How to Locate Your Missing Original iPhoto Library File On Your Computer
When photos go missing from your iPhoto collection, it usually falls under two specific situations. You will need to work your way through both and figure out which one you are dealing with.
POSSIBLE ISSUE — When you launch the iPhoto application, it seems to load your photo collection just fine. But the problem is a few, or maybe even many of your individual photos don't seem to be there anymore. Click the button below to take you to the solution to this problem.
POSSIBLE ISSUE — Or, in the second situation, when you launch your iPhoto application, and a message comes up saying that it can't find your iPhoto library file, or in the window, you don't see the name of your library file listed, then this tells you that iPhoto is having a problem finding your entire photo collection. In this case, you will need to give iPhotos a little help in finding it.
If this sounds like your situation, the article you are reading will hopefully help you to find your missing collection, so just continue reading on.
My Entire iPhoto Photo Collection Is Missing!
What's Causing This Problem:
There are two things required to make your photo collection load in iPhoto.
iPhoto Application — the program developed by Apple that does the magic.
Photo Library File — a self-contained folder that looks like a single file in the Finder application. This contains all of your master images, preview and thumbnail versions of your images, and all of the database files that the iPhoto application reads and writes to know all the information about each of your images and how you have them organized.
The iPhoto application loads your Photo Library file after the application itself loads. You can have as many Photo Library files as you wish. By default, when you launch iPhoto, it loads whichever library file you had opened the last time you used iPhoto.
So the problem is, for whatever reason, your original library file with all of your master photos is missing — or iPhoto can no longer find it to load it up for you. Instead, it's loading either another library file you created at one time or, worse, it's created a new and, therefore, empty library file, so you are seeing no photos or events at all.
My Background Finding Missing Library Files:
Even though I have helped a lot of people with their missing iPhoto Photo Library files, I still have personally never experienced a corrupt or missing library file myself.
So, like I tell everyone that I help, I still can't give you first-hand knowledge of how to deal with your problem since I've never even been able to reproduce the situation. And often, I never hear back from them, so I never find out exactly what fixed their particular problem.
But, what I can tell you from everything that I've heard from people with these problems, and from those that I have helped, is that in a few rare cases, iPhoto libraries seem to go missing during upgrades of iPhoto library files when a major version of iPhoto was just installed, and when their iPhone is connected to their computers and is doing various kinds of syncs and imports.
It's very strange. Coming from their stories, it's as if in these situations, when there is a problem, the software makes a decision to move the Library file somewhere else — possibly to the OSX trash bin!? And then iPhoto creates a whole new (and empty) library file. I, of course, easier not to believe all of this, but I've heard this story many times now, over and over, so I've had to accept that something strange is, in fact going on.
How We Can Fix This:
What you will now need to do is help iPhoto to find your missing original iPhoto Photo Library file.
There isn't one single process I can tell you that is a sure way to find it. So, instead, I am going to list off the instructions for how to do all of the ones I know and recommend.
If it's at all possible, you moved your missing library file to an external drive, be sure to attach it to your computer and turn it on so this drive can be part of the search routines we are going to try below.
These search methods are listed in order of the way I would like you to try them. You are welcome to skip one if you would like to opt for a better one down the list. Just know the further down the list you go, the more difficult or time-consuming they become.
Search Methods to Try
Do these in order — fastest and cheapest to hardest and potentially most expensive
OSX Trash
First, I would look in the OSX trash can to see if it's in there. It's usually in your dock at the bottom. Sort by the file size column if you can’t find files this large in there easily. This will make large files like your library sort to the top or bottom to make it easier. Surprisingly, many people I’ve talked to have found it there. If you find it, you want to drag it out of the trash and return it where you originally had it. This is usually your “user > pictures” folder.
Very Important!
Even if you don't find your library file in the trash, I highly recommend that you do not empty your trash until you have found your original iPhoto library file. If your library file is in there, and for some reason, you overlooked it and later emptied the trash, your odds of recovering your entire photo collection are greatly reduced.
Testimonials
Spotlight
If it’s not in the OSX trash bin, and you’re sure it’s not there, I would then move on to Spotlight (magnifying glass icon) at the top right of your screen in the menu bar to search for your original library.
Start typing in “iPhoto Library” in the search field. This is the default name that iPhoto gives a new Photo Library file. Type in something different if you know you've changed the name of your library file to something else.
Look all over your computer’s drive and external drives to see if you can locate it. I find that typing in “iPhoto Library” and then clicking on “Show all in Finder” works best. Now you can get a good look at all the results to find it.
Like in the trash suggestions above, be sure to sort by file size to help bring the largest files to the top. Your library file is likely 20+ gigs, so it will be very hard to miss in a sorted column of file sizes. It will either end up at the very top or the very bottom of the list, depending on how you have the file sizes sorted.
Testimonials
Finder Application
Here’s an excellent way to find your Photo Library file using the Finder application built into the Mac operating system. I think this is even better than trying the “Spotlight” method above because it narrows the search to just a small number of possible candidates for your library file(s).
If the steps look tedious and daunting, please don't let them. To be safe and reassure me that I don't confuse some people, the steps required me to write out a lot of words.
Load the Finder application.
If you aren't sure what Finder is, it's an application that usually has a shortcut to it in your Dock. It looks like a square with a smiling face on it.
Bring up “Find” window
Hit Command-F for find or “File > Find” from the menu bar at the top of your screen. A search window will come up.
Change appropriate settings in “Find” window
Near the top middle area, in an oval pulldown item that’s probably labeled “Kind,” click it and change it to “File Size.” You probably won’t see it in the list, so choose “Other” from the bottom of the list, and then a new window slides down. Scroll way down until you get to “File Size” in the alphabetically organized list. Click on File Size in the list, and then click the “OK” button.
Change the next pulldown button from “Equals” (default) to “Is greater than.”
Near the top middle area, in an oval pulldown item that’s probably labeled “Kind,” click it and change it to “File Size.” You probably won’t see it in the list, so choose “Other” from the bottom of the list, and then a new window slides down. Scroll way down until you get to “File Size” in the alphabetically organized list. Click on File Size in the list, and then click the “OK” button.
Now choose “GB” (for gigabytes) from the next pulldown where it reads “KB” (Default)
In the window area below, you will start to see files populate that meet your chosen criteria. In my example, any file that is larger than 10GB’s will show up in the list. Only very few files should show up. Just large file-sized photo library files, video files, etc., will make the list.
Advanced Tip
This is very important. Make sure that at the top, next to “Search:,” you click on the right area of your computer to be sifting through. “This Mac” is selected by default, which should search all drives currently connected to your computer. If you select an item to the right of that, it becomes more specific to fewer areas of your computer — like just a single hard drive or just a single folder on a single hard drive, etc.
If you don’t see columns of information you need to see, like the file size, go up to “VIEW > SHOW VIEW OPTIONS” at the top (Command-J). Now you can put check marks next to missing information columns. The file size is just “Size” from this list. And you can drag and drop the columns at the top of the list to get the file size column closer to the name column if that helps you. This will really help to find any large files on your drives. In most cases, this should find an easily finable library file. If it finds a file you think could be it, you single-click on the file to highlight it (select it), and it will show you, at the bottom, the file path where the file is located.
Very Important!
If either of your external drives were formatted and you selected “Encrypted” with a password, this search method won’t work unless you selected to allow Finder to index your drive contents. I just tried a 10+ gig search, and some of my iPhoto libraries didn’t come up because they are on encrypted drives, and I didn’t select to allow Finder to index the drive when I formatted it.
