Yesterday I realized that since moving to my Mac Air and upgrading to iPhoto '08, I've been backing up my iPhoto library ALL WRONG. Since 2008! UGH! I had been copying the iPhoto library icon, which I thought was allowing me to copy all the original and modified photo files. NOPE! I was only copying the thumbnails that iPhoto uses to display, which are worthless for printing.
Anyway after lots of googling and sleuthing on my Mac, I finally found where the ORIGINAL/MODIFIED folders are hiding. I did some screen caps to hopefully prevent anyone else from making this mistake, as it's really unclear on Apple's iphoto support page how to go about doing this.
First: Do NOT copy the iPhoto Library.
This will only get you copies of thumbnails.
Anyway after lots of googling and sleuthing on my Mac, I finally found where the ORIGINAL/MODIFIED folders are hiding. I did some screen caps to hopefully prevent anyone else from making this mistake, as it's really unclear on Apple's iphoto support page how to go about doing this.
First: Do NOT copy the iPhoto Library.
This will only get you copies of thumbnails.
Instead, locate the iPhoto Library file (usually in your home folder) and do a CONTROL CLICK on this file:
Highlight the SHOW PACKAGE CONTENTS et voila:
all the original and modified files that you can safely copy.
thanks so much for posting this! I was backing it up wrong too!
Posted by: Zon aka nalgene | 01/23/2010 at 07:52 PM