Some of my photos have disappeared from iphoto

Hi
I'm running iphoto 09 (version 8.1.2 424) on my Mac Book (Mac OS X 10.5.6).
I've just noticed that several photos are missing from various events. In some cases there is only one photo left. This appears to have happened randomly - some of the events are unaffected, others have just a few missing, others most.
Are there any suggestions as to what might have happened and how I could retrieve the photos? There are no thumbnails or anything. They just appear to have vanished!
Many thanks.

OK so I've been digging around in this forum and seen a post which says that dragging photos from iphoto to the Trash Can in the Finder sidebar rather than iphoto's trash can, can corrupt the iphoto Library.
I've always deleted photos from iphoto by doing this - I didn't realise this was something I shouldn't be doing. Could this be the cause? And if so can I do anything to remedy it?
I regular back up everything to an external hard drive but I have never had cause to restore anything from it. Would I be able to do this without losing what I already have, and is there an optimum way to restore photos I don't currently have on the imac which might still be backed up on the external hard drive?
Thank you.

Similar Messages

My photos have disappeared from iPhoto 11

My hard drive was replaced at the beginning of this year by apple because of the possibility of premature failure. Just before Christmas 2013, i discovered my iPhoto was blank. sometime in January, the photos all reappeared but as of yesterday, they have once again disappeared from iPhoto. The pictures are still on the harddrive as they can be seen using Finder but are no longer grouped by albums. Also, they are locked in Finder. The iMac is running OSX 10.7.5 and the iPhoto version is 9.4.3.
I would like my photos back in iPhoto and would like them to be reliably there when i go to view them. Any suggestions? Apple Support advised me they had never heard of this happening.

Do you have more than one User Account..?
If so, try your Admin and other Account(s).

All my photos have disappeared from iphoto!!! I can find them in spotlight

Hello All! Help!
I was importing photos from a compact flash card into iphoto which was successful. I powered down for the night, the next time I opened up iphoto my entire library seemed to have disappeared(about 5000 images!) All that was left was the new import. It was as though the prog had reset itself there were no albums etc left at all. I understand that my photos live in the iphoto library folder in my pics but that about it! I have never understood the bizarre set up for these sub folders and how they work. Nor do I understand the other elements of the iphoto folder i.e. iphotodb etc. I noticed that I had two library folders as well and when I spotlighted jpg's that I have at least doubled up on images. Its a mess! Can anyone tell me exactly the way it should all be set up, in laymen's terms? Where the folders should live and in what order? And how to get rid of all the duplicate jpgs that have somehow been created? Without having to go through 5000 images by hand!!!

Thanks for your response Terence.
That is what I've done already. iPhoto could not open. After the hard drive and logic board were replaced (for other issues) and OS X Leopard reinstalled, I rebuilt the library manually, and now the same thing has happened again, iPhoto crashes on start up. iPhoto Manager did not fix it, iPhoto cannot rebuild its own library for some reason, and I don't want to have to repeatedly rebuild the library by hand having already done it once. I've noted other posts about keeping constant library backups, which I can start doing, but I was wondering if perhaps going to a newer version of iPhoto would resolve this issue. There are so many similar posts on here perhaps iLife 5.0.4 is really not compatible with Leopard. I would prefer to get this version of iLife to work instead of trying to upgrade.

Photos have disappeared from iphoto library

Hi, I am using iPhoto version 6.0.6 and I can't get some of the old photos to show up in the library.
I had a lot of pictures, had to switch computers, and during the transfer, the old photos no longer show up in the library. I was using an older version of OS X before, now I'm using 10.5.6 on this computer.
When I am in iPhoto, and go to file - import to library - user - pictures - iPhoto Library active - originals - (year) - (roll #) - (file #).JPG and hit "import", a window pops up that says "unreadable files: 1 The following file could not be imported. (The file is in the iPhoto Library folder)
So it won't let me import, it sounds like because it is already in the library, which it should be, but it doesn't show up in the library. Newer photos that I have downloaded from the camera show up in the library like normal and they stay there. They are in the same location (user - pictures - iPhoto Library active - originals - (year) - (roll #) - (file #).JPG) as the photos that don't show up.
Any ideas how I can get these photos to show up in the library? I am considering a switch to iLife 9, by the way.

