iphoto shrunk all my photos!!!! please help.

[dougens]

I know this seems mad and I have looked up online and seen that everyone says this can't happen but it has.

My camera is set to take 12mp photos which come out as 3000x4000pixels when put into iphoto.

I looked at my photos today and they were 3000x4000 and vice versa when upright shots.

I took some photos, not changing anything on the camera and imported then to iphoto and they are fine.

But all my other photos taken with the same camera at the same settings as before are now 360x270 and vice versa and **** quality!!

I have checked the originals root folder etc and they are 360x270 as well!
These were not this size this morning.

Has anyone ever known this to happen?

I think I have a back up but if not is I will be very pissed.

Thanks for any replies and help on how to retrieve.

 

[Designer Dale]

What camera model are you using and what version of iPhoto? I see that you are running Tiger, but I don't know how that would change anything. The photos in your Originals folder should be unchanged by most anything. I've never had this happen, but I keep my OS up to date. I switched to Aperture 3 back in July.

Dale

 

[dougens]

What camera model are you using and what version of iPhoto? I see that you are running Tiger, but I don't know how that would change anything. The photos in your Originals folder should be unchanged by most anything. I've never had this happen, but I keep my OS up to date. I switched to Aperture 3 back in July.

Dale

Sorry I'm now on Snow leopard (iphoto 6) and all the photos apart from the ones I've just added are 360x270. Even the ones I added with the same camera (samsung sl600) a few days ago. The originals are all changed as well. I know it sounds mad but I haven't done anything, and I just checked my backup and they are all the original size of 4000x3000.
???

 

[dougens]

and actually it has resized all my photos (not just with the different camera) to 360x270.
something is very wrong here.............

 

[Designer Dale]

I just went back to my iPhoto library and I found the same problem that you are having. I looked in the Originals folder and found most of the .jpg and RAW files gone. All that remains are the .xmp files that hold the modifications made to the RAW files in PhotoShop. I probably trashed this out myself when I switched to Aperture 3 as my main editor without really reading how to do this correctly. I replaced my hard drive at the same time. I had moved all of my files from iPhoto to Aperture and probably moved the originals rather than making copies.

I don't know if this helps at all. If you have a backup of your library, I would delete the bad one and rebuild it from the backup. If you have the space somewhere, back up the back up first.

Dale

 

[dougens]

I just went back to my iPhoto library and I found the same problem that you are having. I looked in the Originals folder and found most of the .jpg and RAW files gone. All that remains are the .xmp files that hold the modifications made to the RAW files in PhotoShop. I probably trashed this out myself when I switched to Aperture 3 as my main editor without really reading how to do this correctly. I replaced my hard drive at the same time. I had moved all of my files from iPhoto to Aperture and probably moved the originals rather than making copies.

I don't know if this helps at all. If you have a backup of your library, I would delete the bad one and rebuild it from the backup. If you have the space somewhere, back up the back up first.

Dale

Hi Dale
Thanks for you reply.
The .jpeg and RAW files are there in the originals, data and modified folders but are shrunk and average 40-70kb rather than 2-4mb??
The main problem is I only have a back up of my new photos with the new camera not the old ones. A bad move I know but I use most of my space for audio backups as I'm an audio engineer! I won't let that happen again.
I just can't understand how it happened??
Not very happy at all.

 

[PatrickCocoa]

My Guess

My guess is that you deleted all of your picture files, but not the thumbnails.

You may have been trying to save space on your hard drive, move to another picture management platform, update your OS, or keep your file structure "clean".

If you did delete them, and you had activated Time Machine before that, then use the Time Machine interface to get them back. If you did delete them, and you hadn't activated Time Machine, then use your other backup method to restore them. If you did delete them, and you hadn't backed them up, they're gone.

Not that you asked, but you should let iPhoto manage your photo files and structure. Similarly for iTunes with your songs and movies. Sure, they may order things differently than you would, or they may do other things you don't like, but you'll free up that part of your brain that remembers what iPhoto and iTunes do with your files. You can spend that free brainspace on other things, like making better photos or imagining yourself with a supermodel.

 

[dougens]

You may have been trying to save space on your hard drive, move to another picture management platform, update your OS, or keep your file structure "clean".

Thanks for your reply Patrick. I haven't performed any of the above tasks today. Apart from keep my file structure clean? I don't know what this is......

Not that you asked, but you should let iPhoto manage your photo files and structure. Similarly for iTunes with your songs and movies. Sure, they may order things differently than you would, or they may do other things you don't like, but you'll free up that part of your brain that remembers what iPhoto and iTunes do with your files. You can spend that free brainspace on other things, like making better photos or imagining yourself with a supermodel.

