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iPhoto 9.4.3 all edits lost

I hope someone can advise on this. This weekend I upgraded my OS from 10.7 to 10.8 and updated iPhoto to 9.4.3. I now find that ALL my edits have been lost - thousands of photos going back more than 10 years - all crops, rotations, colour correction, everything. All photos show as they were originally imported. I remember that when updating, a message appeared to the effect that several issues were discovered, and the installation process took a very long time. Another strange thing - If I take the file name of a picture (e.g. IMG_008) and do a search for it (to check if any other versions exist) - the search finds no results. If however I drag a photo to the desktop and do another search, it finds one result - on the desktop). There is one glimmer of hope - I have a Time Machine back-up disk which was last connected about 6 weeks ago (when I was still on 10.6.8). The number of pictures I have edited over the past 6 weeks is negligible, so would be happy to lose these. I'd be quite happy to ditch the whole upgrade and go back to the previous version if it restored the edits. Which way should I proceed? Thanks

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Oct 27, 2015 6:55 AM

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Posted on Oct 27, 2015 6:58 AM

I would try rebuild the Library first.


Option 1

Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.


If that fails:


Option 2

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In early versions of Library Manager it's the File -> Rebuild command. In later versions it's under the Library menu.)


This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places back.


Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.


If these fail, then restore from back up.

Regards



TD

6 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Oct 27, 2015 6:58 AM in response to lesparapluies

I would try rebuild the Library first.


Option 1

Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.


If that fails:


Option 2

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In early versions of Library Manager it's the File -> Rebuild command. In later versions it's under the Library menu.)


This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places back.


Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.


If these fail, then restore from back up.

Regards



TD

Nov 1, 2015 7:01 AM in response to Yer_Man

Hello Terence, here is the latest state of play, once again I'd appreciate your advice: I've gone through the "option one" stage of your last posting, it hasn't made any difference. The edited files do exist on the computer (the mistake I made in the initial stages was not searching system files) - they are in Pictures / iPhoto library / Previews, which is I think exactly where you'd expect them to be? But no amount of repairing/rebuilding will get them to appear in iPhoto. I'm beginning to think the program itself may be corrupted - this view is reinforced by the fact that quite a few of the dialogues appear randomly in a mixture of English and Greek, and now some of the dates don't even appear in the correct sequence. I don't really want to go down the option 2 route as I need slideshows etc to be intact. At the moment I have 2 back-up folders - one from about 2 months ago (before the problem appeared) on a Time Machine disk, and another one from last week on a separate drive. I'm thinking about trashing the whole program, re-installing it from an iLife 11 DVD-ROM , then bringing in the iPhoto folder from the Time Machine disk. Are there likely to be any issues with this that I'm overlooking? Thanks again, MD

Nov 1, 2015 7:25 AM in response to lesparapluies

While not discounting every possibility, this does not sound like a problem with the programme and I don't believe that reinstalling ti will help. By all means try if you want.


The issue is that the Library is corrupt. If that's the case you have three options:


1. Repair with iPhoto's own tools.


if that fails


2. Restore from back up.


These are the only two options that will preserve all your data.


If they don't work or are not available, then you're next best bet is


3. Rebuild with iPhoto Library Manager.


Last resort:


4. Recover your originals from the damaged library and start over from scratch.


Those are your choices. Try reinstall if you want. I'd be delighted to be wrong.

Nov 30, 2015 12:51 PM in response to lesparapluies

Hello Terence, sorry for the late reply, been extremely busy and just got back to tackling the problem yesterday. None of the rebuilding or repairing had any effect and eventually I saved the handful of files I had added in the past 2 months to a DVD, then deleted the whole iPhoto library, then in its place imported the library from the last back-up, Sept 8th (I also made a copy of this, just in case this one became corrupted too). But all seems fine now, all the edits have been restored, and the application is running as it should. Thank you for your advice

iPhoto 9.4.3 all edits lost

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