Clean Mavericks Install and iPhoto Photostream

[bowlingred172]

FYI: This is my first time posting on MacRumours

I decided to do a clean install of Mavericks on my 2010 iMac 21.5" since it was getting a tad slow. I took the appropriate steps to back up all my files and applications, so I was confident and went ahead with the wipe.

Now that I'm in the process of installing everything again, I've encountered a lovely surprise. I forgot to back up my Photostream photos (which are all the photos I've taken with my iPhone over the past 6 years).

Now I know the following:
- Photostream keeps photos synced across your iDevices, and stores up to 1000 on your iOS devices but is able to store ALL of them on your Mac (iPhoto under Shared > iCloud)
- There is an option in iPhoto preferences called 'Automatic Import' which imports your Photostream Photos into your iPhoto library. I wanted to keep family/event photos (i.e. Summer Holiday taken with a digital camera) separate from the photos I took from my iPhone. I left this unchecked so my iPhone photos would NOT appear in iPhoto Events. I realise this was stupid, because had I done this I wouldn't have this problem -_-
- The latest of the Photostream photos that are still on my iPhone I have been able to recover, but I know that not all my Photostream photos (>1000) are on my iPhone.

So the real question is: Where are ALL the Photostream photos stored on a Mac? I backed up my iPhoto Library (~30GB) - could they still be in here somewhere? Or were they stored somewhere else on my iMac (before the wipe) and now they're gone forever?

In a nutshell: The photos viewable in (Shared > iCloud) in iPhoto: What is the location of the folder(s) on a Mac that actually stores these photos?

I'm sorry if I haven't explained this properly!

 

[bowlingred172]

Figured it out!

Alright so I've found out the following:

- The photos that show up under Shared > iCloud ARE NOT located in the iPhoto Library. They are located in: /Users/[Username]/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub/

- Turns out, when I made a backup of my Home folder, the 'Library' folder (which is hidden by default) still copied over! This means that I still had a copy of my old Library folder (before the wipe) hidden on my external hard drive which I used for my manual backup!

I was able to access my old Library folder though the 'Go To Folder...' and Bob's your Uncle: all my photos were in the path I just described above!

 

[bowlingred172]

- The photos that show up under Shared > iCloud ARE NOT located in the iPhoto Library.

Actually they are. For some reason, Finder won't let me search for 'All Images' within the iPhoto Library (i.e. within subfolders and subfolders and so on). I manually went through about 50 folders and bam - the photos (the ones I had lost) were there.

- Turns out, when I made a backup of my Home folder, the 'Library' folder (which is hidden by default) still copied over! This means that I still had a copy of my old Library folder (before the wipe) hidden on my external hard drive which I used for my manual backup!

I was able to access my old Library folder though the 'Go To Folder...' and Bob's your Uncle: all my photos were in the path I just described above!

I thought I had found my lost images, but they were actually just the ones I had recovered from my iPhone. So technically that Library folder didn't hold all the photos. They were hidden in the depths of the iPhoto Library.