iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Chapter 31. Troubleshooting iPhoto

iPhoto isn’t just a Mac OS X program—it’s a Cocoa Mac OS X program, meaning that it was written exclusively for Mac OS X. As a result, it should, in theory, be one of the most rock-solid programs under the sun.

Still, iPhoto does have its vulnerabilities. If trouble strikes, keep hands and feet inside the tram at all times—and consult the following collection of problems, solutions, questions, and answers.

Importing

Getting photos into iPhoto is supposed to be one of the most effortless parts of the process. Remember, Steve Jobs promised that iPhoto would forever banish the “chain of pain” from digital photography. And yet…

iPhoto doesn’t recognize my camera.

iPhoto generally “sees” any recent camera model, even if it’s not listed on Apple’s Device Compatibility page (http://www.apple.com/iphoto/compatibility). If you click the Import mode button and see “No camera is connected” in the lower-left corner of the screen, even though the camera most assuredly is connected, try these steps in order:

• Turn on the camera after connecting its USB cable to the Mac.

• Turn the camera off, then on again, while it’s plugged in.

• If iPhoto absolutely won’t notice its digital companion, use a memory-card reader as described on page 89.

iPhoto crashes when I try to import.

This problem is most likely to crop up when you’re bringing pictures in from your hard drive or another disk. Here are the possibilities:

• The culprit is usually a single corrupted file. Try a test: Import ...