“Deeper” Software Scanning
If you are still having problems locating your library file, you will need to then move on to a third-party program like “Disk Space Analyzer: Inspector” or “Daisydisk,” both of which are sold in the Mac App store.
These two programs, and ones like them, scan any and all of your hard drives (externals to if they’ve been hooked up recently) to analyze the types of data that are taking up space on your hard drive. If it sees a large amount of space taken up with photo files, it will show you that area, like a colored “piece” on a map. You just have to hover your mouse over the area (if memory serves correctly), and it will tell you where these photos are stored.
Both applications have a well-thought-out and beautiful interface, and I've used both of them and recommend them equally. Each offers a free trial if you download it directly from their company website: Nektony and Software Ambience Corp.
I just had a guy write me to tell me he found his library file using “Disk Inspector.” He found it on an external drive. He remembered moving it to this location, but he probably didn’t double-click on the library to load this library file into iPhoto. So when he launched iPhoto, it couldn’t find his original library file (or any library file for that matter), so it created a new one.
I’m including a few screenshots that will show you how I was able to find one of my huge library files with it. I wrote out instructions on each step for you to follow. Note: these screenshots were made with an earlier version of the software when it was called “Disk Inspector.”
Testimonials
“Data Recovery Software
If you have exhausted ALL of the methods above, the next option I would suggest is a data recovery application you could operate yourself.
The program I would recommend is the only data recovery program that Apple currently sells on its website and in its stores. It's called “Data Rescue” by Prosoft Engineering.
After clicking one of the above links, scroll down on the sales page you arrived on, and you will see a “Try before you buy” download link to download a demo version of their software for free (you will just need to provide your email address). You won't be able to recover your files for free, but you will at least be able to see if Data Rescue finds and believes it can recover the missing files before you make your purchase.
You might find less expensive data recovery software if you scour the internet for deals. But, I think in this case, you really will get what you pay for like the saying goes. And this is still way cheaper than hiring someone for their time and expertise to attempt a data recovery for you. The great thing is you will also receive email, chat, and phone technical support from Prosoft if you have any questions during your recovery process.
Keep in mind, data recovery software will usually only help if your iPhoto library file was “deleted” from your system — as your computer's operating system was told, it was okay to write over that information with something else. This happens when you empty the trash. If something is in the trash and you empty it, macOS now know it's okay to write over this data on your hard drive. So, recovery software can find that information and bring it back.
If however, enough time has passed, and macOS has now written new data on top of these old files “marked” for to be possibly written over, then the software is much less likely to be effective. Only what hasn't been written over can possibly be restored.
So, if you are thinking about using any kind of recovery software, try not to wait very long while making up your mind. It's very important that you do this as soon as you can to ensure the recovery of as many files as possible.
Forensic Recovery Services
Your absolute last resort would be bringing your computer or your internal drive to a forensic recovery specialist. They can really be costly, especially if they have to take your drive into a clean room and take it apart. And, even with the cost, there is no guarantee they can recover all your missing or deleted files.
I personally haven't used any recovery services myself or know anyone that has. If you or someone you know has and can recommend one, please let me know through my contact form, so I can build a reputable list here for those needing one.
I don’t know who you are, but you have just brought down my stress level 100 fold! I found photos in both the Trash, and on the finder using the parameter of 1 gig folder. Why my pics on iphoto ended up here, I’m guessing is because of the OS system upgrade. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Somehow I have another library icon on my desktop, the icon says photo library and the icon is a bit different in shape from the iPhotos icon in my menu bar. The icon on my desktop is square. I can’t decide if I should trash it or not, if somehow I have moved my library files to my desktop, how do I get it to go back to where it belongs? Any help is appreciated.
Did you recently update your Mac running a really old operating system to a newer one? iPhoto is no longer supported, and hasn’t been for years now. Starting with version 10.10.3 on April 8, 2015, Apple automatically installs its replacement — Apple Photos (round colorful flower icon), and creates a new “duplicate” library file. This way, you can continue using iPhoto (square icon) if you would like, OR, start using the newer Apple Photos.
Changes made in one application aren’t made in the other though! So, it’s best you have a plan of how you want to deal with this before you starting using them both at the same time.
I don’t have enough information from what you wrote to give you permission to trash what you are seeing on the desktop. It could be an important library file, or maybe it’s not. It’s also possible it’s an application file — it could be the iPhoto application itself, not the library file (two different things). So, I would save it if I were you until you are positive it’s something you can delete. Even just moving it to an external drive as a safe keeping backup could be a good conservative strategy.
If it’s an application, like your old iPhoto application, then you would want to drag it and drop it into your “Applications” folder inside of your user folder. If it’s a library file, you would want to drag and drop it into your “Photos” folder inside of your user folder. You can do this using the “Finder” application.
Thank you! My 2nd photo library was totally gone/not visible and I had to try different searches you suggested. Backing up photos now!
Sounds like a complete success — excellent! So happy to hear! You’re very welcome!
Mine now says “clone library” and won’t open when I try to go back to my system library. Help?! Please )):
Hi again, Curtis Bisel, it is just wonderful!!!! With the app recommended, the disc space analyser I could discover the iPhotoLibrary. It is in a very strange directory. I don’t remember to put it there. But there it is!!!!! Visible!!!!
So, without you advisees I could never get there!!!
Many thank’s again!!! My best wishes to you!
Hi, Maria. I was sitting here, working on preparing all of my financials for tax appointment soon for the business taxes for this website, and your comments just came in. My day of boredom, stress and headache suddenly changed for the positive!
I’m SO thrilled to hear how happy you we BOTH are that you were able to find your iPhoto photo collection! Another success story!! You’re so welcome. And thank you for taking the time to let me know how much this helped you. 🙂 Best wishes to you too.
Hi,
It worked for me restarting my MacBookPro, plugged in the external drive. Thank’s a lot. I have no words for it! I was desperate and I thought that I lost all my photos. Now, Photo is processing the iPhotoLibrary file. However, I still do not see the file iPhotoLibrary. Do you have any advice how to make it visible? It is just not visible. I tried to see all hidden files and neither is there …
Thank you kindly, Curtis Bisel. Muchas gracias, maestro! Like many on this site, I am quite relived to have located the files via your nurturing instructions. I plan to name my next child after you (I am 69, so if I can find a surrogate and come up with the cash…..). I haven’t finished the total recovery of my photos process, but I pulled up a long, lost .jpeg from Brazil that showed me they’re awaiting there, ready to be saved.
Ha ha ha! So wonderful to hear, Basil! So glad you are finding success recovering your lost photos! Wahoo!
Yep. My file was in the trash as well. Unsure how it got there. Thanks for your very well crafted, easy to follow, instructions. My wife is very happy to have her pictures back!
Excellent Bradley — so pleased to hear you got your photos back!! And you’re both so welcome. Tell your wife I’m very happy for her. 🙂
please help me, i tried the scan version but it kept saying my usb was having errors. So my problem is this, my photos app suddenly removed my library and when i called apple they had me create a new library and nowhere on my computer can i find the old library. I already emptied my trash unfortunately but i cannot remember ever seeing my photo library or anything of that sort in my trash can. I don’t know what even caused my photos app to suddenly remove the library and even the apple customer service people could help, i’ve tried and tried and unfortunately i don’t even have a back up of anything on my computer nor did i ever have an external hard drive. Please i don’t know what to do and those photos I have meant the world to me and now they’re all gone. I even spent $30 buying a usb so i could try that free demo computer scan thing to see if it could find any of the deleted files and it kept saying there was an error with my usb so i panicked and stopped the process so it didnt delete anything else from my computer. Please I really need help, is there even hope of me ever getting that old library back??
