Alasdair Archibald1

Q: Disappearing albums

Hi,

I recently decided to start a move from Aperture to Photos and go with the whole iCloud experience. I transferred my library across (about 20,000 photos) and spent some time cleaning up the new albums that Photos made from my Aperture projects. I ended up with a lot of albums nested in folders (e.g. long haul trips, local sites, family & friends, events, nature, etc. etc.). Everything went fine and I even managed to figure out how to (almost) recreate my smart albums as well. This all eventually uploaded to the cloud and distributed to my laptop, iPad, iPhone, and office computer as well. After a little while I noticed that some of the albums didn’t seem to have downloaded to my iPad and iPhone, but they were still on my laptop, desktop, etc. Then I noticed that some of the albums were missing from my laptop and then my desktop. Fast forward a month and every single one of the albums that I transferred from Aperture or created in Photos have disappeared. All that is left are the standard albums that Photos provides for basic users (e.g. All Photos, Favorites, People, Places, selfies, panorama, etc.). All my photographs are still there, just organised in Apple’s basic pattern and not how I wanted.

I would be really grateful if someone could explain what the problem is and what I can to do ensure that any albums I create in the future will stay created.

Thanks

Posted on Sep 18, 2016 12:38 AM

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Q: Disappearing albums

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  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Sep 18, 2016 5:31 AM in response to Alasdair Archibald1
    Level 10 (107,891 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 18, 2016 5:31 AM in response to Alasdair Archibald1

    Are you using iCloud Photo Library on the Mac and the iPad/iPhone?

     

    The iOS devices do not support smart albums. Even if you are using iCloud Photo Library, the smart albums do not show on the iOS devices.  The only way to sync smart abums to iPhone, iPad, iPod is iTunes Photo Sync, but not iCloud Photo Library.

     

    But the smart albums should not vanish from Mac, after you enabled iCloud Photo Library on your iPad and iPhone.  It looks like a bug.  I had exactly the same happen, after the upgrade to iOS 10 on my iPhone. Are you now running iOS 10 on your iPad, iPhone?

    I upgraded the iPhone to iOS 10, enabled iCloud Photo Library, it started  to sync, and a day later all albums and smart albums had vanished from the Photos Libraries on all my Macs.

    Something similar happened after OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite had first been released. Enabling iCloud Photo Library on an iPad removed the albums on the synced Macs.

     

    To fix this:  I'd wait until your iPad has finished the sync with iCloud and if the albums do not reappear (for some people they did after the sync finished) , once all photos have been synced to the iPad, restore your Photos Library from your Time Machine backup, if you still have a backup from the time before you started iCloud on the iPad. After restoring the library the albums should stay, if the iOS devices are already syncing with iCloud.  It worked for my Macs. The only problem is, that after restoring the library from a backup, Photos will upload all photos again to iCloud to merge them into iCloud Photo Library, and that can take a few days for a large library.

  • by Alasdair Archibald1,

    Alasdair Archibald1 Alasdair Archibald1 Sep 18, 2016 5:32 AM in response to léonie
    ( points)
    Sep 18, 2016 5:32 AM in response to léonie

    Thanks for this. All the devices (2 desktops, a laptop, iPad and iPhone) have been fully synced for some time now. The iPad and iPhone have been updated to iOS 10 and nothing has changed since I did that. I was aware that iOS doesn't do smart albums, but I didn't think that they would then disappear from my Macs as well. The other albums (which are essentially just gathering photos together thematically) should be supported by both MacOS and iOS, but there is no indication that they might reappear. Looking at my photos on the web using Safari shows the same lack of albums. As the albums disappeared over a period of weeks, I don't have an appropriate time machine backup for the whole Photos album. I am still running Aperture in parallel (from a separate file on a different disk, not the one I used to convert to Photos) so I still have access to the original projects and can see which photographs should go where. I can use this to recreate the album structure in Photos, but I don't particularly want to invest time in doing that if they are just going to disappear again. If it is a bug, it would be useful to know if it is related to albums imported from Aperture projects, or just albums generally.

  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Sep 18, 2016 5:55 AM in response to Alasdair Archibald1
    Level 10 (107,891 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 18, 2016 5:55 AM in response to Alasdair Archibald1
    If it is a bug, it would be useful to know if it is related to albums imported from Aperture projects, or just albums generally.

    I am not sure - my Photos library has been migrated from Aperture as well. All albums vanished after the iOS 10 upgrade on the iPhone, once the iPhone started syncing with iCloud. The folder "iPhoto Events" with the albums migrated from the Aperture projects is now completely empty on all devices, and the custom folders with my smart albums based on keywords are completely gone.