iPhoto ’11: The Macintosh iLife Guide to using iPhoto with OS X Lion and iCloud

Non-Destructive Editing and Older Libraries

On page 50, I discussed how iPhoto has non-destructive editing that maximizes quality by always applying your edits to the original version of an image.

There’s an exception to this rule, and it concerns iPhoto libraries created in iPhoto ’06 or earlier versions. Specifically, if you edit a photo that you previously edited using an older iPhoto version, iPhoto ’11 applies your latest changes to the edited photo, not to the original. Thus, you don’t have the full advantage of non-destructive editing.

The solution? If you want to edit a photo that you’ve already edited using iPhoto ’06 or an earlier version, revert to the original version of the photo. Choose Photos > Revert to Original (or, for raw images, ...