lost photos in IPHOTO

I have a number of photos that apparently have been shrunk down to low-res (360X270). These photos appear in the IPHOTO database under DATA folder, roll 28. I realize from reading other threads that these are one of the several copies that IPHOTO saves. However, the ones that are visible in the IPHOTO viewer, I can see the thumbnail, but when I click to view, I get a grey screen with a dotted outline, with an exclamation mark in the center. After further investigation, the help info says IPHOTO can't locate the picture. When I do a search of my computer, I can only locate the low-res versions of these pics. Curiously enough, when you click to "show info", all of the information for the original Hi-res photo is there. It appears I have lost all those precious, irreplacable photos. IPHOTO sucks! I will never use it again if these photos are truly lost. Boo Hoo Hoo!

Did you do any organizing or other manipultion of your photos from within the library in finder? That could cause the problem you are seeing. Users are not meant to be in that file.

If you did not (or even if you did), then I'd try using the "rebuild" function. See Apple's Knowledge Based Support for Rebuilding iPhoto Library for instructions. Post back and let us know how you did.

rebuild:yes

Thanks for the response, I did try rebuilding the database, no luck. I think I thought I was copying the files out of there onto my PSP, but I must have actually moved them. I was still a new Mac user then, and I guess I will have learned my lesson! Fortunately, I found a few of the photos on a PC at work, so I recovered a few. Next time I will back up more regularly, and I still will not use IPHOTO, there are better programs out there, I'm sure.

;D

iPhoto is actually quite good at what it is supposed to do. It is an organizational and viewing tool that has lots of options. Generally when there are problems, it is what we balloonists call "pilot error". The software does not do bad things to our photos, we users do. If you deleted the photos yourself (PSP) you can't blame the software. Is there any way to take the photos from your PSP and put them back on your mac? I don't have a PSP, so have no idea if any software exists to do this. I know you can bring photos back from iPods, etc, but just don't know about PSPs.

Sorry you lost your photos, hope you can get them back. Just don't give up on iPhoto -- it really is a great app! Learn to use it and you will like it too.