sort out photo library after disk failure

[Danindub]

Hi All,

I had an ugly disk failure yesterday. Luckily, I managed to recover majority of my pictures using data recovery tools.

Unfortunately, the folder structures, majority of file names are all messed up. Pictures were stored in iPhoto library, but only jpg files were recovered from within. That also includes thumbnails, face-crops (used by Faces feature) etc.

Now i have 5 or 6 folders with 10,000 image files in each. Modify date on the files are different - some of them are original, some of them are dates when they were recovered.

Now - I'm looking for ideas - I need to firstly eliminate all duplicates (thumbnails etc.) of all pictures, then remove all spare jpg (like faces), and finally organize them back in events (at least one per day, I can fix them up manually later).

If anyone have any idea how can I achieve that, that would be most appreciated.

I though I can try dragging bunch of files to iPhoto having enabled option to automatically split events 1 per day, but that doesn't seem to work - i'm ending up having one large event, with range of dates of pictures

Really appreciate any help

 

[snberk103]

Sympathies for your - um, loss.... I can only imagine that heavy feeling in the stomach.

My suggestion is to head over to the Apple Support Forums. These Mac Rumours forums are lot more fun, but I believe that for serious technical help the Apple Support Forums have an advantage. I wish I had that magic bullet solution for you, but I don't.

Do some searching on the Apple forums first... I'm sure you're not the 1st to have this happen.

Luck.

 

[NeverhadaPC]

Hi All,

I had an ugly disk failure yesterday. Luckily, I managed to recover majority of my pictures using data recovery tools.
...
Now - I'm looking for ideas - I need to firstly eliminate all duplicates (thumbnails etc.) of all pictures, then remove all spare jpg (like faces), and finally organize them back in events (at least one per day, I can fix them up manually later).

If anyone have any idea how can I achieve that, that would be most appreciated.
...
Really appreciate any help

Welcome to Digi-hell! Unfortunately, I am not aware of the quick-fix solution.

1) My trick for getting rid of thumbnails is not perfect, but involves finding all relevant .jpg files with Spotlight, then sorting according to pixel width/height/count and removing all "sufficiently" small jpgs (like thumbnails).

2) When I transferred 1000s of pics from comp-2-comp, I ended up with duplicates, however, the naming convention was kind on me and Apple/iPhoto appended _1 or _2 to most duplicates. Searching within iPhoto gave me the ability to remove most duplicates.

Good luck!!!