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Help! Where'd my pictures go?

asherman13

asherman13

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 31, 2005
914
0
SF Bay Area, CA
I'm using iPhoto 6 on a MacBook Pro 1.83Ghz with all the new updates. I was trying to play a video via Front Row when I had to restart. I restarted and then I found that I had lost all my preference files (the Dock, iTunes, iPhoto, Safari Bookmarks, etc.)!

I was able to recreate stuff, etc. with the exception of iPhoto; all my pictures are in the iPhoto Library folder, but none of them are displayed when I open iPhoto. How can I get them back short of importing every single photo?
 
asherman13 said:
I'm guessing I should only "recover orphaned photos in the iPhoto Library folder"? Or should I "rebuild the iPhoto Library database" as well/instead?
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Since everything is missing, you may as well check off all the boxes.
 
iMeowbot said:
Since everything is missing, you may as well check off all the boxes.
Click to expand...

I tried it and it didn't work...

...should I do a manual rebuild or is there anything else I can try before doing that (moving/deleting any of the data files in the iPhoto Library folder?) ?
 
asherman13 said:
...should I do a manual rebuild or is there anything else I can try before doing that (moving/deleting any of the data files in the iPhoto Library folder?) ?
Click to expand...
If the rebuild didn't work, there's not too much more to try other than starting over (unless you have a backup somewhere :p)

Fortunately, iPhoto 6 uses a fairly orderly arrangement. Under the Originals folder things should be in the same roll arrangement you had before, so it will involve some relatively painless dragging. If won't be so nice to put the modified versions back in, you'll have near-duplicates but (hopefully, if your disk boo-boo wasn't that severe but nothing really lost.
 
asherman13 said:
Huh?
Click to expand...
iPhoto has a separate folder for originals (unadjusted stuff as it looked when you first imported into iPhoto) and modified versions (color corrections, trips out to Photoshop, etc.). That's how it can revert back to originals.

If you want to keep any of those changes, there isn't an easy way to marry the modified versions back to their originals, so you would have two versions of some photos in the library if you chose to bring them back into iPhoto.
 
iMeowbot said:
iPhoto has a separate folder for originals (unadjusted stuff as it looked when you first imported into iPhoto) and modified versions (color corrections, trips out to Photoshop, etc.). That's how it can revert back to originals.

If you want to keep any of those changes, there isn't an easy way to marry the modified versions back to their originals, so you would have two versions of some photos in the library if you chose to bring them back into iPhoto.
Click to expand...

Is there any other simple way to get my library back, such as deleting 1 or more data files from the iPhoto Library folder?
 
asherman13 said:
Is there any other simple way to get my library back, such as deleting 1 or more data files from the iPhoto Library folder?
Click to expand...
You could try to take everything that isn't a folder out of the iPhoto Library folder and see if a rebuild works then, but it probably won't make much difference.

Just to make sure, is iPhoto set up to use the default folder and all that? No custom locations that might be confusing it now?
 
iMeowbot said:
You could try to take everything that isn't a folder out of the iPhoto Library folder and see if a rebuild works then, but it probably won't make much difference.

Just to make sure, is iPhoto set up to use the default folder and all that? No custom locations that might be confusing it now?
Click to expand...

As far as I know...but is there any way to check like with iTunes? Anyways, when I try to import something from the folder into iPhoto, it won't let me, saying that it's already in the iPhoto Library folder, so I have to make a new Library before I import.

I was having some trouble importing the day of the crash, and all the photos I had imported that day are now corrupted. That made me really mad, but I don't think there's anything I can do about it...

EDIT Tried what you said; it didn't work. :( I even made a new Library and moved the folders there and tried to rebuild, but nothing happened!
 
asherman13 said:
As far as I know...but is there any way to check like with iTunes? Anyways, when I try to import something from the folder into iPhoto, it won't let me, saying that it's already in the iPhoto Library folder, so I have to make a new Library before I import.
Click to expand...
Okay, so then your choices are to rename the iPhoto Library folder so that iPhoto can create a new one, or drag out the files as above and try a rebuild again as a last ditch recovery effort.

Unfortunately the iPhoto rebuild procedure isn't really that good. Backups are the only sure things.

I was having some trouble importing the day of the crash, and all the photos I had imported that day are now corrupted. That made me really mad, but I don't think there's anything I can do about it...
Click to expand...

Yeah, it doesn't seem like you're having fun there :(

I see in another thread that you're asking about why your machine is having trouble finding its startup disk. Have you run the Verify Disk thing in Disk Utility to make sure that your drive is in good shape?
 
iMeowbot said:
Okay, so then your choices are to rename the iPhoto Library folder so that iPhoto can create a new one, or drag out the files as above and try a rebuild again as a last ditch recovery effort.

Unfortunately the iPhoto rebuild procedure isn't really that good. Backups are the only sure things.



Yeah, it doesn't seem like you're having fun there :(

I see in another thread that you're asking about why your machine is having trouble finding its startup disk. Have you run the Verify Disk thing in Disk Utility to make sure that your drive is in good shape?
Click to expand...

The HDD is fine, don't worry. I've created a new library, and am dragging and dropping to iPhoto to import but IT KEEPS QUITTING ON ME! IT WON'T IMPORT ANYTHING AND JUST KEEPS UNEXPECTEDLY QUITTIN!

Sorry, I'm getting really frustrated with all of this.
 
Ouch.

One thing to do is get rid of the old preferences, to make sure that they don't contain settings that would confuse a fresh new library.

That's ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPhoto.plist

You can get a cryptic, but occasionally helpful, explanation of why iPhoto is crashing in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/iPhoto.crash.log - but that's something to look at after ruling out the prefs thing.

Beyond that, all that really comes to mind is a reinstall of iPhoto to make sure that no obscure but essential pieces have gone missing.
 
I did it!

Well, sort of. I downloaded iPhoto Library Manager and used that program to extract all my photos from my backed-up corrupted Library (I copied the corrupted Library to a DVD before I tried rebuilding/moving anything around), and then made a new iPhoto Library (hold option during iPhoto startup) and manually imported my photos into iPhoto (I removed the allegedly corrupted pictures [I say this because I couldn't open them in Preview.app], the ones which I had imported the day of the crash, and moved them into a separate folder, meaning I did not import them into the new iPhoto Library. It imported both original and modified photos, but I'm not complaining, because it should be easy to delete the original modified photos (unless I decide to re-modify the originals so I can still revert to original...).

Now, here's my new question: is there any application/utility I can use to clean/uncorrupt my "corrupted" photos so that I can a) view them in Preview and b) put them in iPhoto and onto my website?
 
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