Fix very slow iPhoto load and/or quit time
Aug 19, '05 07:54:00AM
Contributed by: Fraggle
If you have an issue with iPhoto being slow and barely usable with 1,000+ photos, maybe you are running into this issue, as detailed on Macintouch's reader reports. Here's a summary from Eric Lindsay's write-up there:
iPhoto 5 can be very slow to load, and even slower (7 minutes) to unload for some users. This appears to be related to significant increases in the size of the file in iPhoto Library called Library.iPhoto For my 7GB 6300 photo collection Library.iPhoto was 2.1MB under iPhoto 4, but when converted to iPhoto 5 bloated to 263MB.
Eric later adds more details about the cause of the problem:
This occurs when photographs from certain cameras including some or all Pentax and Nikon are included in your Library. These cameras include in their JPG EXIF information called a MakerNote. For most cameras the MakerNote is a few hundred bytes. In a Pentax Optio, the MakerNote is around 40KB.
Basically, while we all wait for Apple to create a patch, I have created a small set of AppleScripts [43KB download] to back up and restore an iPhoto library while stripping the EXIF part of the jpg. This could be useful, as well, to create albums and import photos from a set of folders, like if you are coming from Windows.
Exporter:
It will ask iPhoto for all albums and then copy each album's photos into a created folder, stripping allb info from the JPEG except for the date.
Importer:
Then you re-import those photos, and the script will recreate the albums and re-import the photos into the corresponding album.
Warning:
All meta information from the library will be lost. It's definitely not optimal, but it can make iPhoto usable while waiting for Apple to correct the issue. Please read the Read Me -- it's important! It explains a procedure using iPhoto Buddy so that you keep the old bloated library untouched along with the new optimized one. Then when Apple fixes the issue, you'll be able to go back to your old one with all the meta information.
[robg adds: I haven't seen this problem, but we have a Canon camera, which has a small MakerNote field. In the Macintouch reader report, there's also a pointer to a Perl script that reportedly strips just the MakerNote from each image file. This is another potential solution, but I'm not sure if the bloated iPhoto.Library file will then automatically reduce in size, or if you'd have to re-import all your images. I'm also not sure what Apple can do about the problem, since it seems to be the cameras that are recording a 40KB file with each image.]
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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2005081209475472