Aperture locating files

It sounds like you may have left the file in it's original location when you imported it.

For example if you imported from removable storage but didn't copy the file to the library, then you eject that removable storage.

Aperture would know about the file (thumbnail and metadata) but wouldn't be able to use or locate the file because the storage where it's located has been ejected.

Where did you import the file from originally?

Does it have a badge to show it is referenced but offline:

The box with a red strikethrough and curly arrow means it's offline (the removable storage it is located on is not connected to your computer).

Andy

Hannah, step 1 is not to panic - it's a bit a of a shock when images go missing but there's usually a reason that can be traced and being logical and calm is the quickest way to get back up and running.

The first thing to check is whether the images are still actually within Apertures library. To do this, use finder to navigate to the "Aperture Library", it's usually in your Pictures folder. Right Click (or CTRL+Click) the library and choose "Show Package Contents" as shown below:

Next navigate to the Masters folder and the hierarchy within it. This is organised by date of import, except for last branch of the tree which has a random name that represents the project it was imported into. Hopefully, you would have imported the files around the same time as the capture date so locating where the image should be stored will be quite easy. You are looking to see if your original files are present in the Library. There is a very good chance they will be.

Here's an example:

If you confirm your images are safe in the Library, then it's most likely Aperture has simply got it's index messed up and this is a very simple fix. However, it's always advisable to ensure you have a good backup before continuing.

If you confirmed your images are in fact still in your library

Make sure Aperture is closed then hold down the ALT+CMD keys while launching Aperture. You will see the first aid screen:

Choose the option to Repair the Database and leave it to complete. Hopefully that will fix the issue, but if not you can repeat the first aid. Try the "Repair Permissions" next, and if that doesn't work, finally use "Rebuild Database".

If you didn't confirm the images are in the library, report back for additional help, but in the mean time do not delete your System Trash, just in case they have been inadvertently moved there.

Andy

hannah3231 wrote:

Hello,

That did really help but unfortunatley images are not in those folders.

Which part of Andy's post helped? Did the problem change after doing the repair.rebuild?

When you say the 'images are not in those folders' do you mean the originals are not in the Master folder inside the Aperture library?

hannah3231 wrote:

I have also now just gone to edit my images from another photoshoot and went to export some of them so i could edit them in photoshop and the exact same thing has happened to them and I really don't know what to so as this is all my university work?

Did you use photo shop on the other images that are missing also? What is your workflow? How do you use Photo Shop in connection with Aperture?

Do you have a backup of our disk and the Aperture libraries?

Message was edited by: Frank Caggiano - This is important, stop doing any work with your images either with Aperture or Photo Shop until this is sorted out.

Hanna,

It's quite unusual for the files to go missings from within the Aperture library. So it would be useful to confirm the files really are missing, and if so, also see if we can locate where they have gone to.

I have recreated the issue on my system so I can talk you through the steps.

What I did, was to move my original file from the Aperture library to my desktop. So in Aperture, it now sees the file is missing:

On the info tab, choose 'File Info' to see the file name. Make a note of this or copy it to the clipboard.

Next, we're going to use Terminal to try to find the file, first by looking in the Aperture Library, and if we don't find it there, by searching your whole system.

The Terminal App is located in you Applications/Utilities folder:

Launch Terminal and put it side by side with a Finder window where you can see your Aperture Library.

We're going to change Terminals current directory so it is looking in you Aperture Library. To do this, in Terminal, type cd followed by a space. Then drag your Aperture Library into terminal and release it. This will copy the full path to your Aperture Library into the command line. Press return to execute the cd command.

Note: Take care when dragging your Library to Terminal, only release it in the Terminal App otherwise you could end up actually moving your Library somewhere. If you are uncomfortable with this, you can simply type the name of the full path to your library instead. The drag from finder is just a short cut to save you having to type the full path name:

Here's what it looks like while dragging:

And here's what it looks like when you have dragged the path and pressed return:

So now we have Terminal with it's current directory set to your Aperture Library. Now we'll use the Find command to see if the image is hiding anywhere within it.

My missing file is called _C061525.JPG so the find command to look for it is as follows:

find . -iname "_C061525.JPG"

Note the dot which tells it to start searching from the current directory.

If it finds the file it will show the path to where it found it. If it doesn't find it the command finishes and doesn't show you anything. In my case, it wont find_C061525.JPG. To show you what it looks like when it does find it, I also did a find for file _C061524.JPG which does exist. Here's what you see in Terminal in each case:

Using find like this, will look everywhere in your Library and hopefully you will locate your images. However, if find doesn't find it, then the images really have gone from the Library so the next step is to see if they have been moved somewhere else on your system.

You could use spotlight for this, but as we have the terminal open, I'll show you the find command we can use to look for it. Find is also a bit more thorough and reliable than Spotlight. But it will take a lot longer to run as it searches your entire system.

The command for my file looks like this:

find / -iname "_C061525.JPG" 2>/dev/null

Note the / in place of the dot, this tells it search your whole system. Also the 2>/dev/null at the end, this just stops your screen from filling up with warnings about permissions. Depending on the size and speed of your hard drive, this make take quite a long time to run, just leave it until it completes.

Here's what the output looks like, and you can see it successfully found the file on my desktop where I had moved it to:

If after this, you still haven't located the files, then it looks like they've really gone. You should check your system trash to see if they are in there, and if you find them you can drag them out of trash. But failing that, you will need to use your backup to locate and recover the files. If you don't have a backup, your last hope is a file recovery utility that will search for deleted files on your hard drive but these can be expensive and time consuming. Having said that, my neice just recently lost her school photo project and managed to recover them with Data Rescue 3. Saved her butt as she is the teacher!

Hope this helps,

Andy

Frank, I was advising only running repair once it was confirmed the images were still actually in the Library, in case the repair decided to remove the missing images which would then take away the option of simply putting them back (once located) and retaining any edits/metadata. And indeed, when I recreated the issue earlier today and later ran a repair, the missing image got removed from Aperture - no longer a thumnail for it - and so it had to be re-imported, essentially as a new image.

Andy

Glad to hear you received some resolution to your problem. However without figuring out what happened there is no guarantee that it won't happen again.

Can you better describe what apple did? If we knew that it might help figure out what happened?

Also as it is appears that you do not have any sort of backup strategy in place it is most important that you begin backing up right away. If nothing else get an external drive and turn on Time Machine. While not fool proof it is better then nothing and will give you some confidence that when this happens again you will be able to retrieve the images.

What is most troubling about all this is your statement that even after you first noticed the problem, when you did your normal workflow on new images those went missing also. I fear you are not out of the woods yet.

good luck

regards