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I have finally made up my mind to import all the photos I have since year 2000. Now my iPhoto photo count has exploded from ~3K photos to >11K photos.

Now the problem is I usually sync all the photos to my iPhone, since my wife likes to look at those pictures all the time. During last sync, iTunes says there are not enough space in the iPhone, and it has consumed around more than 5 gigs of photos in the phone!

By default in iTunes you can choose to sync different number of events:

  • All
  • 1 most recent
  • 3 most recent
  • 5 most recent
  • 10 most recent
  • 20 most recent

Is there any hack in iTunes to make some arbitrary number of events such as 100 or 150 events? 20 is too less and all(I have 339 events in iPhoto so far) is too many.

I tried to make some smart albums like "in previous 5 years" or "previous 200 events", which didn't solve the problem since it just group all the events into one big album without separating into chronological events.

Anyone got an idea to solve this problem?

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3 Answers

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The way that I solved it isn't ideal because it requires a little bit of work at the end of each month. Each month I go though all my photos and give the best photos a star rating of 4 or 5 stars then I create a "Smart Album" with a name of the month and year (for example "August 2009") and add a rating filter of 4 or more stars and a date filter for that month. I then add that smart album to the folders that are synced with the ipod. It does have the added benefit of including only the best photos and the photos are grouped by month so they are a little easier to find.

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So all the starred photos will be group by per monthly bases instead of per event? If so, it kind of solve the problem but I still can't preserve the per event structure… – deddebme Aug 22 '09 at 16:20
Right, it creates monthly groups but you lose your groupings by event on the ipod. FYI, the original reason I was grouping this way was to get the best pictures of each month printed. At the end of each month, I'd send that month's pictures to kodakgallery.com but eventually I stopped getting them printed and now just use the groupings to limit the number of photos that make it onto the ipod. – David Smith Aug 22 '09 at 16:51
Well, I usually don't group photos into smart album since I have already deleted the blurry/not-optimum photos. It would be great if I can preserve the per-event structure without me grouping the photos per month. – deddebme Aug 24 '09 at 16:17
up vote 1 down vote

I painlessly went through all my Photo's I wanted and created events for them, for example the wedding and family photos I want on my phone. I then only synchronise those events to my phone. This normally becomes a more managable process.

I am not suggesting doing this to every photo, although I have, but on a much smaller collection. Once done going forward it is easier to manage.

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For my 11k+ photos, it'd be quite painful to go over all of them. – deddebme Aug 22 '09 at 16:25
up vote 0 down vote accepted

The new iTunes 9 now adds a few more options for syncing with iPhotos, I can now choose to sync events from last month, last 2/3/6/12 months.

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