I had pictures on my Mac going all the way back to 2009. I had them all arranged in albums so I could find them easily. I had upgraded to Ventura and with the last update I have now lost everything from 2016 and back. I did not delete these, they just disappeared. How do I recover them? I had this happen the last time I upgraded the operating system, but I was able to recover them then. Why can't Apple leave well enough alone.
iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.6
Do you use Time Machine to backup your Mac? If so you can go back to the backup just before the system update and restore the library, making sure to keep both libraries.
Then you can import the older library into the current one.
HOWEVER, if you have a lot of organization effort into the libraries and want to keep folders and albums a better choice would be to use PowerPhotos to merge the two libraries as PowerPhotos will also import/merge albums and folders:
A comparison between Photos and PowerPhotos regarding importing/merging is shown in this user tip: Comparison of PowerPhotos vs Photos re Im… - Apple Community
Do you use Time Machine to backup your Mac? If so you can go back to the backup just before the system update and restore the library, making sure to keep both libraries.
Then you can import the older library into the current one.
HOWEVER, if you have a lot of organization effort into the libraries and want to keep folders and albums a better choice would be to use PowerPhotos to merge the two libraries as PowerPhotos will also import/merge albums and folders:
A comparison between Photos and PowerPhotos regarding importing/merging is shown in this user tip: Comparison of PowerPhotos vs Photos re Im… - Apple Community
how to recover old photos
