My Photos library is missing thousands of photos, which I can find in the Masters directory. How should I re-import them?

Question

My Photos library is missing thousands of photos, which I can find in the Masters directory. How should I re-import them?

While scrolling through my Photos library, I knew I was missing a lot of photos. I recently upgraded from iPhoto to Photos, but the problem was also occurring with iPhoto prior to this upgrade.

When I open the package contents of my Photos library, I can go to the Masters directory and find all of my old photos which are missing from my visible library.

I'd like to make these visible in my Photos app library, but I cannot find any documentation on this issue. I also don't want to further corrupt my Photos DB, so I was hoping someone could give me some guidance here. I would like for everything I have in Photos to be accessible & backed up in iCloud.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.12

Posted on Mar 8, 2021 9:02 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

6x6

Level 6

11,588 points

Mar 9, 2021 9:08 AM in response to Liter of Cola

This article may perhaps help you: Create additional photo libraries in Photos on Mac - Apple Support. It shows how you can switch between photo libraries, which might be the problem you are having, i.e. 2 photo libraries.

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Answer 2

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,420 points

Mar 8, 2021 10:36 AM in response to Liter of Cola

You migrated a corrupt iPhoto Library to Photos.

Unless you have a back up from prior to the corruption of iPhoto, I would be inclined to recover all the masters, create a new Photos Library and start over from scratch.

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Answer 3

Mar 9, 2021 6:55 AM in response to Yer_Man

I'm not exactly sure what you're suggesting. Are you saying I should just start with a fresh new Photos Library, and forget about getting everything included in my current library?

When you say "recover all the master" what are you implying? They're already in their respective directories. Could I simply do a Repair Library and have these files found/added?

Any guidance you may have would be helpful.

Thank you!

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

195,141 points

Mar 9, 2021 8:58 AM in response to Liter of Cola

They're already in their respective directories. Could I simply do a Repair Library and have these files found/added?

Repairing is risky. It can make a damage worse. Before you try anything else make a copy of the library as it is now. Copy it to an external volume.

Which version of Photos are you using? The signature below your question is showing "macOS 10.12". Is that your current system version or are you running a newer version? I am asking, because Photos 2 on macOS 10.12 has a folder Masters in the Photos Library, but this folder has been replaced by "Originals" in Photos 5 on Catalina. if you are now running macOS 10.15 Catalina or newer, your library has been incompletely migrated, if you are still seeing a Masters folder and repairing the library might remove the last traces of the photos in this Masters folder.