I’m so sorry to hear Stephanie. Prepare yourself for the worst, but don’t give up. Your photos could still be there.
Usually, from all the help I’ve done on this post, people seem to lose their library files when upgrading a major version of macOS where they go from having just the iPhoto application, to then having a newer version of macOS that comes with their new Photos application. This process seems to come with a little bit of chance that something might go wrong and it displaces the original library file — usually in the trash.
In your comment, you jumped from the step of checking in your trash, all the way to “buying a usb.” I assume you mean data recovery software that came on a USB drive? Or what did you mean by that exactly.
If that is the case, then have you tried the important steps in between?
The data recovery software will look to see if your library file was deleted, and if it was deleted, can it retrieve it. The steps in Finder and using deep scanning, will help you find your library file if it’s somewhere on your drive, but not necessarily deleted. You want to use these steps to try and find a large library file sitting somewhere on your drive that you just aren’t seeing, or that iPhoto/Photos isn’t easily finding when you launch the application.
Hi, I have found my library and it reads that I have 81+ GB there: Date created 1/2/10 Modified (today) 8/24/18 but there are no images there. I just used a 3rd party duplicate cleaner photo app and now my iphoto is empty. My folders pane on the left side of iphoto is intact but they read “no photos”. What can I do?
correction: created 1/2/01 not 1/2/10. pulling my hair out over here. .
Your an absolute LEGEND!!!!
Found it from the spotlight..
I love you
I’m so VERY happy you found your Library File Louis!! I know how absolutely devastating this feels when you believe you will never see your cherished photos and videos ever again. A huge “Happy Dance” in July for you today!!! :coffee:
Yep, wow, my Photo file was in the trash?! So my lost-photo-file nightmare just ended because of you. Bless your generosity!
Wahooooo Sylvia!! Excellent news to hear! You’re so welcome. And your happiness and gratitude make it all worth it. 🙂
Curtis, thank you for you expertise. I was doing o.k with your instructions, util I came to:THE IMPORTANT part, go to the right of the search bar. Can you please clarify this for me. THANKS!
Honor, are you still having problems finding your library file?
Just here to say that I almost pooped my pants and passed out when I couldn’t find my library. Thanks to you I didn’t have a huge mess to clean up. Thank you so much.
Lol! I’m laughing at your comment, yet extremely relieved it appears you were able to find your library file full of photos!! Woot! Woot! You’re so welcome. 🙂
I have VERSION 2.o for photos – I don’t have anything called “iPhoto” But the same happened to me – I was asked after I connected my iPhone – “CREATE A NEW ALBUM” I chose this and I no longer have access to all my years and years of photos – even my iMovie is blank. All I have access to are the photos that pulled in from importing from my iPhone. How do I find my OLD ALBUM. Again – I only have REGULAR “PHOTOS” version 2.0 My “PHOTOS” isn’t called iPhoto
iPhotos is the name of Apple’s photo manager before they stopped development on it and came out with a newer one called Photos. But, my instructions work the same for iPhoto as they do for Photos — they both use the same “mechanism” of a library file to store and/or access your photos.
Albums are ways to contain multiple photos and videos inside of iPhoto or Photos. Is it possible it asked you to create a new library? If so, then you should be looking for your lost library file. If you truly created a second album, then inside of Photos, you should see a list of your available albums (folders in a way) on the left side margin.
Thanks so much for this article, Curtis! I actually didn’t get far down your list before I managed to flush out my missing photos, but having such a long, detailed and above all – easy to follow – list of things to try gave me the sense of calm I needed to attack the problem in a systematic and confident way. So, instead of panicking and randomly pressing buttons to make the situation worse, I have now been reunited with my photos within a much shorter time frame. I am very relieved I didn’t need to resort to some of the harder options, but glad they were there if I needed them. Really appreciate the effort you made to create that post!
Wow! Very happy to hear this Kylie!! So glad you didn’t panic and make matters worse. I know it’s hard not to feel obligated to start doing things so you feel like you are doing all you can do. But, in your case, your patience paid off! Congratulations. So happy you got your photos back. :coffee:
Thank you so much for this blog. I really appreciate the world of open source help! It was in Trash and thank goodness I found it before I trashed it properly! I then just moved it to Pictures and redirected the Photos app and all was fine. Thanks alot!
Oh Jeanine, I’m soooooo happy to hear! You’re so welcome!
Can you believe how your photos just happened to be… in the trash!? Such a scary thought how close you could have come to losing them all for good. But, you took action and found the happy ending! Wahoo! Congrats! :beer:
THANK YOU! I was moving pictures from my pictures folder to iPhoto and deleting the ones I moved…and didn’t realized I had moved the pics to the trash. I think I didn’t breathe until I found your article. Thanks for the resuscitation.
Oh wow! You’re so welcome Suzanne!! I’m very happy to hear you didn’t panic too much, and you worked your way to a place with a solution… and you found your photos! Wahoo!
Another success story!
Thank you for sharing with me. :coffee:
I just updated my mac from yosemite to sierra and lost the use of iPhoto with the upgrade to Photos. I also lost about 300 GB of photos during the migration. Following your instructions above, I found three different libraries – the original backup on an external drive from 2009, the new back up to an external drive from just before the upgrade (YAY!!!) and the new photos library which was short the last four years of photos – which is what prompted me to start searching. My guess is the migration to Photos must have been interrupted and cut short. I went back into the newer backup and made it the “system photo library” and it finished the migration (mostly). It looks like everything is there, except there is a size discrepancy between the two… original is 371.22 GB and new is 350.65 GB. Have any ideas?
Hi Tracy. First off, congratulations! I’m so happy to read you were able to restore your “lost” photo collection! I bet you did the “happy dance” around your home for a few hours! There may have been a way to restore it without a backup, but I think what everyone should take from your story here is — make sure you always have a backup!
I certainly can’t help you assess whether or not all of your photos that are in your iPhoto library are also now in your new Photos library file. You were smart to compare file sizes which usually is an excellent indicator. Another thing you could do is go to the photo views in each program, where it shows photo counts for all of all of your photos, and see if you can get a total count in each. It’s not a 100% exact measure (there could be new duplicates in Photos for example?? to makeup for some that are missing??), but it might be another good peace of mind step for you.
It’s sometimes hard to explain, but, let me give it a try. Apple wanted to make sure that people could still access their iPhoto collection INSIDE of iPhoto, while still learning how to use Photos (after upgrading their systems like you did). So right now, you can use iPhoto or Photos, and it will load their respective library files. The thing is, if you make edits in iPhoto right now to one or more of your photos, it’s not going to show up in Photos. They aren’t synced for changes. But, what they currently ARE “synced” for (if the migration was successful of course), is for a complete count of all of your photos.
The problem Apple had to overcome was, how to we give everyone a complete collection of their photos in BOTH applications at the same time — while not doubling their storage usage on their storage drive. Let that sink in. Your collection is roughly 350GB’s.. so theoretically, your photo collection should therefore be taking up 700GB’s of space if you add up both library files for each application.
