Losing Smart Albums during 09 to 11 upgrade.

Regardless of the process I use, upon upgrading to iPhoto 11 and opening it for a 2nd time, many (most) of my smart albums disappear. I have tried using iPhoto Library Manager during the process also.
FYI-My Smart Albums are organized in the iPhoto 09 side bar within folders that have 1-4 levels of hierarchy. I have tried collapsing the hierarchy to just 2 levels before upgrading to iPhoto 11, but still experience the same issue.
I have tried 3 methods of upgrading and have not been able to preserve my smart albums.
Method 1) Upgraded by leaving the iPhoto 09 library as is, and downloading and installing iPhoto 11 from the app store and then opening iPhoto 11.
Method 2) The same as #1, but then ran iPhoto Library Manager and then re-opened in iPhoto 11. I think the smart albums appeared, but after closing and re-opening iPhoto, they disappeared again.
Method 3) Ran the iPhoto Library Manager on the iPhoto 09 Library, prior to installing iPhoto 11 and then installed iPhoto 11 and opened the Library. I think the smart albums appeared, but after closing and re-opening iPhoto, they disappeared again.
Does anyone have any suggestions? To re-create my smart albums will be hugely time consuming. I have about 16K photographs and I imagine about 200 smart albums.
Thank you for your help!
P.S. Before doing anything, I repaired permissions and rebuilt the library in iPhoto 09 to insure that it was in good shape.
My second step was to backup my iPhoto 09 files to an external drive. The items I backed up were:
-Pictures/iPhoto Library (package)
-Users/Me/library/caches/com.apple.photo (folder)
-Users/Me/library/preferences/com.apple.iphoto.plist
-Users/Me/library/preferences/com.apple.iphoto.plist.lockfile
-Users/Me/library/preferences/com.apple.iphoto.LSSharedFileList.plist
-Users/Me/library/preferences/com.apple.iphoto.LSSharedFileList.plist.lockfile
-Users/Me/library/preferences/com.apple.iphotomosaic.plist

Never upgrade any app in the middle of a project. Finish and order your books, then upgrade. Not before.
Regards
TD

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How did you upgrade the library? Did you just open it with iPhoto 11 and let it convert the library to the new version? If so then try the following:
Make a temporary, backup copy (if you don't already have a backup copy) of the library and apply the two fixes below in order as needed:
Fix #1
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Select the options identified in the screenshot.
Fix #2
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Click on the Add Library button, navigate to your Home/Pictures folder and select your iPhoto Library folder.
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In the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed.
Click on the Create button.
Note: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments but not books, calendars or slideshows. The original library will be left untouched for further attempts at fixing the problem or in case the rebuilt library is not satisfactory.
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O
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Hi. A few months ago I upgraded from iPhoto to aperture. It's all rather confusing but I've been willing to overlook it because of the usefulness of aperture as an advanced photo editor.
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This is particularly annoying because it also seems to have messed up the way photos are synced with my iPhone which (much to my surprise) is one of my favorite things to do on the iPhone: display my photos. Albums on the iPhone contain images often repeated 75 times or other such bizarre problems.
I assume something is corrupt somewhere but I don't know how to “reboot” my libraries without losing precious information.
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As a new Aperture user myself, I had a similar issue. Maybe it's related to yours.
Smart Albums have many options to choose from, and I was a bit confused at the beginning. While setting the Smart Album, you need to be sure you're marking the options you really want/need, and nothing else. For example, my "In the last month" Smart Album showed only one photo, and that wasn't correct.
But the reason was simple: I had written some text in the Search/Filter field (upper right), and obviously that was filtering the not-so-smart results in my folder.
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Hello,
I don't use iPhoto daily and so just realized I have lost my many smart albums. Not sure if it happened during an operating system upgrade, a migration (got a new computer) or a iphoto upgrade.
Must needed, each album is actually a patient (medical field)... many¡¡¡
Iphoto 9.5.1
OS X 10.9.5

Here's a possible solution if you're unable to restore the smart albums any other way.
1 - rename your current library to something other than it is now, like iPhoto Library Old or whatever.
2 - copy the library from your old laptop to the Pictures folder on the new iMac.
3 - get the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager and use it to merger the renamed library into the library from the laptop. iPLM can be set to not import duplicates.
This should give you a library with the smart albums and any new photos. Once you've confirmed that the merged library is complete and working correctly you can delete the renamed library.

Whats the difference between and Album and a Smart Album

OK, just upgraded.... So, whats the difference between an Album and a Smart Album?
Also, I like to organise my stuff, so if I create a folder for each year, and then a project within that year, why is it that the photos are always in both - and then again if I chose to create an album specific to a project, they are there again.
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               Project - Specific Events
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Does this mean the individual photo is stored 3 times and using 3 times the space?
Thanks guys!

