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Spent all summer creating smart album of trip to Japan and four months later can not find it in my iPhoto library!

I spent the entire summer editing and organising photos from my trip to Japan in a smart album and four months later can not find it in iPhoto. need help.

iMac, iOS 7.1.2, OSX 10.9.4-Mavericks-latest iphoto

Posted on Dec 22, 2014 2:36 AM

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12 replies

Dec 23, 2014 4:38 AM in response to Yer_Man

Sorry for the delay. I looked where it was last found in the Album column at the lower left in iPhotos. Perhaps changing different camera memory chips had something to do with it. There was nothing else amiss since this was my first effort to use iPhoto in a serious way. Of course I looked for any sign of it also in the horizontal iPhoto bar at the top in desperation. Yes I have a backup, La Cie d2 Quadra USB3, but wouldn't know how to mine this resource.

Dec 23, 2014 5:56 AM in response to léonie

Thanks Leonie, There are two unrelated items in the Album section (Recovered Photos & untitled album, which are just photos from another memory chip) that can be hidden, but not my specially titled smart album. Any suggestions on how to retrieve material from the back up? Would I need specifics like the date the album was created?

Dec 23, 2014 6:32 AM in response to Jimsen

Any suggestions on how to retrieve material from the back up? Would I need specifics like the date the album was created?

We need to know, which backup software you have been running, as Terence said. The make of your drive " La Cie d2 Quadra USB3", does not tell us how your data is stored on the drive. Have you created your backup with Time Machine Backup?

Then restore your iPhoto Library by entering Time Machine. See this: iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)

Go back to the time when you created your album and restore the iPhoto Library to a different folder. Don't overwrite your current library.

Feb 8, 2015 8:21 AM in response to Jimsen

Leonie, So sorry for the long delay after your helpful comments about my 'lost', more likely submerged photos from my Japan trip that I worked so hard on last summer. I am almost completely convinced that my smart album disappeared because I upgraded to the latest 9.6 version of iPhoto in October and if that didn't do it, I think I upgraded to a more recent program just before Yosemite also about the same time. Since your last comments I have been too busy with other things to try and resolve the problem. I did try to play with the Time Machine in hope of recovering the images, but was unsuccessful. Just now I saw an add for Mac's new photo app that looks quite cool and am wondering if I upgraded on this app, that my organised series would reappear. I do still have all the photos on the chip, but am trying to avoid redoing all the tedious work again. Any suggestions?

Feb 8, 2015 9:58 AM in response to Jimsen

Larry, The album disappeared as well as the downloaded photos from the trip. Of course when I re-interduce the photo chip, the photos reappear in their unedited state, so I could go through the editing process again if I had the time.

That indicates that at the time you first imported the photos you were running a "referenced" library. Compare your iPhoto's Advanced preference pane to this screenshot:

User uploaded file


If it's not a managed library then check that checkbox and reimport those photos again.

User uploaded file

Feb 18, 2015 5:16 AM in response to léonie

Dear Leonie, Larry, and Terrance, Miracle of Miracles, my photos have reappeared with titles and proper order and I assume also the smart album. The only thing I can think I did was insert all my photo chips looking for enough space to take a few more photos. Thank you all for your constructive help.

Spent all summer creating smart album of trip to Japan and four months later can not find it in my iPhoto library!

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