[Atheist]

Just made the mistake of upgrading to iLife '11. Went to open up iPhoto and it tells me it can't open up the library. Looks like I'll have to revert to iLife '09. What a pain in the ass.

I've checked out Apple's discussion forums and I'm not alone. What's even more scary is that there is a 7 page discussion of people whose iPhoto library upgrades just won't complete or worse yet, become corrupt or lost altogether. As a software engineer I find it amateur that Apple attempts to upgrade the library in place. Time and again you see posts from people whose pics just disappeared off their hard drive. WTF!!!

Maybe a poll is in order. Have you upgraded to iLife '11 yet?

[vintagegeek]

Not going to upgrade as I understand it will iPhoto 11 does not work with 1st Gen AppleTV. Can someone confirm they've hit this issue.

[Eug]

Another reminder for me to backup again (in addition to Time Machine) before doing any upgrade.

[Atheist]

I've been following the Apple forums and iPhoto '11 seems to be quite the train wreck. I understand that people only post on forums when they have problems but I still don't understand how Apple can release a product that will wipe out an entire photo library. That's just totally lame.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Atheist 

I've been following the Apple forums and iPhoto '11 seems to be quite the train wreck. I understand that people only post on forums when they have problems but I still don't understand how Apple can release a product that will wipe out an entire photo library. That's just totally lame.

Well, some iTunes update erased all attached hard drives with a space in the name, years ago.

these things happen.

[Atheist]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Well, some iTunes update erased all attached hard drives with a space in the name, years ago.

these things happen.

That's a much more obscure error. One I can see wasn't easily caught in testing. Obliterating an entire photo library from the local drive is inexcusable. When dealing with data you never delete the source until you have confirmed the destination data has been written successfully. Programming 101.

I guarantee if Office 2011 was deleting Word documents we'd have all of MacNN in here declaring the inferiority of MS.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Atheist 

That's a much more obscure error. One I can see wasn't easily caught in testing.

Wha? I currently have two partitions on my internal hard drive and 3 external hard drives with 5 partitions.
That's 7 partitions, and 5 of them have a space in the name.

I also have a bunch of other external drives also with spaces in the names of the drive or partitions, but they're not currently attached.

[solofx7]

I did the upgrade to iLife 11'
I have not had any problems, knock on wood.
I am just not fan of the removal of features like calendars and the direct ability to make the current picture a wallpaper and such.
There are other missing features, I just do not remember what they are since they are gone. Thankfully I did not have any library upgrade issues.

[AKcrab]

Upgraded my iMac, 10K+ photos, no problem.

Updated my laptop, 3K+ photos, no problems.

tv (first gen) still works fine with shared iphoto libraries. I did have to attempt connecting to the streamed library twice, but the second time it worked fine.

[ajprice]

No, only because the minimum system is 10.6 and I'm running 10.5. I think next year could be new mac time anyway so I'll get with the new machine then.

[Maflynn]

No upgrading, I see little being offered that warrants the price, even the lower price. Also from what I've been reading folks are complaining about the performance of iPhoto11, saying its poor. Not sure if those are isolated reports or something that's more expansive.

[Atheist]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Wha? I currently have two partitions on my internal hard drive and 3 external hard drives with 5 partitions.
That's 7 partitions, and 5 of them have a space in the name.

I also have a bunch of other external drives also with spaces in the names of the drive or partitions, but they're not currently attached.

And I would argue that your setup is far from typical. Prior to Time Machine I would wager the vast majority of OS X users had a single drive with a single partition. And I suspect in Apple's testing facilities they have a bunch of iMacs with a single drive/single partition setup.

[darcybaston]

For those who have tried downgrading, is the previous iphoto going to be able to use an '11 upgraded library? *gulp* I'm detesting the new iPhoto. The new features are great, but the old features have been so massacred, that I can't stand it.

Scrolling: now slower than ever and with transitional effects? UGH! (iMac Core2Duo 3GHz here. Previous iPhoto runs like lightning!)

Keywords: can't see keywords below photos anymore so you can't quickly scroll through a list of photos and see which ones you forgot to add 'mom' to or whatever. You have to switch to edit mode and click on photos *** individually ***. Ick.