The only way that I differ when importing photos is I:

1. create a folder on my desktop named "xmas 2010" for example
2. add this folder to iphoto

I do this so in the root folder the folders are named on import rather than Roll 246 etc.
I find this is easier when uploading pics to network sites etc as easier to find in the website upload forms rather than "roll 245 etc"

I have been doing this since I bought the mac though (3years) and it has never been a problem.

The thing I can't understand is that every picture (6367 pics) apart from the ones I just uploaded (23) are all exactly the same size....?

Actually sorry I'm editing this. and apologies for not remembering earlier (head's in a mess!!)

Every picture is now the same size as my mobile phone uploaded images and today I plugged in my mobile phone for the first time in years via USB (I usually bluetooth)
I didn't actually import any photos but when I plugged it in iphoto opened....
If this is the cause
why? why? why>


I'm baffled.
Thanks for your help and advice

 

[dougens]

And stupidly I backed up my "data" folder and have just opened it and all the photos are the same size 360x270 as well.

Can anyone try and help me out with what I've done.

Is there any way of getting these back?

Aghhhh, time for a wee whiskey.... actually make it a large one

 

[glocke12]

this thread makes me want to backup my iphoto library to a secondary location.

if you use time machine you ought to be able to use an earlier saved time to backup your photos...otherwise it sounds like you may have done a permanent change.

 

[esaleris]

Did you enable that option called "Copy Items into iPhoto Library" option? What iPhoto might have been doing is linking to the photos on your desktop, and keeping the thumbnails in the library. When you deleted them off your desktop, it only kept the thumbnails.

 

[PatrickCocoa]

File Structure

Thanks for your reply Patrick. I haven't performed any of the above tasks today. Apart from keep my file structure clean? I don't know what this is......

The only way that I differ when importing photos is I:

1. create a folder on my desktop named "xmas 2010" for example
2. add this folder to iphoto

I do this so in the root folder the folders are named on import rather than Roll 246 etc.
I find this is easier when uploading pics to network sites etc as easier to find in the website upload forms rather than "roll 245 etc"

I have been doing this since I bought the mac though (3years) and it has never been a problem.

Best of luck - if you've been doing something for three years that works, and suddenly your pictures are gone, then something must have happened recently. If it wasn't one of my suggestions, it may be that esaleris' "copy items to the iPhoto library" will fix this issue. But only going forward.

Also, if you've been doing this for three years (including deleting the desktop folders you've created) I'm not sure why this problem would suddenly occur. What has changed on your computer or in your routine recently?

Again, best of luck.

As an aside, regarding my comment about people's desire to maintain a "clean" file structure. What I meant it that people try to use a different file structure than iPhoto for some reason. Many people create a new file structure because they feel it's "cleaner", or more like it "should be".

What you're doing has the same effect - you've decided to not use iPhoto's default file structure so that you can more easily have named photo rolls. I believe this is the root cause of your pictures disappearing. Going forward, if I were you I'd submit to Apple's view of how photo files should be organized. Then rename the rolls from within iPhoto.

To solve your "how do I easily find and upload sets of photos to online sites" issue, you may want to: google it; ask that question specifically on macrumors or somewhere else; call AppleCare; or see if there's some application that will do that. Or maybe iPhoto can be used to tag rolls or individual photos and then those can be uploaded by one of iPhoto's new "share media" buttons. These "share media" buttons are new in iPhoto 11, so maybe you don't need the desktop folder approach anymore.

 

[snberk103]

Best of luck -
....
As an aside, regarding my comment about people's desire to maintain a "clean" file structure. What I meant it that people try to use a different file structure than iPhoto for some reason. Many people create a new file structure because they feel it's "cleaner", or more like it "should be".
....
To solve your "how do I easily find and upload sets of photos to online sites" issue, you may want to: google it; ask that question specifically on macrumors or somewhere else; call AppleCare; or see if there's some application that will do that. Or maybe iPhoto can be used to tag rolls or individual photos and then those can be uploaded by one of iPhoto's new "share media" buttons. These "share media" buttons are new in iPhoto 11, so maybe you don't need the desktop folder approach anymore.

dougens: I don't know what happened to your photos, and I have nothing to add that PatrickCocoa hasn't already covered. I guess this comment is for the next person who is searching this thread for a similar problem. Let iPhoto manage the photos, and use the very good tools that iPhoto has to do what you what you want to do. In this case, tagging every photo on import with a keyword that corresponds to the roll name you were previously using would have enabled the easy retrieval of the photos later. Adding more keywords later is also easy, so find all images with "xmas 2010" then add the people/place/thing keywords as well.

Best of luck with recovering your photos. We do things opposite. I've got all my photos backed up, but none of my music. Hmm. Time to look into that, I think....