How to Import Images to Photo Booth

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Importing images into Photo Booth requires basic knowledge of the Mac OS X operating system.

Photo Booth is a program for Mac operating systems that allows users to take and edit photos with their computer's built-in camera. The program stores these photos in a directory where they can be viewed and edited at any time. If you want to use Photo Booth to edit photos that were not taken using the application, you can import photos into the program by making a few changes to a file contained in the application's image directory.

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Step 1

Launch Photo Booth and determine what folder it stores images in by selecting a photo and hitting "Command-R". This will open the appropriate Photo Booth directory in Finder.

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Step 2

Move all of the photos that you wish to import into Photo Booth from their current location into the directory in which Photo Booth stores its images. You can do this by selecting the photos you wish to move and dragging them into the correct directory.

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Step 3

Search the directory in which Photo Booth stores images for a file called "recents.plist" and make a backup copy of the file. This is done by hitting "Command-D" on the keyboard while the file is selected.

Step 4

Close Photo Booth and open the original "recents.plist" file by dragging it into TextEdit. The photos currently visible in Photo Booth will be shown as a list, formatted with the file names of the photo between the XML tags and .

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Step 5

Add the photos you wish to import into Photo Booth by entering their complete file names to the list. Make a new set of XML tags, and , to mark each new file name on the list.

Step 6

Save the "recents.plist" file, making sure that you are saving over the original file and not the backup copy. Relaunch Photo Booth. All the photos that you moved to the Photo Booth image directory and correctly added to the "recents.plist" file will now display properly in Photo Booth.

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