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iPhoto ate my last import of photos and now quits upon launch

Have tried repairing permissions, deleting both cache and pref, rebuilding library. iPhoto started acting up after I imported 200+ photos from my camera (and I unfortunately selected "delete photos" from camera after they were imported) - now that latest import is missing and iPhoto either won't launch or launches and then goes to spinning beach ball and crashes (this SEEMS to happen during Face recognition). When I can get it to open momentarily, it appears that my latest import is gone (and when I control-click the iPhoto library in question to view package contents, those photos do not appear to be there). I think this may be because I selected "restore from auto backup" once while trying to rebuild the library.

Is there any hope of restoring my latest import? To make matters worse, I'm away from home so not near my Time Capsule, so no TC backup within the last day when this all happened. Should I just trash this iPhoto library or is there a fix I haven't tried?

MacBook Air, iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Nov 26, 2010 2:17 PM

19 replies

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,402 points

Nov 30, 2010 5:12 AM in response to Gretchen Daniel1

Yes. That blows that theory. Sorry

Regards

TD

Nov 30, 2010 5:33 AM in response to Yer_Man

Would you suggest that I try the rebuild function in iPhoto Library Manager first? If that doesn't work, is my only option to do the control-click package contents move, and then manually extract my photos from there?

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,402 points

Nov 30, 2010 5:42 AM in response to Gretchen Daniel1

First: Back Up.

Then 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 Rebuild iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup.

If that fails:

Option 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, faces and places 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.

Regards

TD

Nov 30, 2010 7:12 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks Terence. Option #1 seems to have done it - fingers crossed.

iPhoto ate my last import of photos and now quits upon launch