Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / May 2008

I just started using iPhoto and can't figure some things
out. I have Leopard and iPhoto 08 (version 7.1.3 (364)).

I've got several Events, Albums, and Slideshows created.
But Missing Manuals tells me that I should be seeing
thumbnails, at least in the Album views. I don't. I get
all photos scrollable, one at a time, like one long
web page. (by clicking or double clicking on an Event
or Album).

However, in an Album, if I click on Edit at the bottom,
a narrow window across the top displays thumbnails, with
the larger single selected photo in the bottom part. The
relative sizes of these two windows is adjustable, within
some fixed limit. So I can't make the large photo go away
in preference for the thumbnails, but the thumbnails are
only in a single line across anyway.

And no, the View -> Thumbnails  always has all options
greyed out, except when in the Edit mode as above, where
only Hide or Show are not greyed out, and it makes the
top window line of thumbnails go away or appear.

What preference (I've looked) will fix this? Or what am
I doing wrong? I'd just chalk it up to how the program
works (limited) if I didn't read and see pictures of
how it is supposed to look.

I went out today and bought iPhoto the Missing Manual, and
it says the thumbnails just appear, and doesn't cover what
to do if they don't (as far as I've found so far).

The other thing I haven't figured out how to do yet is to
select all photographs in, say, Last Import (which now has
1,000 photos in it) and put them in a new Album I created
with 0 photographs currently in it. The Edit -> Select All
doesn't work (it is only highlighted if in Edit mode) it
does nothing, just leaving the single photograph selected.
The Missing Manual says to use Command-A, and that doesn't
work either. I was able to drag photographs singly into
an Album, but 1,000 are a bit too many to try that.

Something seems very wrong. I upgraded to iLife 08 on
my MacBook in February or so. Never bothered with iPhoto
until now.

What to do? Delete it and reinstall it? I really don't
have anything important in it (all source photographs
are elsewhere), and won't until I can trust it works
properly.

Thanks!