Moving from iPhoto to Lightroom

I've been using iPhoto since I bought my mac, but lately it seems to be getting slower and buggier... Takes ages to launch, search doesn't work properly, and my library of about 25,000 photos seems too much for it. So I decided to try Lightroom.

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to get out of iPhoto, be it for Lightroom, Picasa, or whatever... There's no simple way to export all of your events into nice subfolders! So I built my own way out!

I created a python script that reads the data from iPhoto, and uses it to create a tree structure with year/name_of_event and all the photos inside. Here's a screenshot of the script running:

To use the script, download it from here, and execute it via the terminal using:

python iphoto-to-folders.py [AlbumData.xml] [destinationDir]

[AlbumData.xml] is a file inside your iPhoto library, and can usually be located at ~/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/AlbumData.xml

[destinationDir] is the folder where you want your photos to be copied to.

A couple of notes about the script:

• It only copies the original versions of the photos. Changes you made in iPhoto are not copied.
• It copies all the files from your iPhoto library, so it needs quite a bit of disk space.
• It may take some time to run. To copy my 25.000 photos it took 1.5 hours
• It's not supposed to mess with your iPhoto library, but do make backups!
• It has no warranty whatsoever!
• It's supposed to be tweaked! If you're comfortable with python, adapt the script to your needs.

If you have any questions or spot some problems, please submit them here. And be sure to leave a comment telling me how the script worked for you!