[jbleisure]

My wife and I will shortly be using the same computer at home. An iMac.
Until now we have had our iTunes library stored on my account on my laptop, but it hasn't worked so well. She can't access the library unless she's using my account or unless my account is open and iTunes is running.

I'm considering on the new Desktop to create a joint account that we share at home with the photos and music and then our regular separate accounts.

ANyone have a solution that works for them?

[peeb]

Nothing elegant. There are various hacks like the one you suggest, but iTunes and iPhoto both suck in terms of managing libraries.

[AKcrab]

For two users on the same machine, can't one simply move the iTunes and iPhoto libraries to /Users/Shared?

[Mac User #001]

Yes.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Yea, move it to /Users/Shared, then make sure everyone has read/write access to the whole shebang, then start up iTunes and iPhoto with the option key held down. It'll ask you to locate the library and you can select it out of the shared folder.

[jbleisure]

Yea, move it to /Users/Shared, then make sure everyone has read/write access to the whole shebang, then start up iTunes and iPhoto with the option key held down. It'll ask you to locate the library and you can select it out of the shared folder.

Thanks I'll be setting up the home iMac within a week or so. I'll do that it sounds like a solution. Thanks.
Oh, what exactly do I move to the shared folder? Is it the iTunes music folder in Music?

[Raman]

Here's what I did:
-Made my g/f's account admin (along with me)
-Shut down iPhoto
-Moved my iPhoto library to /users/shared/pictures/
-Changed permissions on iPhotoLibrary that I just moved and made sure my gf's account was set to read&write. did the same thing with the pictures, shared, and users folders.
-Logged into her account, opened iPhoto and let it create a new, blank iPhotoLibrary in her folder, Closed iPhoto, Created and alias to the real iPhotoLibrary shown above. Renamed it so that the alias was named iPhotoLibrary, restarted iPhoto. I can see all the photos. closed iphoto
-Logged back into my account. Made an alias to the iPhotoLibrary just like I did for her account.

The problem now is that i can rotate and otherwise do things to the iPhotoLibrary and the changes stick. When I go into her account nothing that I do to photos stick. Sometimes iPhoto says that there's an error and that it couldn't save changes.

Another problem is that in my personal .mac account I uploaded some web galleries to .mac. She can see these in her account. If she had a .mac account and added/deleted it then would it delete mine since she can see my web galleries from iphoto??

It would be nice if Apple made it easier to share our photos on a computer or local without everyone being logged in and sharing their photos. It's not like they're copyrighted by other people or something. I could understand MP3's maybe but cmon' we took these pictures ourselves

[AKcrab]

If you hold down option when you launch iPhoto, it allows you to locate the iPhoto library. I think the alias you made is interfering with how iPhoto saves the changes. The alias trick used to be *required* to share a library, but I'm pretty sure Apple made it easier.

You might want to delete the alias, and use the option trick to point the GF's account at the shared library.
(You can use the same trick to switch libraries 'on the fly')

[jbleisure]

If you hold down option when you launch iPhoto, it allows you to locate the iPhoto library. I think the alias you made is interfering with how iPhoto saves the changes. The alias trick used to be *required* to share a library, but I'm pretty sure Apple made it easier.

You might want to delete the alias, and use the option trick to point the GF's account at the shared library.
(You can use the same trick to switch libraries 'on the fly')

This sound like a better option, as I want completely problem/hassle free functioning. Would I move the iPhoto library to /users/shared/pictures/ from my account and change the readwrite permissions? I am guessing yes. Would that be enough, plus holding the option key on launch? I'll be doing this in the next week or so - will feedback. Meanwhile any more insight would be good.

[Raman]

I deleted the alias, held down Option while I started iPhoto in my gf's account and pointed to the iPhotoLibrary in the shared folder that I know she has access to read and write. I'm able to view all of the photos but each time I start iPhoto in her account I get teh following error.

An error occured while trying to save your photo library.

Some recent changes may be lost. Make sure your hard disk has enough space and that iPhoto is able to access the iPhoto Library.

To test this I rotated a photo in my account and then tried to unrotate the same photo in hers. It initially did it but changes it back to what I last did in my account.

It sounds like some of the files inside the iPhotoLibrary package aren't writable by my gf's account since my account created them. Windows has a thing where if you modify permissions on a parent, you can force it to propagate it to all of the children (i.e. folders and files within the higher level folder that you changed permissions to). Is there a way to do this on OS X?

I didn't try to import photos using her account to see if I would get the same error in my account since she would 'own' those files.