Russell
By all means upgrade to iPhoto 09, but don't before you fix this problem. All you'll do is roll it along.
That message is exactly what it says. The file is in the iPhoto Library Folder and iPhoto will not import files that are in the active Library folder - a sensible precaution against duplicates.
The reason iPhoto is not showing you files in there is because the Library has been corrupted somehow.
Try these in order - from best option on down...
1. Do you have an up-to-date back up? If so, try copy the library6.iphoto file from the back up to the iPhoto Library allowing it to overwrite the damaged file.
2. Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.
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.
3. If neither of these work then you'll need to create and populate a new library.
To create and populate a new *iPhoto 6* library:
Note this will give you a working library with the same Rolls and pictures as before, however, you will lose your albums, keywords, modified versions, books, calendars etc.
Move the iPhoto Library to the desktop
Launch iPhoto. It will ask if you wish to create a new Library. Say Yes.
Go into the iPhoto Library on your desktop and find the Originals folder. From the Originals folder drag the individual Roll Folders to the iPhoto Window and it will recreate them in the new library.
When you're sure all is well you can delete the iPhoto Library on your desktop.
In the future, in addition to your usual back up routine, you might like to make a copy of the library6.iPhoto file whenever you have made changes to the library as protection against database corruption.
Regards
TD

Some of my photos have disappeared from my iPad and iphone

I Have lost a large number of photos from my collections/albums. Random dates. How can I retrieve these. Everything is backed up to the cloud.

Howdy Jan,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
It sounds like some photos are missing from your iPhone and you want to know how to go about recovering them from an iCloud backup. Take a look at the articles linked below, the first will walk you through the restore process and the second provides information that’ll assist you in recovering photos after restoring from an iCloud backup.
iCloud: Restore or set up your iOS device from iCloud
Get help finding missing information in iCloud after restoring an iOS device - Apple Support
Your photos
In iOS 8 with iCloud Photo Library beta turned on, your photos and videos are stored in iCloud. They aren’t included in your iCloud backup. When you restore from iCloud Photo Library, your device downloads thumbnails of your photos and videos, and any original photos stored on your device.
If you’re using iOS 8 and haven’t turned on iCloud Photo Library, or if you’re using iOS 7, iCloud backup includes photos and videos in your Photo Library or Camera Roll. They’ll download to your iOS device when you restore.
Photos in My Photo Stream are already stored in iCloud, so they aren’t part of your backup. iCloud stores the photos that you uploaded to My Photo Stream for 30 days. To keep these photos on your device and make them part of your backups, save these photos to your Photo Library, Camera Roll, or another album.
To view a My Photo Stream album, make sure My Photo Stream is turned on in Settings (If you use iCloud Photo Library, the My Photo Stream folder is removed).
To recover photos that originally synced to your device from your computer, sync your device using iTunes on a computer.
To restore Photo Library (or Camera Roll) photos to an iPhone or iPod touch, the iCloud backup must be from an iPhone or iPod touch. To restore Photo Library (or Camera Roll) photos to an iPad, the iCloud backup must be from an iPad.
Ciao,
-Jason

HELP, please! My photos have disappeared from iPhoto library & I can only see them on the screensaver.

Firstly, I should say we haven't updated/installed/deleted anything. I just opened iPhoto yesterday and first it told me it couldn't open up without specifying a library, but then it seemed our library has just disappeared. I then created a new library as, I have to admit, me & my DH are complete tecno dummies, but that didn't help much. The only thing which we have done in the past couple of days is set up the screensaver to play our photos. So now we can only see the photos on that - I'm presuming that means they haven't been completely lost (?) but am in a panic as we've got no back-up (three years worth of photos!).
When I go on 'system preferences' (hope that's the correct translation, our computer's using Italian) and the screensaver, I can see 'picture folder' where all the photos are but I can't find that anywhere else on the computer.
Also, I read other threads about similar probs & tried launching iPhoto pressing down 'option & control' but that didn't help me out either.
We also spent half an hour on the phone to the Apple helpline here in Italy (yes, that's a charged call) to try and understand what's gone wrong and the advisor just kept telling us she didn't know how to help us out 'cause our Mac is an old model
Apologies in advance for my complete ignorance about how to solve this problem but I'd be really grateful if someone out there could shed some light on what's happened.

when you say to go to my Pictures Folder, do you mean to go on Finder, then Pictures, then look at the iPhoto library?
Yes. Is there more than one there?
The material in your screensaver are cached images. They cannot be recovered and soon they will go way.
If you have deleted your Library (and it sounds like you have done this, accidentally) the you have deleted your Photos and you need to restore from your back up.
Regards
TD

For some unknown reason, the print themes have disappeared from iphoto 11 so cannot print. How can I fix this?

I cannot undderstand why the print themes have disappeared from iphoto 11 so I can no longer print photos from my imac. Can anyone advise me please?

When the device is set to Automatic for time, it is pulling the time from the cell towers. Contact the carrier to ensure they are not experiencing issues.
Also, check the time on your computer that the device syncs with, make sure that the time (and time zone) on the computer are accurate.

