files into the iphoto directory. So I drag all the files over again and it asks me what to do if the file is already in the directory, i told it to import the duplicate assuming it would overwrite the original. It didn't, instead it had 2 of each pic. i deleted the original in finder and iphoto has a seizure. It slows down, freaks out and eventually gives me an exclamation point every time i select a picture which has been deleted. Eventually i manage to send all these messed up images to the trash but every time i try to empty the trash, iphoto crashes and quits.

I have rebuilt the library and the thumbnail cache but i haven't had any hope. Am i expecting this to work too much like itunes in the way it handles broken links and duplicates?

 

[solvs]

So I drag all the files over again and it asks me what to do if the file is already in the directory, i told it to import the duplicate

There was your problem. Maybe do a search for .jpgs (or whatever format they're in, look for .gifs and .pngs too, maybe even .bmps and .tifs). Go to the pictures folder and search from within there using the toolbar search instead of Spotlight, choosing only that directory (don't want to get all pic files in the whole drive). Drag them all into another folder and start again. Check to make sure you didn't miss anything in the iPhoto folders (check the size to see if the folders are relatively empty).

Good luck, and don't empty the trash until you're sure you got everything.