iPhoto weirdness

AtticusFinch · 9 Aug 2010 at 13:00

So hopefuly the community can help

Occasionally when importing photos into iPhoto from any of my (or the wife's) cameras I receive a message saying that a duplicate photo has been found and do I want to import and therefore replace the image concerned.

Nothing strange about that - helpful etc - except for the fact that the image being imported and the one identified by iPhoto are compeltely different images altogether - different subjects, different formats even (RAW vs jpg etc). This appears to be a random thing - but very ****y-offy if you've got a few hunderd images to import on the day that iPhoto decides they're all the same as exisiting images.

This is on the latest version of iPhoto on Mac Mini.

Any thoughts as to what might be causing this?

AtticusFinch · 9 Aug 2010 at 15:06

This flood of replies makes it looks like a trip to the genius bar for me then :-)

lukefinch · 9 Aug 2010 at 15:10

Do these images have the same name? This is the only thing i can think of.

Also next time, give us more than a couple of hours to answer a question, not everyone is on here 24/7

PardonTheWait · 12 Aug 2010 at 00:49

I did look and scratch my head but nothing really came to mind. Only thing I can think of was if the date stamps are exactly the same, say you'd reset the date on the camera, but then I thought no they'd have to be exactly the same and that just wouldn't happen with tons of images - plus I'm sure it goes by much more than just the date stamp.

Can't think of anything else that would help apart from going through the usual things like getting rid of the plists and stuff but honestly I can't think how any of them would help.

Just sounds.. broken.

AtticusFinch · 12 Aug 2010 at 13:20

Thanks for the input (seriously).

Apple don't seem to have a clue either - the best they have coime up with so far is:

1. Delete and reinstall iPhoto on the computer and then point it to the exisiting library - frankly doubt this will achieve anything.

2. Contact them again if that doesn't resolve it and they'll see what else they can do - but probably all that can be done is to let the software3 development team know and wait and see.

I did offer to rock up at the Genius bar with the Mac Mini concerned, the power brick and the two DSLRs and compact that have produced "uncooperative" photos to see what they could do, but they weren't overjoyed with that offer for some reason...

I gues maybe I'll just delete ipHoto altogether, save some space on my hard disk and use something else to keep everything organised.

Any suggestions?

PardonTheWait · 12 Aug 2010 at 15:38

I'd try reinstalling iPhoto to be honest, it could quite easily be iPhoto itself that's playing up. Definitely worth trying.

I've NEVER seen this problem before and I've done a lot of support/training in my time, it's definitely a weird one and if I was still working at Apple I wouldn't have wanted you to come in either

Possibly try finding the .plist file and binning it first, but it's a long shot. Worth a punt though.

AtticusFinch · 12 Aug 2010 at 15:55

Thanks

PardonTheWait said:
I'd try reinstalling iPhoto to be honest, it could quite easily be iPhoto itself that's playing up. Definitely worth trying.

I've NEVER seen this problem before and I've done a lot of support/training in my time, it's definitely a weird one and if I was still working at Apple I wouldn't have wanted you to come in either

Possibly try finding the .plist file and binning it first, but it's a long shot. Worth a punt though.

I'll try pretty much anything at this point. It's a really annoying thing as you can imagine. I just can't get iPhoto to accpet whole swathes of photos at the moment.