MacOS – how to stop iphoto from organising photos (physically relocating)

I have written a script to do this for you. It is available here. It works with system Ruby (1.8.6 in Lion) with no external dependencies. This is how you use it (also included in the README):

This script looks for an iPhoto '11 album data file in

~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml

This is the standard place for iPhoto to store the album data file, so it's very likely you have it here if you have iPhoto.

Recommended use for the script is to copy it to wherever you wish to backup the files to, then invoke it on the command line:

$ruby iphoto.rb

This will scan the album data file, sort the photos by date, newest first, then copy them to the desired destination until the drive is full. Alternatively, you can manually specify the path you wish to copy to as an argument parameter, in case you want to store the script somewhere else:

$ruby iphoto.rb /Volumes/Backup

This script was written with exactly one user in mind; that is why it has no other options.

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• I have tested this on exactly one iPhoto library: mine. It works for me, but YMMV.
• The number in front of the files is the "DateAsTimerInterval" value from the album data file. I don't know how to convert it to a "real" date, but sorting by it does sort chronologically, so it's good enough for the purposes of this script.

It is a bad idea to try to manually modify the folder structure inside the iPhoto library, as you seem to want to do.

The best way is to follow Apple's instructions for rebuilding the iPhoto library.

However, this is usually only used as a repair procedure if iPhoto is malfunctioning.

You can try this, but make sure you have a complete backup of your iPhoto library before you start the rebuilding procedure.

Also, realize that iPhoto has an internal Trash that is separate from Mac OS X's Trash. If you have deleted hundreds of photos over the years, and never emptied the iPhoto Trash, those photos will still be in there and taking up space in the file structure.