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Copying original photos


When you edit a photo in iPhoto, iPhoto keeps a copy of the original photo in addition to your modified version of the photo. This allows you to use the "Revert to Original" menu command in iPhoto if you want to discard your changes and start over in editing your photo.


When you copy photos between libraries with iPhoto Library Manager, it will bring over both the original and modified versions of each photo, so that you can continue to use the "Revert to Original" command in the destination library just as you could in the source library.


If you don't want to copy the original photos (e.g. to save on disk space), you can check the "Don't copy originals" option in iPhoto Library Manager's preferences window, and only the modified version of each photo will be copied over. Of course, if you have not edited a photo at all, the original photo will be copied over no matter what, since it is the only one there.


Starting with iPhoto 6, Apple also added the ability for iPhoto to remember the individual editing operations that you performed on any given photo in iPhoto, and allows you to later adjust those settings without affecting others. For instance, if you crop a photo and perform a bunch of color adjustments on it, you can go back later and recrop the photo to a different size without having to go through and redo all the same color adjustments you did before. Note that iPhoto only remembers these settings if you do all your editing within iPhoto itself. If you edit the photo with an external editor at any point, it will no longer remember the individual settings, and if you want to go back and adjust them later, you may need to revert all the way back to the original photo and start over again.


In iPhoto 7.0 and earlier, when iPhoto Library Manager copies original/modified photo pairs between libraries, it has the same behavior as editing with an external editor. Individual editing adjustments will not be copied along with the photos to the new library, though the "Revert to Original" is of course still available. Starting with iPhoto 8.0, however, iPhoto Library Manager will bring over those individual edits, so your copied photos should be adjustable in the same way they were in the original library.

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