Some of my iPhoto albums are suddenly empty

kurchian · Oct 17, 2013

When I recently opened iPhoto '11 I noticed that some of the albums in one of my folders had zero photos in them. To my surprise the thumbnail photos are still present for these albums even though there are no photos in them. The photos are no longer showing in events or in the master photo list.

However, the photos are still present in my library. I can see them when I view the "Masters" folder inside the library.

I tried rebuilding iPhoto. That didn't work.

I tried rebuilding the library using iPhoto Library Manager. That didn't work. In fact, when I did that the rebuilt library had even less photos than my original library.

Since the thumbnails are there I have some hope. But I would appreciate any advice that iPhoto users might have for me.

thank you

MightyGem · Oct 17, 2013

Try here:
iPhoto 6 and later: Rebuilding the iPhoto library

kurchian · Oct 17, 2013

Thank you.

I've tried all the options on the rebuilding screen and none have resurrected the missing photos.

I did take a peek inside the iPhoto Library package and noticed that the thumbnails for the missing photos do exist. Is there any way to use these smaller versions to recreate the master photos?

Thank you

MightyGem · Oct 18, 2013

Is there any way to use these smaller versions to recreate the master photos?

Unfortunately not. They are very low resolution copies of your pictures.

Did you import the missing photos direct from a camera or from Finder? If from Finder, did you have the "Copy Items to iPhoto Library" option ticked in iPhoto Preferences>Advanced? If not and you've subsequently deleted those pictures from Finder, then that is why the pictures are missing.

kurchian · Oct 18, 2013

MightyGem said:
Unfortunately not. They are very low resolution copies of your pictures.

Did you import the missing photos direct from a camera or from Finder? If from Finder, did you have the "Copy Items to iPhoto Library" option ticked in iPhoto Preferences>Advanced? If not and you've subsequently deleted those pictures from Finder, then that is why the pictures are missing.

Yes, I had that box checked. Good idea, though and thanks.

This is the craziest problem. As I said, I can find the missing photos in the iPhoto Library in both the thumbnail and Masters folders. The thumbnails show up fine when I open the albums. Problem is there are no photos in there.

I've run iPhoto Library Manager several times, but that hasn't resurrected the photos. I don't understand permissions, but I wonder if that could be the problem?

MightyGem · Oct 18, 2013

I don't understand permissions, but I wonder if that could be the problem?

Possible. You could try Repairing Permission with Disk Utility.

You could also try deleting the iPhoto Preference(.plist) file in Home Folder>Library>Preferences.

kurchian · Oct 21, 2013

Thanks for trying to help. I've tried every solution suggested to no avail.

Nothing has worked here for me. The photos remain in my Photo Library but not in my albums, although the thumbnails do show up.

To solve this I am going into the photo library and copying the photos to my desktop, then deleting them from the photo library, then importing them back in.