Odd problem with Automater and iPhoto

[Dr. Dastardly]

Kinda weird problem, I used Automater to change the names of numerous photos in a series using the "name using sequential order" work flow. Now the photos are still in the computer and can be launched using Finder fine. But when I go into iPhoto and see the thumbnailed versions of the same photos, I double click to view just the one photo and it just comes up with a blank white screen. No error message or anything follows just a stark white part where the photo should be. Its even blank if you do a slideshow but it still shows the thumbnail of the photo.

The location of the actual file did not change just the name using Automater but I thought that it was suppose to be that easy. Drag the files to give them a name which worked fine. iPhoto just cannot recognize them even though they are in the iPhoto library.

Anyone else come across this or have any fixes?

 

[Applespider]

iPhoto really doesn't like things changing outside of iPhoto; you shouldn't change anything in the Finder that's in your iPhoto library otherwise you're likely to screw up your iPhoto database - as you've discovered.

The thumbnails are created when you import things into iPhoto so iPhoto can still see its links to them in its database. But because you've changed the underlying data, it's looking for image DSC123.jpg in a folder and now it's called BBQ23.

You can't change the file names in iPhoto but in future you might want to consider just changing the title which you can do in a batch sequentially within iPhoto itself.

There are a few people who have done similar things over on the iPhoto discussions (it's really not the clearest system!). Here's one suggestion on how you might be able to fix it.