The trick they pulled off uses what’s technically called “hard links”, and they’ve actually given us all our entire libraries in both applications using the same storage space of just one application. “Photos saves disk space by creating links to the original and preview versions of your images. ”
So, what this means Tracy is, if right now you have 500 GB’s of free space on your storage drive, if you were to decide today you wanted to delete your iPhoto library file that (I think from what you wrote) is 371.22 GB’s, you would think you would now have 871.22 GB’s free. But you wouldn’t! Aha. And that’s because of these mystical “hard links”. If you deleted your iPhoto library you would actually have roughly the same amount of space free — 500 GB’s — and that’s because your Photos library still has all of the same photos that iPhotos was using… so it retains all of that space. (What I think happens is if you try and delete your iPhoto library file, it then moves any unique photos physically located inside of your iPhoto library you are dragging to the trash, and moves it physically to your Photos library file so it’s preserved)
This is a long explanation to get to the point I wanted to make to answer your question, and that is to say I think its very possible the difference you are seeing between 371GB and 350GB could very well be in the realm of possible WITHOUT you missing any photos or videos in your new Photos library file. And that is because of what I just explained above, and also the possibility that new new Photos application is maybe “more efficient” at minimizing file size usage inside of its library file structure.
For example, maybe some of your “preview” (compressed images iPhotos and Photos uses to display to you in the application when you aren’t editing the photo, instead of loading up the bulkier original full-sized images) images are ONLY being physically stored and therefore taking up physical space inside of your iPhoto library file, but are also being accessed (with these “hard links”) by your Photos library. (I’m not positive, I am not an engineer so I don’t understand how they made this work entirely).
So, this is why I suggest you try and compare file counts like I mentioned above. If not by total count of your entire collection, maybe you can compare counts for all of your “Events”. Go to each event in each library file, and compare counts for each. Maybe a little time consuming, but worth it if you will sleep better.
Additionally, if you can afford the backup space, I personally would archive your iPhoto library AND the iPhoto application (from your application folder) on a drive. Maybe 3 years from now, you might discover you think you are missing “1” photo, and you might want to go back to iPhoto’s library and see if it was in there. Just a thought — I am that obsessive compulsive sometimes. 😉
Here are a couple short articles that might help to explain / support what I just talked about with “hard links” — here and here.
Hope this helps Tracy. Again, congrats on getting your photos back!
Thank you! This website saved my photo collection!!
Hey Terry — that’s so great to hear! I’m so happy for you. And thanks for letting me know! Have a wonderful rest of your Memorial Day weekend! 🙂
i am completely devastated. Ive tried looking in the trash, the finder and the spotlight. I am having no luck at all. Please please help me
zen
Zen, if you’ve tried the trash, finder and spotlight, what you need to do now is an “x-ray” of your computer, to see if you can find your iPhoto (or Photos) library file. Using a program like DaisyDisk next is imperative so you know where your library file still exists on your storage drive(s). Have you tried this yet? (It’s the subheading “Deeper” Software Scanning” above in this article)
Hi I have an issue with iPhoto. It says that it is in the trash… no idea how this happened. But I can’t find it I the trash despite looking carefully several times. I can’t access my photo library at all. Are you able to help me please?
I recently opened a couple hard drives on my mac and wanted to see the photos on them. When I clicked on them to import them it “erased” my current iPhoto collection. I did the scan and found hidden photos on my current hard drive. I opened them in finder and they are back. Hooray! I re did the scan wondering why they were hidden and to see if they were now unhidden. Still no dice…
Do you know if there is a reason they say they are hidden on the scan? Also, is there a way to look at my old iPhotos on my hard drives without completely over taking my current iPhotos?
Hey, my apple mac has updated and iphoto is gone. To get it back you have to download it but it is no available in the Australian app store. There is a new app called photos but it won’t download and i have no idea how to get my photos back or where they are. Please help, cause all i want for christmas is my photos 😛 😥
Cheers :heart: xx
Hello, thank you very much for the tricks, I have found the pictures from my library files. Unfortunately not the book I just finished (it took me 10 hours to do it …)
Is there any chance to find it somewhere ?
Thank you for your answer,
Fanny
Dear Curtis. You are truly a lifesaver. I was in a panic but I used your Spotlight suggestion and got my library back. Thank you so much. There are a few things I would like to mention that might help less computer savvy people like myself. My biggest problem was a message pop up that said “My Library is missing” and and the only way to get out of it was to hit the button that said quit. No matter what I did I couldn’t get around it. So even after finding the iPhoto Library with Spotlight, I had no way of knowing if this worked. But I trusted you and my own instincts and hit the QUIT button. iPhoto closed. Yikes! But then I opened it again and all was well. So perhaps after reading this, if the pop up message comes up for someone else, they won’t be afraid to hit the quit button (after they’ve followed your steps).
Thanks again!
Zak
Thank you for finally giving such a straightforward guide to follow. I felt so absolutely helpless and found my photo library in the trash!
Excellent Lizzie! Wahoo!!! I just added your story to my success testimonials above. :beer:
i found my photos all i did was search in the spotlight (pictures) and clicked on the file and iphoto and iphoto_2 showed up i clicked on the iphoto one and my pictures showed up even the deleted ones which was annoying buy im grateful that my photos arent gone
Hi Curtis!
Firstly, you have helped me on an iPhoto issue about a year or so ago so I thank you again for your help!! It is so kind and awesome of you to take the time out of your day to assist people and save our lost photos/memories!!!
I really need your help again if you don’t mind??
I am having a lot of trouble with iPhoto lately (I have version 9.5.1) and wondering if I need to start using a more reliable program.
1. Every single time we have a blackout, iPhoto can’t handle it and the message comes up saying Create New Library or Open a library or whatever and nothing will come up. So I have to rebuild a new library using iPhoto Library Manager.
2. I have rebuilt my library on 6 different occasions now and the latest rebuild did not rebuild any of my events? There is now over 1000 events because 16000 photos have been split into single days! I had organised my events so meticulously! Is there anyway of retrieving “events”? I’m in such a mess now!
3. What should I do with my old iPhoto libraries? Each one is taking up sooooo many GB on my computer. Do I just delete each old iPhoto library icon under ‘Pictures’ on my iMac?
Please help me, I will be forever grateful!!! 🙂
Hey Curtis,
thank you for your ongoing selfless help !
I would be forever thankful, if you had a minute to hear my case 🙂
I created a Library to store on my external drive. When I opened it (the right one), to import new photos, I realized, after the import, that my old library content was gone.
Could I have somehow overwritten it? I found only a few (very little.. 20?) in the masters folder. But for example my whole SD-Card content of my journey to india is gone and not showing up in masters either.
What could have happened and will I be able to restore it? It still gives me the date when I created the library, so it is technically still the same one just without photos. None in the trash either.
I dont dare to restart.
Thank you so much for your help!!
Franziska
Franziska, not likely that you did anything to overwrite the images. The application is not written to do such a thing when just creating a new library file.
Are you using the latest version of the operating system? Is is possible your all of your photos have been moved into a library file being used by the replacement photo application Apple created called “Photos” ?
Have you followed any of the steps I’ve listed above to see if your original library file was “inadvertently” moved to another location on your storage drives? That’s where I would start next if you are still missing a large chunk of photos… start using tools to hunt down a single large file (folder) that could be your original (missing) library file.
your suggestion to use the free trial of the disk inspector saved my sanity! fast and easy. All my original photos restored !
