[X4U] Mysterious iPhoto 6 help please [1]

[Stroller]

On 17 Jul 2007, at 06:56, Germain M. wrote:
> ...
> What's the logic behind the work of the "Modified" and "Original"  
> folders?

Modified stores a copy of the photo with any changes applied,  
original is the original copy. This allows you to revert a photo,  
removing any changes, by right-clicking within the iPhoto UI.

> Yesterday, I added 28 RAW photos to iPhoto 6. Happy me, I like th  
> app very much. A minute later, the program added 28 JPEGs without  
> my consentment in the "Modified" folders. I didn't do anything to  
> the 28 photos but look at them in full view mode. Oh yes I did work  
> one one single file. Still I find that iPhoto adds copies to the  
> "Modified" folders like whenever it feels to do so. Do someone  
> knows what's happening here?

I'm a little surprised that iPhoto is doing this, if you've only  
modified one file, however I would suggest you DON'T MESS WITH ANY OF  
THE FOLDERS IN THE IPHOTO FOLDER. I would suggest you even generally  
avoiding looking in them and observing this behaviour.

Most of us are used to the idea of organising folders ourselves.  
We're prompted to save a file in our Documents folder and when we  
notice our documents folder is too crowded we create Letters,  
Homework and Hobbies subfolders. The arrangement of documents within  
these folders is the same however we view the folder hierarchy -  
whether within Finder or when opening a document in Word.

Apple's apps tend to focus on the sorting of media - let's say music  
& photos - in the app itself. The program (iTunes, iPhoto) manages  
the folder hierarchy and will become confused if we use Finder to  
rearrange files within its folders. If you're coming to iTunes from a  
I'll-manage-my-folders-myself-thankyouverymuch background then the  
structure of the folders is very logical - you correct the spelling  
of an album title by highlighting the songs in iTunes & clicking  
Apple-i and the folder containing the MP3 files in ~/Music/iTunes is  
renamed also. It's useful to remember, however, that you won't get  
the same result renaming that folder in Finder.

iPhoto introduces the concept of "Albums", which are not so closely  
analogous to a folder / Finder hierarchy. Photos can be in more than  
one album (and I think they can even be moved into iPhoto folders?)  
and any changes we make to the photo (unless we explicitly tell  
iPhoto to make a copy) are visible in all of those albums. Since we  
only want to store one copy of the file, the image files themselves  
are never moved from their original (by date?) Finder folder and  
iPhoto has it's own database to tell it which albums the photo should  
be found in. (iTunes also has a similar database, but if you don't  
use "playlists" it's not so apparent from the iTunes folder hierarchy  
that this is necessary).

I know this might seem quite irrelevant to your original question,  
but it begs the question: what were you doing poking around in  
iPhoto's folders in the first place? ;)  I don't mean that in a bad  
way - most all of us (except my mother) has done so when we first  
tried iPhoto, I'm just trying to explain why we stopped examining  
these folders. You can't move or edit any of the photos in those  
folders without messing up the way that iPhoto organises and stores  
them, and if you try to do so you're likely to break the albums and  
smart albums that they're stored in. So there's really no point in  
wondering why these "originals" and "modified" copies have been made.

It's irritating at first - and sometimes for a long time - to be told  
"Apple knows best" and that one shouldn't manage one's own photos,  
however it does make sense once you get used to using iPhoto and its  
albums. A photo of the Ann & David playing with the dog could be in  
the "kids" and "pets" albums, or in the "Ann", "David" and "Rover"  
albums, whichever. Photos of the G4 I sold a couple of years ago are  
in my Mac album & my eBay album. You can't achieve this in a regular  
folder hierarchy without keeping multiple copies of the file - and  
then if you open the file in the Ann folder & Photoshop it, changes  
made are not propagated to the copy in the "David" folder.

(continued...)