Tips for Installing iPhoto 5

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Derrick Story
Jan. 22, 2005 09:35 AM
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iPhoto 5 is now available, and those of you who pre-ordered iLife '05 should have it in your hands. I have a few tips to help make your transition a smooth one.

The entire iLife '05 package requires a fair amount of disk space. And if you purchased iWork also, even more will be required. But you don't have to install the entire suite of apps at once. Digital photographers my want to start with iPhoto 5 and the new version of iDVD. Once you see the storage impact, you can add GarageBand and iMovie HD later.

During the installation process, keep an eye out for the "Customize" button. By clicking on it, you can choose the iLife apps that you initially want installed.

Back up your existing iPhoto Libraries on to an external hard drive before you launch iPhoto 5. Unless you've moved it, the iPhoto Library folder should reside inside your Pictures folder in your Home directory.

If you have more than one Mac, I would only upgrade one of them to iPhoto 5 initially. Live with iPhoto 5 for a while before deciding to upgrade the other machines. I'm going to keep iPhoto 4 on one of my Macs for archiving purposes, so I don't have to "Upgrade" an old library just to view its images. At some point, I may upgrade everything to iPhoto 5 compatibility, but not this week.

Even after you upgrade to iPhoto 5, continue to use good file management backup procedures. In addition to uploading my new images into iPhoto 5, I also copy then to a separate FireWire drive and label those folders as my "Masters." When it comes to file management, better to be safe than sorry.

If you want to learn more about how iPhoto 5 handles RAW files and QuickTime movies, see my article, A RAW Look at iPhoto 5.

Finally, have fun! This new version of iPhoto is wonderful, and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it.

Derrick Story is the author of The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers, The Digital Photography Companion, and Digital Photography Hacks, and coauthor of iPhoto: The Missing Manual, with David Pogue. You can follow him on Twitter or visit www.thedigitalstory.com.

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Showing messages 1 through 16 of 16.

HORRIBLE iPhoto 5 problem!
2005-05-28 03:11:11 stevebowbrick [Reply | View]

Upgrade to 5.02 went well on my 450Mhz Cube but then my precious 2 year-old daughter switched off the external firewire drive on which the iPhoto library lives and... Well, you can probably guess. This is weird, though. My library is intact. All photos, thumbs etc. are present on the hard drive and iPhoto obviously sees them but every single photo (there are over 16,000 of them) is a white blank with a grey outline. Cropping, rotation, even keywords, are all retained. Just no images. I've rebuilt the library using all options (took 18 hours on my sad, old Cube!) but the problem persists! What can I do?

HORRIBLE iPhoto 5 problem!
2005-08-22 12:26:58 turtledave [Reply | View]

I have the same problem, but without the turned off external drive initiating. I'm not sure when or how it happened, but it might have just ocurred when I upgraded to 5. Have you found a solution?

Issue with iPhoto 5 unwanted image alteration
2005-05-11 19:11:53 dienekes [Reply | View]

Hi, I was wondering if you have any insights into a major problem I am having. I just upgraded to OS 10.4 and iphoto 5 at the same time, and I'm having trouble with iphoto "darkening" my images after ANY edit (e.g., red-eye, crop). Right after I make the edit, the image looks fine. However, when I click the "Finish" button, the image becomes darker--modestly, but darker nonetheless. I have no clue as to why it does this.

Solutions? (I'm using an iBook 900 MHz G3 with 640 MB of SDRAM.)

Thanks.

iPhoto 5
2005-03-01 09:13:14 macon [Reply | View]

I just upgraded to iPhoto 5 and now my iPhoto has come to a crawl. It takes at least 5 minutes for the photo frames to fill in with photos, and any moving within the application takes another 5 minutes per move. I have rebuild the library but nothing seams to work. Now I understand that I can't even go back to an earlier version because it won't read my updated library. Is this correct?

Dissolves in iPhoto 5 Problems!
2005-02-13 13:11:40 HowardMiereanu [Reply | View]

Using iPhoto 5 on my G4 466 with OSX 10.3.8, every time I select "Slide Show" and use any dissolves except for the default dissolve, the dissolve works between photos but there are no images in the dissolve. It is just white. WWhen I used iPhoto 4 it worked fine. Have I installed this the wrong way or am I missing something. Any suggestions?

iPhoto 5 Update
2005-02-13 08:36:16 Steph24 [Reply | View]

I want to enjoy the benefits of iPhoto 5 - but I can't even install it on my mac. I was wondering if anyone knew why. The error message that comes up says "iPhotoUpdate501 cannot be installed on this computer. Neither iPhoto 5.0 nor iPhoto 5.0.1 could not be found in Applications."

