Have Your iPhoto Photos Disappeared?

What’s Causing This Problem:

It may not be known to you, but your iPhoto photo collection is more than just the iPhoto application stored in your Application folder.

All of your master photos, thumbnail and preview versions of your photos, and database records of how the iPhoto application handles all of your photos, are stored in a separate file (a folder really) that is in a completely different place on your hard drive from the main iPhoto application.

This separate file, called a “photo library” file, by default is stored inside of the pictures folder in your user folder.

Sometimes the database records become a little mixed up, and what the database shows as being correct doesn’t match what’s actually true with your master images stored with that database.

EXAMPLE:

A simple example of this might be that if you were to peek inside of your folder full of master images, you might find you have 1,000 photos. But, your database records might be off and only think you have 950. When you launch the iPhoto application, this could cause problems and prevent those last 50 photos from being shown to you.