where does snow leopard save user account display image?

**wantedinc** · 10-22-2009, 09:13 PM

I'm quite new to mac, and my new macbook pro took a photo of me when I was creating my user account. Now I would just like to add some custom effects to that particular image, so I was just wondering which folder does osx save the images taken by the webcam. I know i can take a screen shot or even take another photo, but I just want to know which directory mac aves all these images.

**6string** · 10-22-2009, 10:18 PM

~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/Image

Also, I don't know how it got there, but I found mine in my iphoto library!

So once you locate your picture, and you're finished adding effects, and saving it, just go to your account in system prefs, click on the image/edit picture/choose... and select your picture.

**vansmith** · 10-22-2009, 10:52 PM

/Library/Caches/com.apple.user501pictureCache.tiff. If you are not the only user on your machine, that 501 will be a different number.

**6string** · 10-22-2009, 11:00 PM

Originally Posted by vansmith

/Library/Caches/com.apple.user501pictureCache.tiff. If you are not the only user on your machine, that 501 will be a different number.

I searched there on mine, but com.apple.user501pictureCache.tiff doesn't exist in this location! The closest I have to that is com.apple.ImageCaptureExtension2.ICADeviceDatabase .501

**wantedinc** · 10-23-2009, 09:26 AM

cannot find in both the locations.. the images folder in address book only has one file which when opened with preview shows the apple logo... does no one knows about it?

**chscag** · 10-23-2009, 02:50 PM

Did you upgrade to Snow Leopard from Leopard or was your computer already equipped with SL when you bought it?

My photo was exactly where it was supposed to be (according to 6string) but was overwritten with the image of an Apple when I upgraded to SL.

Regards.

**wantedinc** · 10-24-2009, 12:08 PM

I upgraded to SL. However I tried taking another pic but it still has that apple logo

**chscag** · 10-24-2009, 03:22 PM

Don't know what could have happened to yours. Did you check both the iPhoto and the Photo Booth folders?

Regards.

**vansmith** · 10-24-2009, 03:27 PM

There must be some confusion here - ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Images contains nothing for me. The directory I stated earlier has my login picture and does for others online. I did do a clean install but I find it hard to believe that this is the cause for difference in location.

**chscag** · 10-24-2009, 07:46 PM

Strange. The location you gave above does not exist on my machine. The other does.

Regards.

**6string** · 10-24-2009, 08:03 PM

Originally Posted by vansmith

There must be some confusion here - ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Images contains nothing for me. The directory I stated earlier has my login picture and does for others online. I did do a clean install but I find it hard to believe that this is the cause for difference in location.

Originally Posted by chscag

Strange. The location you gave above does not exist on my machine. The other does.

Regards.

I did a clean install too, but as chscag stated, I have no such location on my machine.

**vansmith** · 10-24-2009, 09:00 PM

I can say in all honesty that this one has me stumped.

Upon further research, it seems to differ from person to person. According to this article, it could also be in ~/Library/Images/iChat Recent Pictures/. This folder does not exist for me but the idea of non-existing folders isn't new to this thread.

**6string** · 10-24-2009, 09:40 PM

Originally Posted by vansmith

I can say in all honesty that this one has me stumped.

Upon further research, it seems to differ from person to person. According to this article, it could also be in ~/Library/Images/iChat Recent Pictures/. This folder does not exist for me but the idea of non-existing folders isn't new to this thread.

/Users/Username/Library/Images/iChat Recent Pictures/
Re: the above link.... I have an image there, but this is a picture that I took with photo booth, and I chose from my picture folder, to change my account picture, but the actual picture taken when creating the account doesn't reside there.

It has me stumped too, as the more research I do on this, the more that I keep hitting dead ends as far as a default location.

I am relieved that this is the only instance that I have encountered, where using the same operating systems, that default locations vary

**wantedinc** · 10-25-2009, 11:01 AM

That's why osx isnt developed by microsoft.. oh well, a screenshot would have to do for now!

**ncjones** · 08-29-2011, 09:04 AM

I was stuck on this one for a while too but finally found the answer at this Superuser question: osx - Where does the Mac store account pictures? - Super User

To summarise: in Mac OS 10.6 your user image is stored in a configuration database. You can extract it using this command:

Code:

dscl . -read /Users/username JPEGPhoto | tail -1 | xxd -r -p > ~/Desktop/accountImage.jpg

where "username" is your user name and "~/Desktop/accountImage.jpg" is the path to the file to export to.

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