I've run out of storage and while waiting for a new external drive, have deleted things. I deleted iPhotos because everything is migrated to Photos. It was going fine until I restarted my computer. All my photos are there but are very small (less than 500kb). What can I do? I restored iphotos from the Trash but it hasn't helped.
I used to over 100GB of photos, now a mere 14GB...
I have a time machine hard drive... can I restore them from there?
Thank you.
What exactly did you do? It sounds like you may have run Malware like CleanMyMac or other bad clean up software
Deleting the iPhoto library does not affect the Photos library in any way (and usually does not save much space either - Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries - Apple Support )
LN
Thanks for your quick reply. I did download OmniDiskSweeper and ran a sweep but didn't actually use it to delete anything.
I'd like to restore things from my external drive (Time Machine) but I have created loads new files since the last back-up. Any tips on restoring only certain data from the backup?
If (you didn't say) you enabled iCloud Photo Library to keep on Optimized local copy and were running out of storage space, it's entirely possible Photos reduced size of images on your drive. If this were the case, however, the full-resolution image should download from iCloud when you double-click on it and switch to Edit mode.
Is this not working this way for you?
Unfortunately random occasional backups are useless which is why the default (and strongly recommended) schedule for TimeMachine is hourly backups - You can not restore part of a Photos library - it is all or nothing
and again to help we need to know exactly what you did
have deleted things.
How and what things?
LN
Okay I can find all my photos in high res in a folder called 'Masters' when I open 'Show package contents'. Does that indicate that Photos is only showing me thumbnails somehow?
I have made a back-up of all my photos on an external hard drive (not time machine). I didn't realise Time Machine was all or nothing...
Thank you once again for your help.
we still need to know
and again to help we need to know exactly what you did
have deleted things.How and what things?
and how much free space do you have on your disk ?
LN
iPhotos (84GB) and files. I had about 1> to 5 GB depending left. Then I restarted my computer and had about 50GB - my background image disappeared and I noticed the images were all reduced.
I restored iPhotos and now have 13-18GB left.
I cannot recall deleting anything other than iPhotos and files (photos, ppt, videos, docs, esps)
Deleting the iPhoto library does no affect the Photos library in any way
Launch TM and go back in the TM viewer to before you deleted the iPhoto library and check the size of the Photos library then adn now
LN
Photos suddenly thumbnails
