Where are my photos in time machine

When you restore an iPhoto Library from Time Machine be sure to either restore it to a different location than your working library by Control (right) -clicking on the library and selecting:

or select Keep Both from the window that will present itself to you:

OT

If you do not have an iPhoto library in the Picture folder of your Time Machine backup then the library wasn't backed up. Earlier versions of iPhoto had a bug that if the app was left open it would not be backed up by TM. However, that was fixed a couple of versions ago.

Have you tried checking the contents of the Pictures folder in your TM backups with the Finder to see if the iPhoto library is present in any of them? This is what I see when I do that:

Warning: Do not attempt to copy a library via the Finder or open it from the TM drive. Only check with the Finder to see if the library is present.

If you haven't changed your Time Machine settings and the iPhoto library is being stored on your OS X partition, it's being backed up. However, you can't open the iPhoto library by using Time Machine, but you can check that your iPhoto library is being backed up.

To do this, open a Finder window and go to the folder where you have your iPhoto library (by default, Pictures). Then, open the Time Machine application (in /Applications/Utilities), select any date in the right sidebar and see if your iPhoto library appears. If so, the photos are backed up. If you want to open an iPhoto library from your Time Machine backup, you have to restore it, and this will replace the iPhoto library you are using

From another Mac you can open Finder and click on the external disk on the Time Machine backup package. Select the option Show Package contents and you can click to the userfolder Pictures in which the iPhoto Library is stored per default. Open also the Package contents of the iPhoto Library to click to the folder with all your master copies of your photos.

Hi I just purchased a 2TB Time Capsule and presimably set it up correctly to perform backups using Time Machine. I seem to be able to retrieve individual documents but not photos. Whenever I try accessing photos I just get the iPhoto Library despcription and the total size of copied/backed photos. I can't seem to select individual photos I may wish to recover. Im running Mavericks on a new macbook air. I'd appreciate any assistance you could provide

Individual photos in an iPhoto Library can't be restored individually anymore. One has to restore the entire library.

Thanks old Toad but let's assume i deleted a pic 10 days ago and need to recover that pic but also saved another hundred since then. If I restore the file with the pics as at 10 days back I lose all the more recent ones, no?

Not necessarily. Restore the library to the desktop, open it with iPhoto and export the original of the missing photo. Then delete the restored library from the Desktop.

If you know the file name of the photos here's a way to recover it with an application named Find Any File.

1 - download and launch FAF.

2 - select your Time Machine hard drive.

3 - search for the photo's file name.

4 - wait. Due to the convoluted nature of the backup structure it can take a while.

5 - when the file is located and displayed in the seach results window drag it to the Desktop and import into iPhoto.

NOTE: be sure you select the file that's in the Masters or Originals folder.

Hi mende1,

I tried the approach you suggested to find my photos on time machine back up and they are not there!

In the backup when I open TimeMachine in Applications/Utilities and go to Pictures it only has my photobooth photos.

There are also no backups showing when I go into iphotos and go to "show backups"

Time machine seems to be backing everything else up but not my photos...

What can I do to fix this

thanks so much for your help

I have the exact same problem- did you ever get a solution? Thank you