I recently saved my iPhoto library onto my iPod, and i didn’t know if it was going to work or not. But it did work and i was very happy. I did not want to re-do all my galleries cause i have a few thousand photos now. But after the move iPhoto would crash on me after about two minutes. Sometimes it would last longer, but i never really used iPhoto for a long period of time.

I just recently got fed up with it and i did some research about how i could speed up iPhoto. Or even stop making iPhoto crash. I only have two tips on how to speed up iPhoto, there are more tips than this. But these two tips worked perfectly for me.

1. Make sure to make a backup copy of your iPhoto Library, which is included in your home directory (example ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/)

2. If you are running iPhoto 4, Hold down the Shift and Option keys on the keyboard. If you are running iPhoto 5, Hold down the Command and Option keys on the keyboard.

3. Open up iPhoto while doing one of the above commands, depending on your version of iPhoto.

4. Keep holding the keys until either the library is being rebuilt, or you get this dialog.

5. I ran all the options and it took about two hours to do for a few thousand pictures. I don’t really know, i walked away as it did it.

Doing this made iPhoto run better and it never crashed after it. Well i have been using it for three days now and i havn’t had a single problem with it.

Links: Apple Knowledge Base Article about rebuilding the iPhoto database