Thank you so much and thank you disk inspector for the free trial : )
Dear Katerina,
After finding original photos with disk inspektor, how can you restor them? Thanks for your time.
Jin-Jing
———————-
your suggestion to use the free trial of the disk inspector saved my sanity! fast and easy. All my original photos restored !
Thank you so much and thank you disk inspector for the free trial : )
Jin-Jing, when you used Disk Inspector, did it find a single library file that is large in file size? (like 20 gigabytes or more etc?)
If so, and you suspect this is your “original” library file, all you need to do to return to using this as your library file of choice is to:
1) If the library file isn’t where you want it to be now, move this library file back to the location where you would like it.
2) Double click on the library file and it should load into iPhoto (or Photos if that’s what you are using now), or hole down “control” key and then single click on this large library file and choose “open with” and then select either iPhoto or Photos (whichever you are using).
Katerina — that’s excellent! Wahoo! Thanks for letting us all know your success with Disk Inspector! :beer:
I can’t even begin to say how thankful I am for reading your post. I was freaking out, just like everyone else, and the initial info on the internet I read wasn’t helpful. It was a lot of “It’s gone forever”, “Apple has glitches” and “It’d erased”.
I have over 30K pictures on my 2006 MacBook. Luckily I have a Seagate 2T external hard drive that I was using to back everything up, but the fix for me was doing the “Spotlight” and clicking on “Iphoto Library.2” (just the name of my most recent library…I noticed I had several). All the photos were there.
Moving forward, I’m gonna use a second backup system like Google Photos (free and unlimited storage).
Wow, I am so incredibly relieved by all this. THANK YOU again so much, you are AWESOME!!!
Hi my IPhoto albums have disappeared. My son completed a full disk reboot on our IMac and now I fear I cannot locate two albums that were once there. When I went to recover photos from ICloud two of the albums were no longer visible, therefore I only have 2/3 of my pre-reboot library returned. I had a lot of valuable photos saved, namely the birth date of my daughter so I am super stressed in getting them back.
I have completed a few things but to no avail. the files cannot be located. Can anyone assist or point me in the right direction?
Hi there, I would like to seriously thank you for this article. I had this message that read “Photos cannot play this video because it cannot find the file.” when I tried to play a video in Photos. Luckily I found your article after 5 days of searching for a way how to resolve my problem. I even contact apple support and they couldn’t help me. THANK YOU!
Hi Curtis. Thank you so much for your page, you have explained everything in such an understandable manner. I have lost approx 12,000 photos from my iPhoto library…..I have tried all the steps you advised and got to the scanning stage using Disk Inspector as per your recommendation……Disk Inspector has located my iPhoto Library at a size of 94GB (what I would expect for my 12,000 photos), so I have selected reveal in Finder and opened my library but this only shows approx 1000 photos at a size of 3.4GB.
Do you have any idea of how I can locate where the other 90GBs of photos are located within my iPhoto Library?
Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it.
THANK YOU…..I just nearly had a heart attack when I logged on and literally ALL my photos were just gone.!! I found your page and followed your step by step guide and found my whole iPhoto library in my trash..!!! its now restored thanks to your amazing advice…Thank you soooo much : )
THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH! I found it searching on the SPOTLIGHT!
Excellent Artie! Very happy to hear you were able to find it! 🙂
Thank you SO VERY MUCH!!!!!!! I also had issues with my Mac so took it to the store to get it sorted out. They wiped my system clean and I could only find photos and videos from 2014. I was sooooo sad because some video interviews I shot for work were just gone! And pictures spanning over 3 years! After reading your post last night, I found them under “All My Files”. Painstaking search having to go through the files one by one but I found them! 😀 😀 😀 Thank you so much once again!
Thank you so much Curtis! I too had to scan to find the file…all my photos had been ‘migrated’ from Iphoto to photo! What a relief! I owe you a beer next time you pass through Geneva, Switzerland! J
Thank you for this help. It is so unbelievable to me that Apple does this to its customers. I love my iPad and like my iPhone but I think I am totally done with Mac computers after this one goes.
I wasn’t able to locate one big “iphoto library” file but was able to find the individual files by searching for date last modified under the Finder window. (My external hard drive had most of the photos but I was missing about the last 6 months). I tried your searching by size suggestion but didn’t find anything that way and nothing was in the trash.
Thanks again.
As someone has said here before, thank you, thank you, thank you! With your very first suggestion I located it in the trash and how it got there I have no idea I certainly didn’t delete it. When I dragged it out and put it on the desktop it said “there’s another iPhoto file elsewhere do you want to replace it with this older one or keep both”. Out of indecision I checked “keep both” which I hope won’t haunt me in the future. I was just about to embark on what a previous viewer had done, visit my nearest Apple’s Genius Bar (50 miles away) but you saved me that trip so my 85,000 photos dating back to 2001 are now intact. I had tried using Time Machine which should’ve worked but it didn’t. I also have Carbonite backup which I guess is nice but forget it trying to get that many photos back. I do have a 2 TB Western Digital external drive with the photos independent of everything else,but that would be my last resort and this worked out much easier thanks to you. (even the usual reliable Apple Community could not solve it like you did).
Hey Bob, that’s excellent to hear! So happy this worked out for you.
What a great piece of mind though too that you had a couple backups even if my steps hadn’t helped. Not sure what went wrong with Time Machine. And Carbonite, yeah downloading that many photos from them may have taken a long time. They probably have the service as a last resort, where they could have sent you your backup on a portable hard drive (at your expense – usually a couple hundred bucks). But as you pointed out, this was easier and much cheaper!
Congrats! Thanks for taking the time to let me know. :beer:
These tips are really helpful, for someone whose not damned like me. I cant find my old iPhoto library which had five years worth of photos. I’ve tried all those tips, except the forensic one ofc. I even downloaded the Disk Inspector. Which helped locate iPhoto Library only to realise it was the new one, not the old one. I honestly feel like it was in the trash & got emptied. Bc i’ve tried everything.
So if that is the case, there’s no way at all to get it back?? :'(
Thank you for all your recovery methods. I went all the way to the Disk Inspector and some how after getting that screen to select a library (that was empty/it had no choices) I selected create a new library, they disappeared. I was in the middle of backing up my music to Google Drive and was trying to figure out how I was going to backup my pictures when I lost them. I am really bummed, all my kids baby pics were backed up on my computer =(. Thank you again for all your help. I know what to do if it happens again.
HI
My problem isn’t that my library has gone missing, it’s more that the Photo or iPhoto application itself is completely missing. When I try to view a photograph saved on my macbook it opens in one of the free apps that’s downloaded called photos for free or something like that. Is there anyway to get the original app back?
The macbook was a present from my parents and brother when he upgraded to a new macbook.
Thanks!
My iPhoto collection is in my “Photos” on El Capitan, but it did not carry over all the folders that I had so carefully organized over the years! Is there any way to find the way they were organized into folders?
Hi Lisa. Photos should have created separate “albums” for all of your “events” (probably what you meant by “folders”) in iPhoto. It should have put all of these albums in a folder called “iPhoto Events” in the My Albums section.
I would check this out and see if you have albums representing all of your iPhoto Events. And if they are there, know you can select one or all of these albums, ‘right click’ and then select to move these albums outside of this “iPhoto Events” folder if you want them to be organized at the top level of all of your albums — instead of being compartmentalized down in this single folder.
