How to: Find original photo files in iPhoto

January 8th, 2009

If you use iPhoto on your Mac (ok you use it, because it is the most commonly used application in iLife suite and comes pre-installed with any new Mac), you’ve noticed that iPhoto keeps all your photos in a file called iPhoto library. The point is that iPhoto library is a package, not a single file. To view its contents and find your original photo files:

Left-click (or ctrl+click) the iPhoto library file which is in your user>pictures folder, select show package contents and

Navigate to “originals” folder and that’s it! You can now view, edit, move or delete your original photo files!

iphotoshot2

Tags: apple, ilife, iphoto, mac, photo

Posted by Nikos Typpz Filed in Apple Mac

9 Comments »

9 Responses to “How to: Find original photo files in iPhoto”

David Newman Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Neat tip, thanks.

I’m getting started with Lightroom and would like to import originals from iPhoto. How to do that?

thanks again
Nikos Typpz Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
@David: Find the original files as I described above, select them all and import them to Lightroom. I do not have Lightroom on my Mac (I use Aperture), so there may be an option from automating import your photos from iPhoto! Hope I helped!
Fred Hamann Says:
May 19th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
This is great, thanks! But what if I edited my photos with iPhoto on Mac #1 and now I want to transfer them to Mac #2? How can I transfer the photos *and* preserve my edits? … Both Macs are running the same version of iPhoto (7.1.5).

Thanks!
katie Says:
October 14th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
For some reason I don’t have a modified file for 2009 – so now if I try to view these images on iphoto i can see a thumbnail but can’t open the file, it just shows an exclamation mark. Please help!
Drew Pinskie Says:
November 10th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Thank you that was what I had been looking for!
Nikos Typpz Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
@Katie: that probably means that the files have changed location and that they are no longer in your iphoto folder! The best solution is to scan again your mac for images!
Bill Says:
November 28th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Aaaaah. Thanks! That makes perfect sense.
Harry Singer Says:
February 20th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Hi, I get a similar issue to katie. I can see thumbnails of my modified files, but when I try to open them the iPhoto viewer goes black. Examining the image files in the iPhoto modified folder, they show with a generic .bmp icon and are all 0 bytes! What’s that all about?
Nikos Typpz Says:
February 22nd, 2010 at 12:36 am
@Harry: Launch iPhoto and click iPhoto—>Preferences—>Advanced. Make sure that “copy items to iphoto library” is checked. If it isn’t, check it and scan your mac for images one more time