I uploaded thousands of photos from my ipad to iphoto and now they are nowhere to be found. Where are they?

Question

I uploaded thousands of photos from my ipad to iphoto and now they are nowhere to be found. Where are they?

Hi! I just uploaded thousands of photos from my ipad to my iphoto on my macbook pro and when it notified me that it uploaded successfully and asked if I wanted to delete the photos on my ipad...I stupidly deleted them. But my main problem is that I cannot find these photos ANYWHERE! I searched every event and latest import and there was no luck. It's as if they were never imported in the first place. These photos are dear to me, please help!!!

Mahalo,
Payten

Posted on Jul 9, 2014 12:38 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Jul 9, 2014 1:18 PM in response to payteninhawaii

I searched every event and latest import and there was no luck.

How did you search? Have you tried to search with a smart album, searching for a specific date?

Or to arrange the photos in Photos view by date?

Can it be, that you imported the photos into a different iPhoto library? Launch iPhoto with the alt/option key held down to bring up the library chooser panel. Is there more than one iPhoto library?

What is your iPhoto version, Payten?

-- Léonie

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

207,409 points

Jul 9, 2014 2:04 PM in response to payteninhawaii

With the amount of information you've provided it's impossible to offer a solution. We can't see your computer so we need to know the details of your problem and setup, i.e.:

what version of iPhoto are you using?
what system version are you running?
what method did you use to upload from the iPad to the Mac and the iPhoto Library?
what do you see when iPhoto opens?
what fixes have you tried?
where is your library located?
did you apply any updates or upgrades just prior to the problem occurring?
are you running a "managed" or "referenced" library?

what type of Mac?
how much free space on your boot drive?

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Answer 3

Jul 9, 2014 4:54 PM in response to léonie

Hi Leonie,
Thank you for your response. I've actually used your helpful responses earlier today by reading other user threads that were similar.

To answer your questions:
-I searched through each event, album, and folder that I could find within iphoto and finder. (although i'm not familiar with what a "smart album" is)

-I've arranged the photos/events to chronological order.

-No, this is the only iphoto that I have(from my experiences at least.) And I did start the iphoto while holding down alt/option and it showed "iphoto default" only, which is the iphoto that i've been using.

-This is iphoto '09 version 8.1.2

BUT! I used "Find Any File" demo software and it helped me find the "photos" but they weren't in iphoto, but on my mac(still not too sure where it was found.) Now my new problem is that the photos that were uploaded(or found) are tiny and pixelated. What i'm hoping is that I found a cheap version of the photos that were uploaded or something, because i've uploaded photos from my ipad to iphoto before and this has NEVER happened. So I think that these photos are NOT on iphoto but somewhere else? Or the (super low quality...basically pixelated thumbnail) photos are all that's left...

Thanks for your help Leonie!

-Payten

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Answer 4

Jul 9, 2014 5:34 PM in response to Old Toad

Hi Old Toad!

- I am using iphoto '09 version 8.1.2
- not too sure what system version is...
- I used the uploading method that is available to ipads(and other devices) on iphoto when they are plugged in via usb cord.(ipad-iphoto/mac)
- when I open up iphoto, it functions properly and I see my typical page with all the photos that i've uploaded from the past...with the exception of the most recent.
- i've tried three finder softwares: PhotoRescue, MediaRecover and FindAnyFile. Find Any File seemed to have worked for me except when it located the photos(which all of them were there), the photos were EXTREMELY small and pixelated! I recognize them as the photos from my family trip but they are so low quality that it's not worth having as a photo...(is there something I can do to enlarge them?)
- i'm not too sure "where" my "library" is located...is that my iphoto library that you're talking about? or something more general? Sorry, i'm not updated with tech-lingo.
-no, I haven't updated anything lately...(should I?)

-like I said before, not too sure what a managed or referenced library is.

-the mac i'm using is a macbookpro Mac OS X version 10.6.8 - Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8GB 1067 MHz DDR3
-hmmm...let me find out how to check that info...(10mins later) well, all the instructions online didn't match up with what my computer is allowing. I can't check my free space on my computer because the "about this Mac" and "more info" doesn't lead me to the "storage" option that all the guides were leading me towards.

Thanks for your support and help,

Payten

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Jul 9, 2014 5:41 PM in response to payteninhawaii

-This is iphoto '09 version 8.1.2

And what is your MacOS X version?

BUT! I used "Find Any File" demo software and it helped me find the "photos" but they weren't in iphoto, but on my mac(still not too sure where it was found.)

Do you have "Find Any File" still open?

If you click one of the found images, it will show you the path to the image files.Could you post what you are seeing then?

Does the path start with your Home folder or outside? Desrcibe exactly the the names of the nested folders.

Now my new problem is that the photos that were uploaded(or found) are tiny and pixelated. What i'm hoping is that I found a cheap version of the photos that were uploaded or something,

Perhaps you found the thumbnails folder - if you can give us the path there, we may be able to find the matching Masters or Originals folder.

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Answer 6

Jul 9, 2014 6:40 PM in response to léonie

MacOsX version? I think Snow Leopard...(not sure if that's what you meant...)

Yes! It is still open...but...it has been stuck on this "Gathering Data" screen(might be frozen?) for the past two hours.

I don't see the "Home" or any of the bottom section that you provided with your pic. The picture above is all that i'm seeing, but I can restart the program and run it again! How do I find the "path"? Thanks for supporting me through this Leonie!

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Answer 7

Jul 9, 2014 6:45 PM in response to léonie

It stopped "Gathering Data" and I was able to see what you were showing me. Here is an updated shot of what i'm looking at:

Does this help?

jfyi: The folder MommIpad is something I made for all the files I found(via FindAnyFile) and put them into this folder(not knowing that they were low quality.)

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Answer 8

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Jul 9, 2014 11:17 PM in response to payteninhawaii

The folder MommIpad is something I made for all the files I found(via FindAnyFile) and put them into this folder(not knowing that they were low quality.)

If you moved all images found by "a creation date within the past day" into a different folder "MommIpad" they can no longer tell us, where the iPhoto library is. The library will now show black thumbnails. These low resolution images are an important part of the library to speed up browsing. Or have you copied the thumbnails? If you indeed moved the images, try to undo the last Finder command from the Finder's "Edit" menu in the main menu bar "File > Edit > Undo move ...".

Do the ind Any File search again, but click the "Size" column, to sort by the size, with the largest items on top. Do you still have new jpegs, that are not in "MommIpad"? Where are they?

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Answer 9

Old Toad

Level 10

207,409 points

Jul 10, 2014 10:00 AM in response to payteninhawaii

Use Find Any File to search for a file with "ThumbJPGSegment" in the file name. There are files common to all versions of iPhoto libraries with that as part of the file name..

FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages. If there's a library hiding somewhere on your hard drive FAF will find it.

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