I lost all the photos in the iPhoto Library ..

Sorry to hear you lost so many pictures. 22k is a LOT of photos to lose. I am chiming in here because I had the same issue w/ my wife's computer. She was on 10.7.x w/ iPhoto. I did a fresh install of Lion, moved over iPhoto, updated, etc. All was good. Then went to Mtn Lion, checked iPhoto and all was good. A few days later she imports photos from her camera to iPhoto and again all is good. A couple days after that, we open iPhoto and it starts complaining about missing photos. I tripled checked and the maters were GONE. Some of the thumbs and previews were there but the masters are gone. No backup of them either. I tried everything but nothing work. I gave up, went back to Lion and put back her old iPhoto. All was good... until today when iPhoto crashes on startup 😉 I think it's time to look into Picasa or something (anything) else unfortunately. I lost photos too but not 22k. Maybe 100 or so but they were priceles regardless.

This may not work for you if you have no Time Machine backup. My iPhoto Library became corrupted when I saved an edited photo from Photoshop Elements 9. I had a back up in Time Machine but TM would not let me restore from an earlier backup when I selected the iPhoto Library in my Pictures folder. It tried to copy the file but quit and said I did not have permission to complete the procedure. I then went back into TM and instead selected my ~Pictures folder and clicked Restore and TM was able to restore the entire folder successfully.

I am running OSX 10.8.2 on an Imac (3.4 Ghz Intel Core i7) when I did a software update and chose "iPhoto 11" version 9.4.2 (710.42) all of a sudden my entire iphoto library and all photos are gone.

I am a very savvy Mac user of 22 year and a programmer.

There is no longer an iphoto library here:

user > Pictures > iPhoto Library

All my original photos are missing as well. They are completed gone from my harddrive.

There is nothing to backup and nothing to restore.

This is a complete nightmare. I had 10,000+ photos that are completely wiped off my harddrive.

There is definitely something going on here with this new update. The software itself had to have completely erased all of my photos off my hard drive.

Believe me I have NOT moved the folder or accidently moved it to the trash.

THIS IS DEFINITELY AN ISSUE WITH THE SOFTWARE OR COMBINATION OF THE SOFTWARE AND OPERATING SYSTEM!!!!

My library and all pictures were on my drive then after update to iPhoto ALL GONE.

This really is happening. CAn someone at APPLE please enlighten us to what the heck is goign on here???????

Sorry about your situation. Are you using Time Machine to back up to an external hard drive? If so you may be able to recover your photos as I did.

P.S.

I just realized that this thread has been marked as question answered. It may be a good idea to start a new thread of your own as it will attract more attention. The help in this forum comes not from Apple but from volunteers that read our questions and try their best to help you out.

1 - Apple does not answer here - as noted in the TOU you agreed to

2 - as a "very savvy" user and a programmer I'm sure you have a great backup - time to restore it from before the problem

LN