Hi, I recently upgraded my parents' iMac from Snow Leopard to Lion. It didn't occur to me to back up their photo library before the update, and it now appears that their photos in iPhoto are gone. According to my mom, when she tried to open iPhoto after the upgrade, she received a message that indicated she had no library, or something to that effect. Their current version of iPhoto is '09 v 8.1.2 on Mac OSX 10.7.5. I opened the package contents to see if there was a master file directory for the originals and none could be found. My concern is that the OSX update, and presumably, subsequent iPhoto update resulted in a fresh install replacing the old directory. All other files that were previously on their computer are still there.

Mac os x installer download. Foldable code blocks, CSS-like selectors, which can help you pinpoint the scope of actions and settings, column selection and typing and the possibility of recording macros are just a few examples.

Only the photos are appear to be missing. Does anyone have any insight into this issue, and hopefully, a solution to possibly recover any photos?

Apple added a Faces feature to iPhoto years ago, and frustrated many Mac owners to pieces by weakly implementing it in Photos, and failing to import recognized faces for some users (including me. I did not use iPhoto on my iMac but my wife used it on her's. And when I imported the iPhoto library on her iMac (after using Aperture to make all the photos referenced as I did not want them all uploaded to iCloud Library), all the 'iPhoto Events' were brought over.

Thanks in advance! Hi, the photos are stored in an 'iPhoto Library', whose default location is the 'Pictures' folder. Check there, and if you find that iPhoto Library, double click on it, this will open iPhoto and make this Library the default one. What 'package' did you open? The iPhoto application itself does not contain any picture: the pictures are in the iPhoto Library. BTW: there is no reason that upgrading the OS could delete an iPhoto Library. However, as always: 'before upgrading, backup your data.'

Click to expand.Thanks for the quick reply! By package, I meant the iPhoto Library found in the '[user]/pictures' folder. It shows as an iPhoto Library icon (not folder), and so I have to right-click and 'show package contents' in order to access -- sorry for the confusion. No images or master pictures folder can be found there.

It appears that the old iPhoto Library was replaced by the current, fresh iPhoto Library which has no photos at all, effectively deleting the old one. Doing a blanket system Spotlight search for anything '.jpg' produces nothing other than application jpegs and other pics found in separate folders on the computer. I posted this thread primarily to find out if anyone else has come across this issue. I imagine any chance of recovery might be lost, but perhaps, it might be possible with data recovery software? Would data recovery even work in this context? Never heard of an iPhoto Library being wiped out from an upgrade. If there was no backups being done your chances of recovering the lost photos is very slim.

First thing is to quit using the computer so it quits writing to the HDD. Then you would have to look into data recovery software.

I can not help there as I am not familiar with that kind of software. Gmail default mail client mac. Not to sound harsh, but there is a lesson to be learned here. That being, backup, backup, backup. I can not say it enough.

External drives are dirt cheap, but so worth every dime you will spend for one. Also a lot less frustration when this type of thing happens.