Aperture 3.3 lost images

Hello,

I just updated Aperture from 2 to 3.4.5. when it first opened all the projects were listed but all the projects with raw files are empty. My libary reduced from 320 GB to 15 GB. Searching for the masters did not show any results on the hard drive. Could you please give me some advise how to bring back my photos?

Unfortunately I did delete the time machine backup the day before because I installed a new system ...

Thank you very much any advice is highly appreciated.

Ulf

I see this is an ongoing thread. Frankly, there's nothing much any of us can do about Aperture losing its connection to referenced images. I've been using Aperture since v2. Its always had an issue in this respect. Fortunately, its simple to correct. Unfortunately, the next time you open Aperture, other images may be missing. The larger the library, the more problems.

Some thoughts:

Create a Smart Album with the source as the entire Library (Photos). Add File Status as a criteria and check the box. That will show you all the files that require reconnecting. You can actually select all of them, locate one of them, select reconnect all and Aperture will usually locate all the images, irrespective of whether they are in the same folder or not.

Every time you open Aperture, glance at the Smart Album. Its not unusual that there will be missing images (my Library contains 25,000+ images).

Note that Aperture can also assign the incorrect images to a Project. This also can happen over and over. What's weird is, on mine, Aperture picks up the same folder of incorrect images over and over. If this happens, delete the versions, don't trash the referenced files and reimport. This is bad as you will loose your edits. Unfortunately, you lost them anyway. Once you get incorrect images being referenced, you can't reconnect. There's discussion on the web that selecting the option key as you select reattach will do it. Occasionally it will, try it first, usually the reattach button will remain grey and you're out of luck. This has got to be as bug as I've had to deal with the same set of incorrect images being assigned to a variety of albums for well over a year. Has lived through even an OS X upgrade and the version upgrade to 3.4.5.

Repairing/ Rebuilding does nothing. The problem will persist. In ApertureExpert.com's post on reconnecting images, are the words "you may have to do this more than once". That's a polite way to say Aperture needs some work in this area.

I was really a huge fan of Aperture.

But now I really think whether I should switch to lightroom.

Why? Because Aperture told me that there were inconsistencies in my Aperture library.

Sure as I was I just hit repair. A HUGE MISTAKE!

My 96 GB Aperture library showed off with 1,2 GB and EMPTY!

Aperture DELETED EVERY SINGLE IMAGE!

I just found some badly damaged image preview files in the package contents.

I thought I missed all the pictures of the last 5 years. Gladly I found a backup on my time machine.

So I just miss the pictures of my last holiday.

A really severe bug!

Not very nice, though... But not as bad...

Anyone an idea how to get those deleted images back?
I gues no 😟

Now it just brought up the message on my MacBook Air library (24,09 GB)

Because I didn't want to make the same mistake again I copied the library to an external hard drive before I hit "Repair". Now it is slightly larger than before so I guess all my pictures are there.