Mrsthebraggster wrote:
So it might look:
          Folder (2012 Equine Photography)
               Project - Specific Events
                    Album - Big Barn Dressage May
Does this mean the individual photo is stored 3 times and using 3 times the space?
No. Conceptually the Master only lives lives in the single (time based) Project you import it into. Albums are just collections of pointers that point to images in various Projects.
"Big Barn Dressage May" could be a Project, but only if it is only one day and a limited number of image files; otherwise an Album. "2012 Equine Photography" should be an album or a Folder of Albums. "Specific Events" could be an Album or a Folder of Albums.
A Project should not be used as a Folder.
From an earlier post of mine:
Folders are indeed flexible organizational tools but IMO often overused. Folders can effectively hide contents from view and therefore require users to remember how folders are nested and what is inside them. Folders were the only way to deal with single-original film, but are IMO limiting to image database thinking.
The way I look at it conceptually:
Aperture is a database (DB), and each image file lives in one Project.
Albums are just collections of Pointers that point to individual image files living in one or more Projects. Since they just contain pointers, albums can be created or deleted at will without affecting image files. Very powerful. And Albums of pointers take up almost zero space, so they are fast and do not make the Library size grow.
Keywords can be applied to every image separately or in batches. Keywords are hugely powerful and largely obviate the need for folders. Not that we should never use folders, just that we should use folders only when useful organizationally - - after first determining that using keywords and albums is not a better approach.
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Similarly all family pix can have a keyword "family" and all work pix can have a key word "work." Each individual pic may have any number of keywords. Such pic characteristics (work, family, flowers, etc.) should not be organized via folders.
So by using keywords and albums we can have instant access to every image everywhere, very cool. And keywords and albums essentially take up no space in the database.
Another approach is to use a folder "Family" for family pix, a folder "Flowers" for flowers pix and another folder "Work" for work pix. IMO such folders usage is a very poor approach to using an images database (probably stemming from old paper or film work practices). Note that one cannot put an image with family in a field of flowers at a work picnic in all three folders; but it is instant with keywords.
HTH
-Allen

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Sorry for the length, but has anyone else run into this??
PowerBook G4 1.67 2GB RAM 128MB ATI Video, External FW Drives for library Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Nope, all the images at this point in my workflow have been unstacked, with the non-picked members of the original stacks discarded.
Now that it seems I am not the only one who has witnessed this behavior, what I am really trying to find out, is what is the definitive proper operation of this according to the Aperture group at Apple.
Assuming I have opened a Smart Album with images displayed, and no images are selected.
Is the correct behavior:
1) Selecting New Album makes a new Untitled Album (very quickly) with the identical contents of the Smart Album....OR...
2) Selecting New Album makes a new Untitled Album (slowly) with NEW VERSIONS of the contents of the Smart Album. (Also, depending upon the number of images, typically brings up SBOD and makes Aperture unresponsive until it is complete.)
Now what I expected to happen was #1, as it is what happens when I select New Album when a project is selected. Given Apple's human interface creedo for intuitive operation, I think this is the most intuitive choice, because I can't think of a good reason I would want to double the number of versions of all files in an album, unless I expressly told the app to do this.
Could an Apple guy provide the definitive answer, please...
Thanks in advance for your help.
PowerBook G4 1.67 2GB RAM 128MB ATI Video, External FW Drives for library Mac OS X (10.4.7)

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Hi,
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closed all programs,
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Perhaps there is a secret incantation and dance?
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When I went to open the library using iPhoto Library Manager, it had to upgrade the library to work with this version of iPhoto.
That's normal.
Option 1
Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.
If that fails:
Option 2
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In Library Manager it's the FIle -> Rebuild command)
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Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.
Regards
TD

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The thread discussing this is:
IPhoto keeps on crashing, cannot use it
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Regards
TD

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First thing to do is examine the install disk for any scratches and dirt. If there are any, then you'll need to fix it. I've had success using liquid auto polish (w/o wax) rubbing with a cotton cloth (old, white T-shirt works great) from the center to the edge. Once the disk passes checking, then do an Erase & Install installation, and when it restarts into the Welcome and Setup routine, use the Migration Assistant to transfer your stuff from the bootable backup. It doesn't matter how many times you've upgraded, the new OS will delete anything that's older than the current OS.
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Mind-numbingly confusing, but once I deduced that my Aperture Library was now kinda fronting for some data stored in iPhoto, I could link to the Smart Folder stored there.
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Losing Smart Albums during 09 to 11 upgrade.

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