All of my photos have disappeared from PSE Organizer 13 (after I upgraded it).

All of my photos have disappeared from PSE Organizer 13 (after I upgraded it). The files are all on the HD. When I try and reimport them, Organizer says they are already in there and will not allow me to proceed. When I highlight a keyword, Get the message "NO MEDIA TO BE DISPLAYED". Perhaps I am dense, but I find the Search function of the Forum to be near useless, unless I just happen to type the Exact name of a topic.
I now have no access to perhaps 35,000 files from 12 years of using PSE!
GFrey

Which operating system are you running on? Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
Which version did you upgrade from? updated from PSE 13 to PSE 13.1
In the organizer, which view are you using - in the View menu is Details checked or unchecked - does it make any difference? was unchecked now checked. Now can see the other files, but the Keyword tags that I had attached in the past does not bring up the selected frames.
In the View menu, select Media types - are all checked? At this point I have only Ohotos and videos checked
In View menu, select Hidden Files - is Show All Files checked? yes
I'm assuming that you are in Media view, what happens if you select People Places or Events? get groupings of files with those keywords.
Brian
Thanks Brian, at least some of my problems are gone, just can't get the keyword sorting to work correctly

TS4009 I store important info in my notes app that I refer daily to. Some of my notes have 'disappeared' from my notes list and I cannot find them. Any ideas how to retrieve my lost notes?

I store important info in my notes app on my Iphone 4S that I refer to daily. Some of my notes have 'disappeared' from my notes app. Any ideas how to retrieve my lost notes. I am up to date on my software. All notes are backed up to Icloud. I have approximately 74 notes on my iphone but Icloud is showing only 15!

Hi iPheariPhoPad,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
It sounds like there’s an issue with Settings, the Notes app entry isn’t showing up as expected. Take a look at the article linked below and try restarting your iPhone 3GS.
Restart or reset your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support
If that doesn’t do it, try restoring your iPhone as shown in this article:
Use iTunes to restore your iOS device to factory settings - Apple Support
Take care,
-Jason

Photo album disappears from iphoto

My two most recent albums keep disappearing from iPhoto, and thus from my iPad and iPhone. I've repaired permissions and the iPhoto database, but no joy.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Remember: we cannot see your machine. There are 9 different versions of iPhoto and they run on 8 different versions of the Operating System. The tricks and tips for dealing with issues vary depending on the version of iPhoto and the version of the OS. So to get help you need to give as much information as you can. Basic things like :
- What version of iPhoto.
- What version of the Operating System.
- Details. As full a description of the problem as you can. For instance: 'iPhoto won't export' is best explained by describing how you are trying to export, and so on.
- History: Is this going on long? Has anything been installed or deleted?
- Are there error messages?
- What steps have you tried already to solve the issue.
- Anything unusual about your set up? Or how you use iPhoto?
Anything else you can think of that might help someone understand the problem you have.

All my photos have gone from iPhoto is there any way i can recover them?

I turned my laptop on and when i opened iphoto it asked me to create a new library as there was no existing one, therefore all my photos have disappeared. There are no photos in the trash and my laptop is a macbook pro and it's not old. Please help i had a lot of important photos!
Thank you

Download and run Find Any File to search for a file named "Library6.iPhoto". There's one in every iPhoto library. FAF can search areas that Spotligh can't, like invisible or system folders. If there's a second iPhoto Library on your hard drive FAF will find it.
OT

Some of my icons have disappeared from my desktop

Quite a few of my app icons have disappeared from my iPad screen. I can still go into the app thru notifications or thru the purchased section of the App Store. Does anyone know how to get them back??? Thank you so very much!!!! Carolyn

If you can still access these apps from the purchased tab of the App Store or via a spotlight search, they cannot be restricted. Restrictions will hide apps and make them totally unusable - hence the restrictions name.
Have you tried resetting the iPad by holding down on the sleep and home buttons at the same time until the Apple logo appears on the screen?
Or, you can also try resetting the home screen layout and the home screen icon will reappear - but the home screen will return to the way that it looked when you first activated your iPad.
Settings>General>Reset>Reset Home Screen Layout.

