iphoto sharing between users and blocked thumbnails

[eho]

Hi,
I have 2 main problems;
1 All the family photos are stored in iphoto in my log on name but do not appear in my wife's user account when she logs on. How do I either copy or preferably allow access to my iphoto to my wife when she is logged on?
2 I lost/deleted some photos and replaced them from an external storage system. In general they are OK but some show a thumbnail of the photo but when I click into it to view full screen or edit the photo is replaced with a black exclamation mark within a white circle on a black screen. How can I view/edit these photos?

Any help would be most appreciated.

 

[r0k]

Hi,
I have 2 main problems;
1 All the family photos are stored in iphoto in my log on name but do not appear in my wife's user account when she logs on. How do I either copy or preferably allow access to my iphoto to my wife when she is logged on?
2 I lost/deleted some photos and replaced them from an external storage system. In general they are OK but some show a thumbnail of the photo but when I click into it to view full screen or edit the photo is replaced with a black exclamation mark within a white circle on a black screen. How can I view/edit these photos?

Any help would be most appreciated.

Before I answer, let me say I prefer to never keep originals of my photos in iPhoto. This includes photostream photos. I always export them to a NAS drive every family member can see, then I re-import them but I have set iPhoto NOT to copy them to iPhoto Library. I have about 200 Gig of photos and home movies in iPhoto but my iPhoto Library is less than 10 gig in size.

You could export them and put them either on a shared network (NAS) drive or in the shared folder on your Mac. She can see them there. It is possible to move the entire iPhoto Library to a different folder so you could both see it in your Mac's shared folder. I would proceed with caution when it comes to moving iPhoto Library. Be sure you have exported and backed up everything before you attempt it.

I had a 67 GB iPhoto Library. I decided to move it to a firewire drive. I copied it in Finder then deleted the original file. It was then I found out that the file was corrupted. iPhoto Library is a "package" and you can take a look inside by picking "show package contents". I could have gone inside and recovered a lot of my photos but this was not necessary as I never allowed original or only copies of my photos to be in iPhoto Library. Because I had everything backed up, recreating iPhoto Library was fairly quick only this time I turned off "import photos" and the only data in my iPhoto Library is metadata like faces and places. Of course this means you can't go moving files and folders around after importing them to iPhoto or iPhoto gets confused about where they went.

Here are 2 alternatives:

1 - You and your wife have separate iPhoto Libraries, each pointing to files sitting in a shared folder (on your Mac or on the network).
pros: originals are not kept in iPhoto library, cons: you have to import things twice

2 - You and your wife share a single iPhoto Library sitting in a shared folder (on your Mac or on the network).
pros: you have to import things once, cons: you have to set up permissions on iPhoto Library so both you and your wife can modify it, you might be tempted to leave originals sitting in iPhoto Library

 

[eho]

iphoto sharing between users and blocked photos

Thanks rOk I will give it a go.

Anyone know why the photos are blocked?

 

[gazingsouth]

Thanks rOk I will give it a go.

Anyone know why the photos are blocked?

I think this has to do with permissions as I had the same issue with sharing an iphoto library between my wife and I.

I found 3 solutions to the issue:
1 - move the iphoto library to a disk image (google for instructions) and set the "ignore permissions on this volume". The main issue I had with this was you have to predict the size your library will grow to... not importing the originals will help.

2 - move the iphoto library to an external volume and set the ignore permissions flag (google for instructions - this is the method apple talk about in their tech note.

3 - I did the following in Lion and to date it appears to work.
sudo chmod -R +a "<<shortname>> allow read,write,append,delete,list,search,add_subdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directory_inherit" /Users/Shared/SharediPhotoLibrary

This sets an ACL on the files and directories and also newly created files.
Substitute <<shortname>> for your account shortrname
After doing this for both accounts I have had no issues seeing both photos imported by my wife and vice versa.

 

[ezramoore]

I think this has to do with permissions.

This is correct.