Help! All pictures gone from iPhoto!

Question

I opened iPhoto today and it said zero pictures... none, all gone! I did some hunting around, after catching my breath, and found a bunch of the numbered folders with pictures in them through the my "pictures" in the finder... but iPhoto will not show any. They were all there yesterday when I shutdown and first thing today... gone from the liblary, along with all my folders that they were orginized into! All I can do is open then one at a time now and that's no fun. Any ideas as to what is up????
PowerMac G5   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

Answer 1

Hi artboy,
You can try launching iPhoto with the Option key held down and choose to open another library. Navigate to your library, highlight it and click "open" Hopefully it will open your library.
When you launch iPhoto holding down the Option key this is the window you will get.
Create a new library or choose a library to open
Choose to create a new library if that is what you want to do, or choose a library to open by clicking the "choose" button.
If you click the "create library" iPhoto will open with a brand new library for you to import images to. If you click "choose" then you will get this window.
Open library
Navigate to where the library is on your computer, highlight it, then clcik the "open" button.
If it doesn't open or still shows no photos you might have to create a new library and import the photos from the old.
Close iPhoto
Rename your messed up iPhoto Library to "iPhoto Library_old"
Drag this library to your desktop
Hold down the Option key and launch iPhoto
This is the window you will get
Create a new library or choose a library to open
Choose to create a new library
Once this new empty library is open it is time to import the images from your old library
Go to File>add to library
Navigate to the old library on your desktop and highlight it in the window, then click the "open" button.
iPhoto will start importing the images from your old library
This is what to expect:
Your images will be imported in nice dated rolls. (make sure your view is set to sort by rolls to see it) There are a couple of caveats to this. You will get rolls named "Originals" These rolls will contain your video clips and your original images that you had edited. If you had RAW files they would be in those rolls too (I don't do RAW, so I don't know for sure) Delete what you don't want from those rolls. You will also get the jpeg pointer files to your video clips imported. They will just be jpegs and will not point to the video clips anymore as iPhoto made new ones when the clips were imported again. You can delete those. they should be in a roll right next to the newly imported video clips so they are not hard to find. The thumbnail files don't get imported as iPhoto makes new ones when the images are imported.
Once all you images have been imported, check through the library and make sure everything looks ok.
You can now start making your Albums, and do your keywords or any other organizational steps.
You can also delete the old library on the desktop.
It is also a good time to backup this new library to CD/DVD by burning the iPhoto LIbrary folder in the Finder, or copying the iPhoto Library folder to an external drive formatted for Macs, or copying the iPhoto LIbrary folder to an iPod.
Good luck!
If you have a recent backup of the entire iPhoto Library folder then drag the old iPhoto Library folder to the desktop and rename it iPhoto Library_old. Drag the backup iPhoto Library folder (make sure it is named iPhoto Library)
into the Pictures folder and launch iPhoto.