All of photos have disappeared in iPhoto

Murphy's Law. After several days of detailed keywording, cropping, etc with thousands of my personal photos (I'm doing a family album prep), they're GONE from iPhoto '08. My last backup is a month old too so installing the back up is something I'd like to avoid.
What happened? My best guess is that some kind updating glitch messed up the software. Last night, I logged back in to my computer, turned on iPhoto and got a message that said something like "Your thumbnails need to be upgraded, please proceed..." I did. Then suddenly every folder and the events were blank. No pictures.
I spent about two hours on blogs and forums including this trying to find a solution. None so far.
Does this ring a bell with anyone or any hints on how I can restore my latest round of photos w/ their keywords, modified data, etc?
As a heads up, I have tried the following which don't appear to do trick if I'm doing correctly:
-I held down the Option key and tried to load iPhoto library manually in case it rerouted.
-I also looked at my old iPhoto library icons (previous to iphoto'08) to compare or possibly rebuild but I can't open those older versions at all.
-My original, modified, etc folders still seem to be there (thank goodness) but I can't seem to get access to them in the iPhoto environment.
Any advice or insight would be appreciated. Meanwhile... I'm trying to figure it out!
Cody

Cody:
Welcome to the Apple Discussions. What is appears to have happened is the library's database file, Library6.iPhoto, has been damaged. If iPhoto is interrupted in any way while it's writing to the file this can happen. If you've got a recent backup of your library or the dB file you can get most everything back except what's changed since the last backup.
You can try rebuilding the library as follows: launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys depressed and follow the instructions to rebuild the library. Select the first three options.
If that does not resurrect the library you're faced with starting over with a new library and importing the Originals folder from the old one as follows:
Creating a new library while preserving the Events from the original library.
Move the existing library folder to the desktop.
Open the library package like this.
Launch iPhoto and, when asked, select the option to create a new library.
Drag the Originals folder from the iPhoto Library on the desktop into the open iPhoto window.
This will create a new library with the same Events as the original library if you have the Finder checkbox unchecked in the Events preference pane.
However, depending on how many new photos are in the current library vs your backup you might consider moving the current library to the desktop and the backup into the Pictures folder.
You can then import the Originals folder from the damaged library into the backup library, telling iPhoto not to import duplicates. That will bring in only those new photos that were not in the backup. You will retain the keywords, comments, etc. as of the backup date. Better than losing all of them.
In the future to help protect yourself from this type of file damage and library loss see the tip at the end of my signature.
Do you Twango?
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've written an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 08 libraries. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

Some of my photos have disappeared

I know there are a lot of topics on this but I couldnt find one that helped me specifically. Some of my photos (spread throughout my library, not a specific group of photos, although some groups of photos are intact while others seem to be half there and half not) won't show up when I click on them in iPhoto, although their thumbnails are there. When I realized this I painstakingly tried to find the first 15 or so in my spotlight search and found them in my pictures folder, so I deleted the ones in iPhoto and imported them again (I have not tampered with the iPhoto library folder in Finder, I found out you couldn't do that the hard way before). But then I found that some of the photos are not in my pictures folder or it would seem anywhere in my computer except the thumbnail in iPhoto that doesn't show the actual photo. A while ago I did empty my iPhoto trash and then also my actualy trash because I was running out of space, and possibly that is when it happened because I haven't looked through my photos since then. So now I am hooped. And hopefully there is something I can do, because I have had many bad experiences with losing photos!

I am what sounds to be the exact problem.
About a month ago I started to notice that some of my pictures were randomly acting up. The thumbnails still appeared in iPhoto, but when double clicked, an error would occar. I tried reverting to original and that seemed to work, even though I then needed to re edit the once missing pics. But since then, all of my pics have gone "missing" with the thumbnails still appearing. I tried to revert them to the originals again, but that doesn't make a difference any more.
How can I get my pictures back and prevent this from happening again?
On another note, I need to transfer my photos from my PC to my Mac Book Pro. I do not have an external drive or a router to use. I am buying an iPod Video and will be using it to tranfer my iTunes from my PC to Mac. Can I use it to tranfer my pics? I was using Picasa on my PC, how would I transfer them. I will need detailed instructions as my PC keeps screwing up, so I know I am doing it right and if it doesn't work, it's not me.

All my 800 photos have vanished from iphoto after I uploaded more photos

All my 800 photos vanished after I uploaded some new photos from my camera to iPhoto.please help, how can I retrieve my photos from iPhoto.?

You may be able to recover photos from a camera card with an app like MediaRecover
There are 9 different versions of iPhoto and they run on eight different versions of the Operating System. The tricks and tips for dealing with issues vary from version to version and OS to OS. So before anyone can help, they need information to work with. Things like:
- What version of iPhoto.
- What version of the Operating System.
- Details. What were you doing when the problem arose?
- Did it ever work properly?
- Are there error messages?
- What steps have you tried already to solve the issue.
Anything else you can think of that might allow someone else to understand your issue.

Some of my photos have disappeared from iphoto

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for