I have iPhoto 4 in my applications folder. I even tried to install the update to iPhoto 4 - but it read the same thing....that I didn't have iPhoto 4 installed (but I do).

I appreciate anyone's expertise on this one...

Disk Permissions
2005-01-24 09:05:26 Derrick Story | [Reply | View]

A reader sent me mail reminding me to remind you that it's a good idea to launch the Disk Utility and Repair Permissions after major software updates. Some people like to run the repair before installation, then again afterward.

iPhoto 5 and Photoshop Elements 3
2005-01-23 15:39:05 JasonH [Reply | View]

Can anyone else get the Edit in external editor to work? Since upgrading to iPhoto 5, that option (when I control click on a photo) is greyed out. I've tried resetting my preferences a couple of different ways but I cannot edit a photo in Elements unless I select PE to be used when I double-click on a photo.

RE: iPhoto 5 and Photoshop Elements 3
2005-01-24 08:36:48 Derrick Story | [Reply | View]

The Ctrl-Click "edit in external editor" appears to be broken. There's a report on MacFixIt also, confirming this problem.

In the meantime, you'll have to get by with double-clicking on the thumbnail to open in an external editor. If you want to edit in iPhoto 5, no need to change your prefs, just click once on the thumbnail to highlight it, then click the "Edit" button at the bottom of the window.

G3 iBook
2005-01-22 17:33:19 marcp [Reply | View]

I wish I had known how limited and SLOW iPhoto 05 is on a G3 before I had installed it on my G3 iBook. As mentioned above, virtually none of the new editing features work, and that was one of the main reasons I upgraded. At this point, I'm ready to switch to something like iView for organizing my pics and just use iPhoto when I have to do something very specific like ordering a book. What a disappointment!

Differences between G3 and G4
2005-01-22 11:23:20 restiffbard [Reply | View]

Just a tip to help avoid head scratching, G3 based machines will be limited in the number of things they can edit via the dashboard. On my G3 iBook the most I can do is edit brightness and contrast. Things like temperature, and horizon corrections won't run on a G3.

That kinda bums me but I still have Photoshop for that anyway.

RE: Differences between G3 and G4
2005-01-22 11:27:57 Derrick Story | [Reply | View]

Thanks for posting this Christopher. I hadn't realized that myself.

iPhoto 5
2005-01-22 10:46:42 dave_flory [Reply | View]

I got it installed just fine and started using it to look at photos and playing with the photo adjustment capabilities. I was astonished to find out that if I made any changes to an image and then moved on to another one that it automatically saved the image without asking me if I wanted to do so. Now this might be great for some, but if you fail to backup your images somewhere else than in iPhoto it seems that your original is automatically overwritten. looked for some way to prevent this but couldn't find it. Anyone know if I just missed it or this automatic saving a required part of iPhoto? If so I guess I'm back to Graphic Converter/PhotoShop Elements/Photo Studio.

Fair winds and happy bytes, Dave Flory

iPhoto 5
2005-01-22 12:08:39 HarryLime2 [Reply | View]

As I understand it, iPhoto ALWAYS keeps the originals intact. See File>Show Original. Makes keeping track things all that much easier.
Please correct me if I am wrong.

iPhoto 5
2005-01-22 10:53:47 zbir [Reply | View]

dave: Does iPhoto 5 remove the "Revert to Original" menu item under the "Photos" menu? At least in iPhoto 4, when edits are made on the image, the original is shuffled off on the filesystem to an 'originals' subdirectory.

RE: iPhoto 5 Revert to Original
2005-01-22 11:32:30 Derrick Story | [Reply | View]

Yes, Revert to Original is still alive and well. When you edit a photo in iPhoto, the application saves the original file for you. You can always go back to square one using the Revert to Original command.

Also, in iPhoto 5, if you play around with adjustments in the editing dashboard, and decide you don't want to apply them, just hit "Reset Sliders" before moving on. Your original image will remain unchanged.

Showing messages 1 through 16 of 16.

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