I know, it’s a brand new way of thinking when we were trained for so long what “Events” were and how they were used. No one still knows if Apple plans on bringing “Events” on to “Photos” or not.
Hope this helps! :coffee:
hi Curtis!
Terrific Post! I updated my Mac to OS X EL Capitan and then, I was not able to find my photos. However I came to know that iPhoto app was replaced by Photos app during the upgrade. Although I found out my photos, but I feared that I mistakenly deleted one or two photos . Thankfully I had a already installed program ( Stellar Phoenix) by which I was able to get them. http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-photo-recovery.php
Hello
When I bought the computer I always had one Iphoto on me desktop or in the lower part of my mac. Where you see all your apps.
Then after a while I started getting 2 of these Iphoto, but only one of them opened the my IPHOTO LIBRARY.
Therefore I erased the other one.
Now, I just realized that I have one IPHOTO and next to it I get a: ?.
And now the Iphoto that I have left does not open my pictures. I dont find them 🙁
It says: to open, iphoto needs a library. select a library from the list, find another library on your computer or create a new library.
I have done your recommendations, search in spotlight, finder and in the trash for my iphoto library but I dont know where it went.
I dont know if erasing the other iphoto that I had just beside the other caused this.
What can I do?
Thanks!
Hello! My photos of about 8 years disappeared when I upgraded IOS. The pictures are still on the computer but not in a iphoto library but as individual jpegs. So the first steps for me did not work as it could not find the old library. I then did the repair you recommended and the computer said it found 50,000 pictures and asked if I would like to import them into the current library. I clicked yes! Last I check 43k were imported but just now when it should be done, i looked and said there was not enough disk space and it could not import them. I hit ok and now nada , nothing. not one was imported. all pictures still as jpegs floating around on my computer. Any suggestions?
THANK YOU!!! I was clearing out my photos, moving them to an external drive. Somehow, my iPhoto Library disappeared and it just was not there. Also, I couldn’t find anything resembling a photo library file on my external hard drive. It wasn’t in my trash. If it had been there, it would have been long gone. I used the search option to find: “iPhoto Library” and it worked!!!!!
THANKS AGAIN!!
Hello, I went through all your steps and even bought the disc inspector app but I found nothing. It’s not in the trash, in the finder, or anywhere. What do I do now?
Thank you so much. I thought I had lost all my photo’s. I found them using the spotlight method. I am now in the process of loading them on a thumb drive and putting them in a safe. Your the best !!!!
I could kiss you. Thank you! I’m so glad I was able to find my pictures. Now to put them on a usb, so I’m not in trouble if I do lose them!
thank you very much. Disk inspector worked well for finding my library. I had an issue with Keychain access, and had to force quit out of it – I believe that is what made iphoto switch libraries.
Hi and thank you.
How I lost my entire photo library to start with. I used ‘Image Capture app’ for the first time and deleted number of photos from it.
There were also some files with unknown to me extensions there. Since everything was highlighted, by pressing delete button, everything was gone. Unfortunately for me photolibrary was no more, so I did not see my photos.
After reading your article and tips I found the entire photolibray in user>pictures. Voila.
Thank you very much.
Thank you Curtis! I had to go all the way to the Disk Inpector stage before I found my missing libraries and then, even though the Photos library was “revealed” in finder, it would not load? Fortunately the recovery of the iPhoto library went smoothly and I now have my 30,000 pictures back in place and accessible. I’m not sure how I got into this mess. When it happened I had photos in both programs and decided to migrate all of my iPhoto content to Photos. Obviously that’s what I will eventually have to do but I’ll be very careful the next time I try this exercise. Your guidance was clear, concise and easily understandable even for a senior like myself. My cardiologist will also appreciate that you got me out of what was a very stressful situation.
Gary Parker
Burlington, Ontario
Excellent Gary! I’m so happy to hear of your success! Wahooooo! And thank you so much for taking additional time out of your day to let me know, and what worked for you. I really appreciate that!
I’ve just added your comment above as a testimonial for those who are also seeking the similar results.
Cheers Gary!
Curtis
Ugh, I am in utter panic. I am usually quite careful with pictures (I generally store other docs in the cloud), but haven’t been using my computer as much as of late. I am an *idiot* and didn’t do any kind of full backup in an embarrassingly long time, so when all my iPhoto pictures EXCEPT FOR A FEW RANDOM EVENT ALBUMS FROM 2012 straight up disappeared, I got really upset. I am currently scanning with a free trial of the data recovery software mentioned above, but I don’t have much hope. I believe the great vanish occurred when I updated my computer to El Capitan about a month ago, and I haven’t noticed because I’ve been traveling without my laptop for much of the time in between.
I have a 2009 MacBook Pro, with a solid state internal drive as well as a regular hard drive. I hate myself a lot for not being better about Time Machine and such, but I do have files for all pictures through 2013 on an external drive. I backed them up just days before I did the update, but failed to get the last couple years because I had planned on doing a full computer back up around the same time. Some sort of stupid must’ve struck because that clearly never happened… hence the anger at self.
Anyway, just wondering if I should hold out any sort of hope for this data recovery thing, or is all lost. Thanks.
Hi, How did you go with the recovery? I am in the same situation where I have lost valuable albums from previous years. I too think the issue occurred when I updated my IMac. Would be keen to hear how you went.
Hi Curtis,
I am having the same problem as kristen solarzano, except I was able to find all my photos in the “masters photo”. The problem is, when I open the files to try to put them back into iphoto, there are multiple events and the dates don’t match up. For example, there will be an event for nov 7-dec25, and a group of pictures and I don’t know which picture was for each date. Is there any way to fix this? I have pictures that go all the way back to 2011 and there’s no way I remember the specific dates of each picture 🙁
Hi Curtis,
Just wondering if you can help me on a big mess i made with iPhoto. This is what i did
1. I transferred pic from my sd to iphoto (iPhoto was pretty full with over ~120GB)
2. The warning sign pops up that start up disk is full so, I deleted some of the old iPhoto events which have already been backed up on ext hard disk
3. My iPhoto app started working weird showing no pictures when clicked on a event. So, I closed the iPhoto and reopened again, BOOM , all the pics dissapered.
4. I followed your steps by repairing the database and didn’t work so, I tried rebuilding the database, nothing worked
5. This time I tried switching the library but I was able to retrieve only 40 GB pics. couldn’t find more than 70 GB of iPhoto events including videos.
My iPhoto library do not contain all the images.
Please help me on this Curtis 🙁
hi, I found my iPhoto folder in the trash with only a couple of pictures hardly any intact I’m freaking out and while using finder to search for iPhoto library I also found a folder with a flower on. When I select iPhoto though it still says which photo library do you want iPhoto to use, what should i do ?
Hi Curtis!
When I clicked on the iPhoto app, a pop-up came up that asked me to choose a library. There was nothing to choose from so I clicked on “create new library”. After I clicked on it, all of my photos were gone. I had about 7,000 photos and videos stored on the app and now I can’t find them. I checked my trash, other folders, clicked on File > Switch to library” from inside of iPhoto. I even tried clicked the Repair Database and Rebuild Database option and nothing happened. Do you think you can help me retrieve all of my photos back?
Hi Kristen. I think at this point, it’s extremely important that you follow the steps on this page to search using Spotlight, and Finder or even a third party “Deep Scanning” software application to try and locate your iPhoto library file. Have you tried any of these yet?
