iPhoto library "loss"

[Sasha]

I can't believe I did this: late at night, I imported everything from "Pictures" into iPhoto ... including, I just discovered, my entire iPhoto library. Now I have a new, EMPTY library, and cannot search out my photos.

Suggestions? (Other than the judicious application of fist to forehead)  

[Sasha]

Having spent the morning digging in Apple's KB, I'm ready to say that the photos, yea the entire library, is gone. I do remember an episode of the MB refusing to wake from sleep soon after I did the dirty deed; it was probably a digestive upset. Let this be a cautionary tale about the care and feeding of iPhoto; nemmine the "back up or die" advice.

[Paddy]

Has the amount of free disk space on your HD increased by the amount of space your pictures occupied - assuming that this was significant enough to notice? On my Mac it certainly would be! Because otherwise, I think they've got to be there somewhere...

You have clicked on iPhoto Library in the Pictures folder and there is absolutely NOTHING in it? No originals folder? Have you looked in your Trash? I hope you haven't emptied it since this occurred...

I've NEVER trusted iPhoto to be the sole keeper of my photos because of its formerly bizarre library structure (somewhat improved in latter editions) and the number of horror stories I've read of things just up and disappearing. I use Lightroom now - and it's terrific, and far more powerful. Also costs more of course, but worth every penny to me, especially as for the last two years I've had thousands of photos to manage for my son's school yearbook. I also back up in triplicate.

[Sasha]

Paddy, yes, I had checked the free disk space, and it was reasonably close to the same. I'm fairly sure the data exists somewhere on this drive (possibly doubled, since I accidentally copied everything in again).

In the Pictures folder when I first opened it after the mishap, there was NOTHING. I.e., no iPhoto Library ... no nuttin'. Makes it a little hard to search out any folders in that Library. I tried Spotlight for several terms that should have raised folders: nothing. I miss the OS 7.x days of drive searches. Probably ferretable (ferretible?) through Unix, but probably useless if I did. Henceforth, I'll stick with folders full of jpegs. Most photos were backed up as jpegs prior to iPhotoizing them, so it's not tragic ... much.

Thanks for your thoughts. There could be a simple "do you really mean to do this dumb thing you just started to do?" warning, but when have we dummies ever paid attention to those?  

[Mayo]

I have never trusted the iPhoto library and when I switched to Aperture I elected to keep image folders outside the library; I think that iPhoto now has a similar option.

Aperture and Lightroom are similar but I think that Aperture is (obviously) more intuitive in an Apple way and editing images is less locked-in to doing it Adobe's way or it's the highway... Aperture is less expensive too last time I checked. I would demo both apps before plunking down my $$$.

And like Paddy I keep multiple copies of my images on external drives; if something happens to a drive I'm covered.

[Xairbusdriver]

You might want to 'invest' in a third-party app called "<Path Finder>" that can and will search and display any and all files on your drive(s). It's actually shareware and you may be able to find and restore to use the files you want without any other use of the app, just delete then. It does not use Spotlight or the OS, so it will show you files that Apple doesn't intend for the casual user to see. Of course, that will make you responsible for moving, deleting, renaming, etc. any file(s). Just be sure the ones you find are the ones you need and be sure you know where they should be located. It may be a simple matter, in this case, of 'showing' iPhoto where the file is, so it can access the images.

Path Finder is an extremely useful and well supported app and well worth the shareware fee, IMHO. Of course, there are other, similar apps that may do all you need. Just make sure they do not depend on Spotlight.

[Sasha]

Downloaded a 30 day free trial. This'll be fun; thx/

[Paddy]

Lightroom keeps the photos wherever YOU tell it to keep the photos, which is a fundamental difference between it and iPhoto. I have several large projects in different folders on my hard drive, complete with folders of photos - in some cases, MANY folders and subfolders. They're all in the Lightroom data base, which makes finding and using them very easy. But if anything ever happened to the Lightroom database, I'd still have all my photos, exactly where I put them.

Of course, iPhoto should also work this way - the actual "originals" folder should remain untouched by any database failure.

Sasha - something just occurred to me. What version of iPhoto are you using? You do know that the more recent versions of iPhoto don't show anything when you click on "iPhoto Library" in the Pictures folder? That you have to right click on that iPhoto Library folder and select "show package contents"??

Of course even without doing this, if the iPhoto Library folder shows 0 GB for the folder size in the preview window in Finder list view, then you know there in fact isn't anything there...

Let us know.

[Mayo]

Mire info:

"Note that in iPhoto 7, Apple has now changed the library folder so that it is a package, meaning that it no longer appears as a folder in the Finder. You can still delve into its contents, however, by control-clicking on it and selecting "Show Package Contents" from the contextual menu."

In Aperture you can select "managed" images that reside in the Aperture library and/or "referenced" images that can reside anywhere you please. I prefer referenced images because I use a variety of third-party apps so I like to be able to easily open images in the Finder.

[Sasha]

They're gone. They were undoubtedly in a "recovered" file after the last "wouldn't wake from sleep" episode, and went out with the trash. I haven't had the heart to look in my backup files, but I HAVE warned my neighbor (he who does not distinguish between originals and slideshow folders ... he's a super photographer with 5000+ photos, and deserves better than iPhoto), who will "give it some thought.'

BTW, is the visibility of prior posts in a thread while replying a new wrinkle? Super!

[Paddy]

QUOTE

BTW, is the visibility of prior posts in a thread while replying a new wrinkle? Super!

Not to my knowledge.

I do hope your files are all intact in your backups! You really ought to consider an external HD with full backups (clones) done by SuperDuper. You can set it to back up automatically at a time of day when you're normally asleep or not around and it's utterly painless. I have a weekly backup to one drive and a nightly backup to another, so if something like the disaster you've just had occurred and I didn't realize it for a day or two, I'd still have the weekly backup to fall back to. I've probably got 20,000 images on this Mac - not all of them mine as some are for the last year's and this year's Northlea School Yearbook and other parents send me stuff, but my own digital photos go back about 7 years now, so losing them would NOT be good. I do want to do CD backups of all the "good" ones, but I've not gotten to that quite yet.