iPhoto option suddenly missing from iTunes 'Sync Photos'

This is a dramatization.

Due to evil wizards, I recently was forced to essentially wipe and reformat my OS X internal drive.

Before then, I was used to using iTunes (12.3.3) to sync my external hard drive's iPhoto (9.6.1) library events, albums, etc, to my iPhone (iOS 9.3.1).

After I restored my OS (10.10.5) from a week-old backup/clone (when I know this sync was still working), the 'iPhoto' option suddenly disappeared from the 'Copy photos from:' dropdown (which just said 'Pictures' or 'Choose folder...').

It was very odd, because my iPhoto library was still there on my external drive, I could open it, and nothing really changed there.

After a few hours of googling and finding nothing helpful for OLD iPhoto (the results were mostly about missing certain photos, or the newer Photos app misbehaving), I did some experimenting.

I held down the 'option' key while opening iPhoto and decided to create a New Library, located on my local/internal hard drive instead of an external hard drive. I then added a couple photos and quit.

When I reopened iTunes, lo' and behold 'iPhoto' appeared again as an option on the 'Sync Photos' tab for my iPhone.

I quit everything, deleted that new local test iPhoto library, and I tried this again but this time with a new library on my external drive and it also worked.

Putting two and two together, I came up with the fix:

1. Quit everything.
2. On your external iPhoto.library file (could be named anything really), rename it to something else.
3. Hold the option key and click iPhoto.
4. Create a new library and name it the same as the original name of your external library before step 2 above.
5. Optional - import a couple photos.
6. Quit iPhoto.
7. Open iTunes and verify that you can again see 'iPhoto' as a sync source for your iPhone (if you imported some photos, you should see a count of them if you select it).
8. Quit iTunes.
9. Now delete the temporary .library file that was created in step 4. Trash it.
10. Return your 'real' library back to it's original name before step 2 (should be the same name you gave your temporary library).

and you should have the option back in iTunes with the correct library/photos being sourced.

Really hope this helps someone out there!