If it’s not in the trash, and you are for sure… 100%.. then you’ve gotta use one of these tools to find it. Repairing the Database and Rebuilding the database will only work if you actually have the library file in iPhoto’s reach. Otherwise, you are just repairing and rebuilding the new empty one.
Hi Curtis, although I have not found a solution, I want to thank you in advance for your dedication to helping keeps peoples sanity, I hope my own 🙂
I literally worked on my Photos library for about 8 hours yesterday after a vacation, uploading photos from different devices, deleting unwanted photos, uploading them onto an online album, AND running time machine on my external HD, seems like it was too much for Photos because just as I literally finished, after an eternity and figuring out how to actually delete photos so they don’t keep coming back on albums (that took hours too), then all of a sudden, I had only 3 albums from years back. The vast majority was gone. I found it this morning in the trash but the one album was empty (it had 2000 photos before), and 3 other albums, also empty. Which by the way, now the trash appears as empty (I didn’t empty it).
The external HD is also acting out, it says last backup was last night but it appears empty, or some folders say “in progress” and appear in light grey, not clickable.
I am not having a heart attack yet because I figure it has to be somewhere. I tried every one of your steps and can’t seem to find anything.
I am running disk inspector on the external HD now, as you suggested, its still doing its thing, but lots of photos are from old back-ups and I’d like to find the 4000 that disappeared just last night.
Can you help please?
amazing!!! you rock!! great stuff! Just found my 11 gb iPhoto library following your advice…. Thank you so much
I’m so happy to hear Dorin — Wahoo!! Congrats!! You’re so welcome. :thumbs:
OMG!!!! YOU ARE A LIFE SAVER!!! I was going through step, after step and nothing you recommended was working. That is, until I tried Disk Inspector! The moment I saw, “iPhoto Library” I am overwhelmed! I was freaking out and you were a massive help!! Thank you so much.
Thanks so much for this resourceful post. This seems to happen a lot and there is nothing on the web to help!
Ok so I am in major trouble! How can i turn on my mac one day and my entire 25,000 images just disappear?? I have done all your steps. I have possibly emptied trash in the pst month but i only noticed the images missing last week. devastated. would you recommend i take it to an IT guy? 🙁 grrrrrrr
Hello, Firstly- thank yo ufor your help here- I have followed all the steps but still can not retrieve my photos- When I go to switch to library then othe library I can see the file with approx 2.2 GB of photos but it won’t let me open it and I’m not sure why. The open button does not respond even when I have highlighted the correct file.
I wonder if everything was sitting in the trash and then I emptied it? But in that case I would think that the file wouldn’t show anymore
thanks for any advice you can offer- I am in Port au Prince Haiti so a trip to the apple store is out of the question for a couple of months!!
Hi Babe, your doing an amazing job on here . Wondered if you can help me ? … a few days ago my iphot library totally disappeared . I clicked on iPhoto and it says which photo library do you want iPhoto to use . Apart from create new there is no more options other than other library which is empty 🙁 i have searched all through spotlight and through finder . It is no where . I have searched ever single item in finder . No joy . I have scoured the bin and opened all that and is not there either . My mac is not backed up (i always thought it was backing itself up but when i checked it =s never had at all ) I have defiantly not deleted it at all and i have not emptied trash since i had the computer last year . I can not understand where everything has gone but it has all the photographs that i have ever taken on all my life including family members who have passed away and all my little girls photos from birth to 7 years old now) also i am a full-time model and all my work was in my iPhoto too :((( Literraly feel like dying . Please can you help x
Thanks in advance
Thanks for your help… not much success with regaining my old IPhoto,but that’s probably down to my lack of computer knowledge etc.
Hi there,
Looks like you’ve been dutifully replying to every comment here. Kudos to you, that’s dedication!
I was transferring photos from my iPhone to my Mac yesterday, and I had to do it in clumps of 100 or so, because anything higher would freeze up iPhoto. It would stop on a photo, and make no more progress (even after an hour of waiting). The only solution was to Force Quit, which of course meant I would have to start all over again.
So I got about 1,000 photos transferred, 100 at a time, and was deleting them from my phone as I went – I badly needed the space. But then iPhoto froze again, only like 60 photos into the next transfer. I had to Force Quit again, and when I reloaded the program, every single photo I had transferred that day was gone. I couldn’t find them in an iPhoto Library, or in a recovery album.
Do you have any ideas as to where I can find them? I had already tagged Faces and created Events (which were still there, albeit empty), so I don’t understand how all that data would have just disappeared after a Force Quit.
Thank you in advance if you get to this!
Hi Curtis,
I have had a similar problem as folders have disappeared from my library. However I do empty my trash on a regular basis and was not aware of this. I believe it happened when I plugged my iPhone in. I do have time machine but have been to scared to do anything as I have literally thousands of photos and have now asked a technician to come next week.
Do you know if whatever happened might have also affected time machine and the external hard drive ?
Hi there,
Did you happen to recover your photos and do you remember how you did it?
I have lost all mine in a similar way and I also empty my trash regularly, I’m worried that iPhoto moved my photo library to the trash and then I deleted them.
I did have recent time machine back ups, so I plugged it in to recover my photos but couldn’t figure out how to do it. The weird thing is when I took it to the genius bar at Apple they said my photos were not on my time machine back up. I’m worried that by plugging it in it also corrupted the files on my hard drive.
Are you able to help me at all?
Thanks, Bec.
Please I would like to get back all pictures
Hi Miriam. Sorry to hear you have lost your photos. 🙁
Tell me, what of these steps on this page have your tried so far?
I turned up my computer one day to find out my iphoto library had disappeared. It would tell me to “choose a library”, but there was none anymore. I did everything you described here, included getting Apple support to remotely access my computer and search everywhere for it. We found nothing. Then I booked a visit to genius bar at an Apple store, as a last resource. The guy searched my computer beside me, found nothing. Then he asked permission to take the computer inside the store, spent 15 min in there, and came back with all my libraries perfectly back into place. He said it was in the trash, and could not explain how neither I, nor the apple support, nor the searching tools could see it there before. I am very happy to have my files back, but I would love to know how he found them. It was not visible on Trash, not even as an invisible file, since we tried that as well.
If anyone looses their ilibrary, and can’t find it at all, I would suggest do not empty the trash and go to a store. Thank you for all your advice as well!
Nani, thank you for taking the time to tell your story. It’s important others in the same situation you were in read about them, so I added yours above up in the section about looking in the OS X trash so everyone else can be sure they don’t miss it.
I can only speculate, as I’m sure the Apple Genius employee did, as to why you all didn’t see it in there. I can say there are settings that tell search procedures to avoid looking in certain places, and maybe “trash” was one of those turned off. But, why you didn’t see it with your own eyes in the trash is very surprising to me. I wonder what he used in the back to find your library file. Possibly it was a file recovery program like Data Rescue.
In your situation, it’s moot — I’m just glad you got all your photos back! Yay! Be sure to use Time Machine regularly. 😉
Hi Curtis
I was working on a photo book online when something happened (my startup disk was flashing full) and every time I opened my iPhoto it asked if I wanted to create a new library – at the time I did not know what had happened and I created a new library. I see that all my photos (60GB) have been deleted and there is that amount of free space on my startup disk now. I have done a search in trash, finder for anything to do with iPhoto and there is nothing. There is a new iPhoto library created at the time that my original one must have disappeared but there are only a few MB in this. I have used the disk inspector that you recommended and it does not pick up 60GB worth of photos on my Mac. I have used a Data recovery app that is for free on the istore and that has found a lot of images but it is all the images I have taken from my iPhone and none from my camera. What else can I do? I don’t want to purchase the Data Rescue if it is not going to do anything. My only pressure is that this happened just over 3 weeks ago and I was told that Apple will write over that space created and lose any info that is there so I need to try and recover these files within the next 3 days or so before they are lost forever. Please can you advise me what to do.
