All photos gone with upgrade to iPhoto 9.6 ???

Is there an Old Masters folder in the iPhoto library? If so this is the result of a very nasty bug which Apple has not addressed - the only solution is to restore a backup and upgrade it again - or start over with the originals in the Old Masters folder

LN

You got bitten by a nasty bug.

The upgrade of your library got interrupted, and some of your photos are still in the "Old ..." folders. There is no known fix for this, that can save your iPhoto library. We are still waiting for a bug fix from Apple. What you can do, icopy out your original photos, that are still in the "Old Masters" and "Masters", and save these folders. Then restore your library from your most recent backup and use the saved "Old " folders to reimport and add the newest photos, that are missing in your backup.

And consider to send feedback to Apple, to get this bug fixed: Apple - iPhoto Mac - Feedback

That's exactly right. Crazy that any of the rebuild/repair functions won't work (when you hold command + option as you start iPhoto). You have good advice. I'm going to the genius bar on Sunday, maybe they know a secret way to fix it. Otherwise I'm stuck with your advice, which I appreciate. I submitted feedback to Apple but obviously I'm not holding my breath.

OK, now I haven't read through all of these posts, but am sharing what just happened to me after upgrading all of my 8th-grade Art/Photo classroom mac minis to Yosemite...

Had been using (for the last 1.5 years) Lion on 5 mac minis, with corresponding iPhoto/iMovie versions...

Got 5 new mac minis, that were already loaded with Yosemite.

HATED the changes in iMovie... Felt like MICROSOFT had infiltrated Apple, and re-designed iMovie to torture me & students...

Found out I could not un-install/downgrade back to Lion, since these were BUILT with Yosemite, and it is what it is...

So grudgingly decided to bring the other original 5 minis up to date...

Upgraded successfully to Yosemite.

Then clicked on iPhoto.

"Not compatible with Yosemite—Need to update" message appears.

That's when I find out that my WiFi connection is now inoperable.

Therefore I cannot reach App Store to upgrade iPhoto/iMovie

Which means my weekend is shot, because teachers are not allowed access to the school network password... because of a few undiscerning teachers that gave it to some students previously...

Tech coordinator helped out yesterday, reconnecting WiFi...

Upgrades to iMovie & iPhoto took awhile, but came through OK...

YAY!

Then, opening up programs to the horrifying reality of ALL photos and movies (1.5 years of student work) being gone...

I did the logical thing... handed in my resignation to the principal, and went out for a pitcher of beer.

Then a thought occurred to me.

Went back to my classroom computers.

Logged OUT of Admin User.

Logged IN as Student User.

ALL PHOTOS/iMOVIES/DESKTOP FOLDERS, etc. were there!!!...

Don't know if that rings a bell of similarity, but there you go... I have testified to the best of my recollection...

PS: My wonderful principal allowed me to tear up my resignation papers.

To Juba2014 and other victims of iPhoto 9.6.

I have had exactly the same experience as you and many others I have read about. It caused me many days and nights of pain and loss of precious time. I had consulted various people in Apple Support to no avail. I am just furious that for such a serious, commonly occurring bug in iPhoto 9.6, Apple has not owned up to it and sent out a patch release to fix it. Once again, I turned to the magic software of iPhoto Library Manager (IPLM) and the sage advice by its creator, Brian Webster for rescue. Very fortunately, after iPhoto 9.6 trashed several backup copies of my 320GB library, I still had one old copy left! After running IPLM for over 40 hours to rebuild the library, I finally got my good library back and usable by iPhoto9.6. Here is what you should do when encountering that ominous message from iPhoto 9.6 asking you to Upgrade or Quit: Take half a breath, click Quit and run a Rebuild of your library with IPLM which will preserve your precious library by creating a new one. If you have a large library like mine, be very, very patient because it is going to take a long time. You don't have to watch the rebuilding operation continuously, but you need to check it frequently in case iPhoto hangs with an error message; you need to Quit iPhoto or Force Quit iPhoto to allow IPLM to resume its operation. (See excellent explanation by Brian Webster in http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/Help/stalling%20during%20a%20long%20operation .html) I had to do it several times. Following rebuilding by IPLM, the tricky iPhoto 9.6 turned up another problem -- between quitting and reopening, iPhoto 9.6 changed the manual sort order of the album entries in my library to an arbitrary order which I could not make any sense of! Brian advised me to invoke the Repair Database option (NOT THE REBUILD OPTION of iPhoto 9.6!!!) after loading the library while depressing the Option and Apple keys together. Lo and behold, the problem was fixed! Many users who reported that problem were afraid to try that option after their disastrous experience with Rebuild by iPhoto 9.6. I am now of the opinion that Apple should ship every copy of iPhoto with IPLM to correct the various deficiencies in iPhoto X.Y.

lakecomo

iPhoto Library opens to an empty Library with Old Masters.

1. Backup your Libraries on a regular basis with Time Machine if your not already.
2. Show package contents on the damaged Library
3. Move Masters, Thumbnails and Previews out onto the desktop
4. Remove Old from Old Masters, Old Previews and Old Thumbnails making sure you don't leave any spaces before the first letter.
5. Right click on Originals (if you have it) and Show Original to make sure it takes you to the Masters you just renamed.
6. Delete any interruptedupgrade, -journal, rebuilding.txt or data.noindex files
7. Go into Database/apdb and delete any -journal files
8. From the same Database/apdb folder drag Library.apdb out onto the desktop
9. Open iPhoto and click Rebuild. This may take awhile for large Libraries and older computers so gove it time. Even if iPhoto says not responding it can come back to life.
10. If the rebuild is successful wait for iPhoto to finish loading completly then close the Library to save the changes before doing anything in the Library.
11. If the Masters pulled to the desktop in step 3 has a 2015 folder in it then import it into your library. If the files appear as Aliases then no import is needed.
12. Delete the files you pulled out of the library.

Just a word of advice: do not let the Genius Bar personnel do their thing on your only copy of the library. They've been known to mess things up worse than when you went in.

This morning after the update 9.6, I noticed that the best part of my adolescent memories had gone! I had experienced the same problem years ago on a windows pc, I excepted it an moved on. This morning however I felt truly sickened (broke out in a cold sweat) at the fact that the best part of my life's memories had been carelessly lost by apple!

I did however find all my photos again! thank F**k! 😍

1. Finder - Search Iphoto

2. iphoto library - right click - show package contents

3. Open - Library.iphoto

(this should open the original iphoto application)

hopefully like me, you should see your precious images waiting to be copy and pasted to an external hard drive for SAFE keeping.

Hope this helps, and if not I feel your pain.

Rik.

What? You mean you updated without a back up?

Sure did terence! like I said, fortunately this time I've been lucky.

fortune favours the bold I guess hahah, But everything has been backed up now!