Lost my photos from April through last week...

Question

I went to look at a couple of pictures last night, and everything I had taken since last April until the last few pics I loaded last week are gone. Now, everytime I try and open up the Library, or last roll, or any slideshow on the left causes iPhoto 5 to crash. I still have all the photos in finder. I've restarted, verified disk permissions and repaired disk permissions, but nothing has helped.
I gotta say, ever since I upgraded to Tiger, I've been having problems. Is it just me?

Answer 1

hi Bruce? Kristin?
It looks like a data file/files go messed up somehow.
Do you have a recent backup of the iPhoto Library folder?
Try a rebuild first:
Try this:
Before doing a rebuild make sure iPhoto's trash bin is emptied. You can do this by control clicking on the trash bin, or from the menu bar under iPhoto.
Close iPhoto
Duplicate the iPhoto Library folder
Drag the duplicate to the desktop (hopefully you have enough room on your hard drive for the duplicate.)
Launch iPhoto holding down the Command and Option keys until you see the rebuild options screen.
Choose the first three options. If you were missing photos in your library, also choose the last option. Be advised that you will get a roll of orphaned photos and it might be quite huge. Most of them will already be in your iPhoto library, but use caution when deleting anything from this roll until you are sure the photos are still in your library in another place. It might be a good idea to share/export this roll of photos just in case you need to import them again.
Back to the rebuild, depending on the size of your library it might take some time. When it is done, hopefully your photos will be there.
You might see some unexpected results as I did when I did a rebuild. Photos had been moved to wrong dates, video clips had lost their duration info and some were even orphaned from the jpg pointer file. It took me some time to straighten it out again.
This is the reason to make a duplicate before you rebuild, in case you do not like the result. If you don't like the result, close iPhoto, then delete the rebuilt library and drag the duplicate back into the Pictures folder making sure the name is iPhoto Library. Launch iPhoto and it should open the library in the Pictures folder.
iPhoto 4 or later: Rebuilding the iPhoto Library
Come back with the results from the rebuild.
If that doesn't work then try creating a new library;
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 choose it.
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!
Come back and give the results if you have to go that route.
Lori