Spotlight not finding iPhoto keywords? Here's a fix
March, 06 2006 02:17 PM Filed in: How-to
I recently
wiped my drive and reinstalled OS 10.4 as well as all
my apps. I keep an up-to-date back-up so putting all
my files (This included my fully intact iPhoto
library) back in place was fairly easy. However,
after reinstalling iPhoto and using it I happened to
notice that my photos no longer showed up in
Spotlight keyword searches. The keywords are still
there in my iPhoto library as were all my smart
albums. So, within iPhoto everything seemed fine. The
problem seemed to be that the Spotlight indexing
process was not seeing the iPhoto data.
I tried several different "fixes" such as assigning a new keyword to all the photos in my library, closing iPhoto, re-opening it and then deleting that keyword. The idea is that it would force a re-index of the iPhoto Spotlight index. This seems to work for some users though it did not work for me. Also, assigning a new keyword to 2000+ photos takes a few minutes as does removing it. The whole process had my computer's processor pegged at 100% for 20 minutes and during that time it was unusable.
What did work was similar in concept but much easier, faster, and did not make the computer unresponsive: Open iPhoto, select the main Library, select all photos in that library, control click on a photo to get the contextual menu, navigate to the rating for the photo and assign it a rating. Wait a few seconds to let iPhoto do it's thing and then shut it down. Within the few seconds of iPhoto shutting down and writing changes to your iPhoto library Spotlight indexed the changes. Fixed! Optional step, open iPhoto back up and select all your photos and remove the rating.
The downside of this is that if you use the iPhoto rating system and you have already rated your photos this will void that. I do not use this rating system at all so it was not a problem.
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, iPhoto, iPhoto Keywords, Spotlight
I tried several different "fixes" such as assigning a new keyword to all the photos in my library, closing iPhoto, re-opening it and then deleting that keyword. The idea is that it would force a re-index of the iPhoto Spotlight index. This seems to work for some users though it did not work for me. Also, assigning a new keyword to 2000+ photos takes a few minutes as does removing it. The whole process had my computer's processor pegged at 100% for 20 minutes and during that time it was unusable.
What did work was similar in concept but much easier, faster, and did not make the computer unresponsive: Open iPhoto, select the main Library, select all photos in that library, control click on a photo to get the contextual menu, navigate to the rating for the photo and assign it a rating. Wait a few seconds to let iPhoto do it's thing and then shut it down. Within the few seconds of iPhoto shutting down and writing changes to your iPhoto library Spotlight indexed the changes. Fixed! Optional step, open iPhoto back up and select all your photos and remove the rating.
The downside of this is that if you use the iPhoto rating system and you have already rated your photos this will void that. I do not use this rating system at all so it was not a problem.
Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, iPhoto, iPhoto Keywords, Spotlight
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