THHHAANNKKKKK YOOOUUUUUU SOOOO MUCHHH! Very helpful, unlike many other ‘”how to”sites online. Restored all my missing photos 🙂
Alright Alex! You just joined the success story club! Wahoo! I’m SO glad to hear! :beer:
If you wouldn’t mind saying, what fixed it for you in the end? What step helped you to recover your collection. This might helps others in a similar situation.
YOU ARE A SAINT. You just saved me from a total mental breakdown! Thank you so much for taking the time to share all of this x
Harriet! You are SOOOO welcome! I was VERY happy to read you were one of the success stories and were able to get your photos back! Wahoo! Congrats! :coffee:
OMG, love you and your tips. Was able to repair my library after everything “went missing”. I knew they were there because in Finder it indicated my Iphoto library was 59 GB. But only 120 photos and 200 MB were showing in lphoto. I indeed verified presence of photos by showing package contents and repaired library after pressing command and option while launching Iphoto. Thank you!
Hi!
So I followed your steps from another post and found all my photos in the “masters” folder. How do I get my photos out of there now and into my iphoto app?
I tried switching libraries and it kept showing me my current library. Thanks!
Hi! After i accidentally created a new library i can’t open the old one! I did what you said about pressing “file- switch to library-other library”, and i found my old library,but when i press open, nothing happens. It is only possible to open the new one. I really hope you cant help me, there was pictures from 3 years back in there..
Hi Siren. I would backup your original library file that won’t open and try rebuilding the library file. Hold down the command and option keys while launching iPhoto. In the window that comes up, choose to “Repair Database.” If that doesn’t help, then try again, but this time using the “Rebuild Database” option.
If this built-in Apple procedure doesn’t work, then the best recommended step after this is to download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. I have basic instructions how to do this on this resource page at the bottom.
iPhoto Library Manager creates an entirely new library file by making copies of what it finds in your failing library file. You point to the bad library file, and it creates this new one, copying your photos, metadata and versions until it creates a library files as close to your original as it can — leaving your damaged (failing) library file intact as-is. This means, if this process doesn’t work to your liking, and you’re not happy with the new library file for whatever reason, you can always go back to your original untouched library file.
All of these instructions are on this page, and probably better explained: https://www.scanyourentirelife.com/resources/iphoto/photos-disappeared-missing/photos-in-library-not-showing-in-iphoto/
Fingers crossed — hope this works for you!
Hi!
I got the same problem as a few others her, but did not find an answer!
I clicked on “create new library” when the pop-up came up!
Now i can’t find my pictures at all. Not in iphoto, trash or something! Do you got any solutions?
Hi Alexander. I’m sorry to hear about your iPhoto issue. 🙁
Assuming that you aren’t seeing your original iphoto library file by looking in the menu when you choose “File > Switch to library” from inside of iPhoto (this is how you switch from one library file to another), then you want to start looking for your library file (with all of your original master photos) while being outside of iPhoto. So if you created a new one, odds are you are still inside of this new one. Start looking using the Finder application.
When in Finder, when you find a library file, you want to be checking the file size to see how big it is. A big file size means there are a lot of photos in it — small, none or not many. Tne way to know this is to look in finder and look in the size column next to the library file and it will tell you the file size of the file. If it’s really small, under 1gb (gigabytes) for example.. then you know for sure this isn’t your original library file with all of your photos. Most library files are probably 20 gb’s or more.
At the bottom of this post, I have a box that asks if you still need help with iPhoto, to read through this message. Have you gone to these 2 links yet in this message? If not, you want to follow the first link in this resource area that asks: “Is iPhoto Not Opening Up Your Original Photo Library File With All of Your Photos? Are 100% of Your Images Still Missing?” This is where you fall right now because you aren’t able to locate your original library file that contains all of your photos. So try following this secondary resource page (I pasted the link below as well)
https://www.scanyourentirelife.com/iphoto-missing-photos-resource-page-002
Let me know how it goes. Fingers crossed for you Alexander!
hey I have a ?. so my girl friend got her computer reformatted and lot all of her photos from iPhoto. is there anyway I can get them back there is like 5 years of pictures that are just gone. please email me back asap. and I really really hope you have a good response to this the poor girl is so heart broken thanks again
Hi Michael, I’m so sorry to hear about your girlfriend’s computer. 🙁 I’ve never tried to reproduce this situation, but in theory reformatting the hard drive is one of the easiest ways to erase the data that’s on the drive. There are several ways to reformat a drive, the quickest way doesn’t actually write on top over the data. It just tells the operating system that it’s safe to write over all of the available space on the drive when it needs to. Slower and more secure ways to reformat a drive actually writes data on top of old data, as to make it nearly impossible to restore any of the old data.
So, if your girlfriend’s drive was reformatted the quickest way, it’s possible a drive recovery piece of software might be able to recover data that wasn’t written over yet. I would recommend starting with a really good one such as Prosoft’s Data Rescue software. They have versions for both Mac’s and PC’s.
And, I assume it’s safe to say if you wrote me, she doesn’t have a Time Machine backup to rely on that was run anytime in the last five years? That would certainly be something I would try first if she has one.
Let me know how it goes. Again, I’m sorry you both are in this horrible situation. 🙁
Fingers are crossed for you both.
i usually dont comment on these type of things, but literally you saved my life. haha. i had photos from soo long ago, and iphoto was the only place i had them, i love my photos and dont know what i would do if i lost all of them. I had the same problem that Abdulla (might not be spelled right) and i couldnt find my original iphoto album. i went to your other page and found the options for things to do and i looked all through my trash and for some reason i didnt think of that on my own, and what do you know- its there. dont think ive ever been so happy to see that, and now my original photos are back and i want to thank you sooo much. this was so helpful.
Hi Megan!
Thank you so much for writing to let me know this helped you out! Yaaayyyy!
Isn’t it SO strange… to think that for whatever reason, your entire life of photos was just sitting there in the TRASH can!?? And you were just one click away from possibly losing it for good. 🙁 So, I’m so happy for you that you cared enough to go looking for help and found it on these resource pages.
You’re so welcome for the help, and thank you again for letting me know. My wife and I were having a wonderful dinner Sat night out and I showed here your comment when it came through on my smart phone (I checked it while she was using the restroom) That made us both feel really good the rest of the meal knowing how happy you must have been. 🙂
I think I lost my iPhoto library while it was upgrading! Yes terrifyingly it is in the trash!! I dragged it to the iPhoto icon ( in the dock) and now it works, but the iPhoto still remained in the trash. Now I have dragged it on to my desktop. Should I leave it there? I also lost my screen background and can’t find the photo from before? It was a picture we had taken. How can I get it back?
i have a 2009 imac. my external HD shorted and turned off when i unplugged another device from power. when i turned the iMac back on, my iPhoto library (160gb, reading from external) would not load. I’ve tried rebuilding permissions, library, and all the other options offered through the “Cmd + option” buttons. now on my external drive, the size of the file reads to be 16gb. the library will not load at all. do you know if i have any options at this point?