Batch rotate: I used to be able to shift/command+click photos and click a rotate button while scrolling through photos. It was very fast. Now I have to go into edit mode, and I can't seem to batch select? Holding the shift key toggles between original and modified or something. Plus, even when use Edit to rotate, when you switch back to photo library view, the thumbnails don't always update. I can use the CMD+R hotkey to rotate, but now I HAVE to use the keyboard to keep same functionality where I could just stay on the mouse before? I hate all this workflow killing nonsense.

Anyway, if anybody can suggest the best way to downgrade, let me know? I'll really appreciate the support!

[jmiddel]

iLife did not erase my library, or anything as grave, but I am unable to drag pix into my iMovie project. They are right there in the Media Browser, but refuse to move. No green vertical line either. I have read and re-read the Help instructions, so I know I'm doing the right things. Raaaaats

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Originally Posted by Atheist 

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Well, some iTunes update erased all attached hard drives with a space in the name, years ago.

That's a much more obscure error. One I can see wasn't easily caught in testing.

Wha? I currently have two partitions on my internal hard drive and 3 external hard drives with 5 partitions.
That's 7 partitions, and 5 of them have a space in the name.

I also have a bunch of other external drives also with spaces in the names of the drive or partitions, but they're not currently attached.

It was actually more obscure than that — it didn't delete all volumes that had spaces in the name, but rather it would delete any volume whose name was the same as the first word in another volume's name. This was because they used a shell script, and forgot to put quote marks around the path. So, if you had a volume named "Foo Bar", then the command was something like rm -rf /Volumes/Foo Bar/baz, which would delete any volume named "Foo" as well as any item named "baz" which happened to be in a folder named "Bar" in the current directory.

Not to say this couldn't happen. If you had your drives named, for example, "Stuff" and "Stuff 2", then "Stuff" would have been hosed.

As for iPhoto performance, I haven't upgraded yet, but '09 was already pretty badly performing on my original laptop hard drive. What you have to do with iPhoto is to run it on an SSD. I couldn't believe the difference.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by darcybaston 

Batch rotate: I used to be able to shift/command+click photos and click a rotate button while scrolling through photos. It was very fast. Now I have to go into edit mode, and I can't seem to batch select?

You can still rotate photos outside of edit mode. Select the photos you want to rotate and use cmd-r or cmd-opt-r. (Photos > Rotate Clockwise; Rotate Counterclockwise)

You can also select multiples and use the new little "downward arrow" in the bottom right hand corner and rotate them.

[Atheist]

Apple has released an update to iPhoto to fix the issue of trashed libraries.

Download here.

Edit: No luck for me. Still tells me it can't open my iPhoto library.



What's most frustrating is that there's not a single entry in the logs. No indication as to why it can't open the library.

[Atheist]

Can anyone explain why I have "custom access" on my iPhoto library?



And why does "everyone" show up twice? I'm suspecting this has something to do with why iPhoto '11 can't open my library.

Also, I can run iPhoto '09 from my partners Mac mini and it opens my iPhoto library just fine. Even after attempting to open it with iPhoto '11.

I've tried running iPhoto '09 with option+command pressed... that opened up the window that gives me the option to fix the permissions on the library. That didn't make any difference. I also tried the option to rebuild the library. When I do that, iPhoto immediately quits with no messages and nothing in the log.

[l008com]

I upgraded and my iPhoto won't open. My library is untouched, but when I click on iPhoto, it bounces for a few minutes, while using 100% CPU. Eventually it stops bouncing but is still hung, and you have to force quit. It does this every time. Nothing a little time machine can't fix.

[Atheist]

^Anything in the logs?

[l008com]

Originally Posted by Atheist 

^Anything in the logs?

I restored my app from Time Machine, then ran the update again and everything went well. All my photos are there. Haven't really poked around the rest of the app. I can scroll without the extreme slow downs others have had though.

[Old Toad]

If you use the book feature a lot then the new iPhoto 11 does have some merit. They've added some nice themes to it. That's about all I can say good about it.

