# finding original photos that were lost importing from iphoto



## tackjibe (Sep 17, 2004)

How do I find the original photos that were lost from iphoto? I think I had two iphoto libraries and I upgraded my system software from OS10.5 to 10.6 and the old Library came up in iphoto and i lost about 8 months of photos from the new library I had. Where are these photos? They must still be on my hard drive but I don't know how to access them.

Thanks,

tackjibe


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## Oakbridge (Mar 8, 2005)

tackjibe said:


> How do I find the original photos that were lost from iphoto? I think I had two iphoto libraries and I upgraded my system software from OS10.5 to 10.6 and the old Library came up in iphoto and i lost about 8 months of photos from the new library I had. Where are these photos? They must still be on my hard drive but I don't know how to access them.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> tackjibe


Try holding the Option key down while launching iPhoto. It should ask you which library you want to use.


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## tackjibe (Sep 17, 2004)

No good. I lost several months of photos some were not backed up. I tried Disk Driller and it recovered a lot of photos but not the ones I needed. I'm going to get an external hard drive. Some of the photos were in "Dropbox" but I only got that recently.


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## tompatrick (Oct 14, 2011)

tackjibe said:


> No good. I lost several months of photos some were not backed up. I tried Disk Driller and it recovered a lot of photos but not the ones I needed. I'm going to get an external hard drive. Some of the photos were in "Dropbox" but I only got that recently.


Some of the photos that could not be recovered using disk drill may be because they were overwritten? Did you try other recovery tools?


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## tackjibe (Sep 17, 2004)

No. Are there others?


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## tompatrick (Oct 14, 2011)

tackjibe said:


> No. Are there others?


Yes, there are plenty of tools available in photo recovery section. I did a quick search on google with the term mac photo recovery and found following results:

Stellar for Mac photo recovery
Mackeeper for Mac photo recovery
Wondershare for Mac Photo recovery

The above tools provide free evaluation so you can scan your drive and volume again and preview the files to check if you have recovered those you want. Also you can go for selective scan by inserting certain file formats if the software allows.


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## Lawrence (Mar 11, 2003)

Have you checked in your "Pictures" folder?
Look for "iPhoto Library" and then double click it.

It'll open all your photo's.

It might even ask you if you want to upgrade,
Press upgrade if it does and hopefully all your photo's will magically appear.

Personally, I don't like iPhoto,
I prefer to keep all my photo's on an external drive outside of iPhoto.


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## eMacMan (Nov 27, 2006)

Lawrence said:


> Have you checked in your "Pictures" folder?
> Look for "iPhoto Library" and then double click it.
> 
> It'll open all your photo's.
> ...


Mine are internal but not within iPhoto, also triple backed externally but I agree iPhoto is a real PIA when it comes to archiving or even a general clean-up.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Stay FAR AWAY from MacKeeper. BAD product!!!


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## keebler27 (Jan 5, 2007)

Hi Tackjibe,

Before you try this, back your mac's HD up. Some folks it's not highly advisable to go this route so it's a solid idea to back up before you do. 

Maybe your photos are indeed still on your hard drive, but just not showing up in the actual software.

Then open a finder window, go to Pictures - iPhoto Library.

right click and choose 'show package contents'

look for the 'Originals' folder

There should be sub folders containing your folders.

I will admit that I don't know how this works for multiple iPhoto libraries, but I would assume there would simply be multiple folders (1 for each library?).

Once you find the photos, copy them to another location. Don't delete anything in this folder or you could further screw up your iPhoto library. Any deletions should be done from the software.

Cheers,
Keebler


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