Hi artsytexan,
I understand that you wish to restore some old photos from a Time Machine backup. I know that it's important to have access to your photos, so I'm happy to provide some direction to help with this.
Since you're posting in the OS X 10.7 Lion community, I'm going to share the steps for that software:
iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later) - Apple Support.
To restore photos:
- Quit iPhoto.
- Connect your Time Machine drive.
- In the Finder, open the folder containing your iPhoto Library. Unless you've moved your iPhoto Library, it can be found in Home/Pictures/iPhoto Library.
- Enter Time Machine. (Time Machine can be found in the Dock or in the /Applications folder.)
- Choose your desired backup. The timeline on the right side of the screen displays a purple tick mark for each of the backups stored on your Time Machine drive.
- Select the iPhoto library you would like to restore, and click the Restore button.
iPhoto may prompt you to repair your library if there are some inconsistencies in your files. If so, please allow it to proceed by clicking the Repair button. If you notice blank thumbnails, reopen iPhoto while holding down the Command and Option keys. When the Rebuild iPhoto Library window appears, enable the "Rebuild all of the photos’ thumbnails" checkbox. This may take a long time, depending on the size of the library.
For further information about how Time Machine handles your backups, check out this article:
Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support
Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities, cheers!