I upgraded to iPhoto 9.0 on my iMac without a problem - 7 libraries. However, I experienced what everyone else did when upgrading my MacBook Pro. Since I had only one library on the MBP, a small one, I ran some installation tests and reported them in this topic at the Apple Discussions: Apple - Support - Discussions - Spread the Word: DO NOT upgrade to ...

I got the impression that there were more MBP users having problems than desktop users. That's way I ran the test with my MBP. The bottom line was the 9.0.1 update that came out yesterday did fix the library conversion problem that users were having, at least it did on my MBP.

However, it did not fix some of the performance bugs, like the repeating of the first character when entering a new location for a photo.

Also there are a number of GUI issues. Apple dropped the ball when they made it more difficult to change an Event name, removed the keywords from under the thumbnails, changed the Extended Info window, etc. etc. etc.

There were also an issue with the iLife 11 disk. A number of users had received damaged disks. The disks could not be read or wouldn't launch the installer. One user's solution was to create a disk image of the disk somehow (Disk Utility did see it even if the Finder couldn't) and install off of that. That's how I ran my tests on the MBP even though my disk could be read - I used it on my MacBook Pro.

[Spheric Harlot]

There are more laptop users than desktop owners, period.

That may be why you get the impression that more Laptop users are affected.

Of course, there may be some other issue; I'm just saying, is all.

[Old Toad]

You're absolutely right. It's just an impression based on a limited sample which doesn't necessarily make it so. Just like you can't judge the health of a city by what you see in an Emergency Room.

[Atriplex]

I managed to lose 50 years worth of pics and even now, with 9.0.1 installed, it won't open. Anyone any fixes please?

[Old Toad]

Make sure the photos are not in the library package, the Originals folder or what is not called the Masters folder. You do that by Control-clicking on the library package and selecting "Show Package Contents" from the menu. If they are there then there may be some fixes that can recover your library. Otherwise you can create a new library from the Originals folder which will give you the same Events you had but no other amenities.

Do you have a backup of the previous library?

[l008com]

CORRECTION

I reinstalled iPhoto and I thought it worked... it worked because it was 9.0. It worked fine several times, but as soon as I installed 9.0.1, my iPhoto no longer works. So I guess I need the 9.0.2 update before I can access my photos

[l008com]

And another fun issue. you get music with slideshows even if you turn music off. What a ****ing hack this version of iPhoto is.

[Old Toad]

That has to be unique to your setup as that's the first I've heard of that issue. Have you tried all the fixes that have been suggested at the Apple iPhoto 11 forum?

[AKcrab]

Huh. Yeah, that music thing is a bug. If I turn it off a second time that seems to stick.
Create slideshow, play it, click the music icon, turn music off.

[Old Toad]

You need to click on the Choose button after unchecking the Play music during slideshow to make the selection stick just like you do when you select music to play.

[placebo1969]

No problems with iPhoto 9.0 or the 9.0.1 update. But there are a few things that really irk me:

1. The ability to email photos without a template. I'm hoping this will be changed at some further update;
2. I miss the Set to Desktop button. Yes, it's in a menu, but I liked the button;
3. I liked being able to see the changes to the histogram when I clicked on the Enhance button. Now I have to toggle back and forth;
4. When I open iPhoto, it never seems to remember that I'm at the bottom of my Events. It seems to place it about half way through my Events. The same goes for looking at individual Events or Faces with many photos.

I've actually gave feedback to Apple. I think this is the first time I've done so. iPhoto is probably my 3rd or 4th used application behind Safari, Mail and iTunes. It kind of reminds me of the big changes with iMovie '08. Hopefully things will get better.

[Old Toad]

There is a reasonable workaround regarding the emailling until Apple get's it act together.

For the emailing issue set Mail as the editor of choice in iPhoto's Advanced preferences and then remove it back to iPhoto. Then select the photos you want to email, Control-click and select Edit in External Editor. Mail will open a new email with the selected photos embedded. Choose the size you want to send and off you go.

Or create an Automator Service workflow to do the same. Works about as easy as the Mail editor trick. Select the photos to email and go to the iPhoto Services and select the service. How to create it is described by iPhoto user Terence Devlin here:

Apple - Support - Discussions - iPhoto 11: A new way to use the old ...

No help for the other Apple miscues.