ALL my EXIF data suddenly gone from entire library.

Question

ALL my EXIF data suddenly gone from entire library.

Yesterday I was using Aperture v3.6 and noticed that I wasn't seeing the camera settings for my images. When I searched to find the extent of the problem, I found that all of the images in my library (approx. 90,000 versions) are missing all EXIF data, including camera model, exposure settings, captions, location data, etc. The only exceptions are a handful of iPhone photos that have been added in the last few days and because of this I was able to determine the loss occurred between the 19th and 22nd of this month. I can't think of anything I did in those few days that might have led to this issue.

All of the photos appear to be fine, but all of this fairly important data (understatement of the year so far) is gone. All the files are Referenced from the Finder and I have Time Machine backups, but the Finder files still have the EXIF data (checked using Preview's Inspector). Aperture's "Create New Version From Original" command doesn't generate any new information. The only thing missing from the Finder files is GPS data from images shot with my DSLR; iPhone GPS is fine since that was embedded into the original file and DSLR GPS was added in Aperture. I think I'm most upset about the GPS data because a lot of my photos are from wilderness trips and I added that information when it was fresh in my mind—there is no way I'd be able to accurately replace that info from memory.

I have Repaired and Rebuilt the DB at least twice since discovering this issue.

Has anyone else had this problem? What did you do to fix it? Can I Restore my Aperture library database from Time Machine without ruining something important? What else can I try?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), 27" iMac Core i7 Quad 12GB

Posted on Jul 25, 2015 12:43 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 26, 2015 9:02 AM in response to Phillip Breske

I found on another thread the simple fix for the missing EXIF (select all versions with missing info, control-click and select "Update from Original"), but the GPS data is still missing. I'm going to attempt to restore my Aperture library (90GB without the referenced files) from my Time Machine backup. I will report with results.

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Answer 2

Jul 26, 2015 4:47 PM in response to Phillip Breske

Okay. Problem solved. Thank goodness for good backups.

I went back in my Time Machine backups to the day before the range of dates I had figured the issue arose. I restored only the Aperture library and since I reference all my files in the Finder (arranged by Aperture in year/month/day format), the Library itself is a manageable size and restored in a couple of hours. With the exception of a few iPhone photos added in the past couple of days, everything is back to normal. For those few missing files, I simply imported them back into Aperture directly from their existing Finder locations.

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