I'm praying that someone can help me. I have about a 60GB library that hold approaximately 22,000 images. I run my programs including Aperture on the OSX Drive which is an 128GB SSD and I store the photos on a separate internal 750GB 7200 drive. I believe this means it's a “referenced library”
The problem recentlty is that about 12,000 masters appear to be missing. In the browser view in Aperture I get the little yellow triangle and arched arrow with the exclamation point inside. Most of the missing master appear to be from 2009 and earlier but I do have some masters from they period 2000-2010. I discovered this when I was trying to delete duplicates using duplicate annihilator.
If I click on the “show package contents” of the library folder and go to the master folder the only years that are showing is 2011, 2012 and 2013. Nothing from all prior years despite the fact that I can see the preview, high quality in almost full screen in Aperture.
WHAT I DID NOTICE is that if I look at photos from 2010 in Aperture that HAVE the master available, the bottom bar of the photo when I click on it says “From MobileMe”. If I click on one with the master missing (the little yellow triangle) it says “iPhoto Original”.
All I know is that I want my masters back. They are almosty ALL photos of of my kids.Can anyone help? I've tried all rebuild/repair options in iPhoto and Aperture. I'm almost certain I didn't delete the masters. I don;t have a time machine backup. I did have another backup of the library from 8-31-12 but when I go to that, I have the same issue, tons of missing masters even in the backup.
Even crazy—I'm able to go back to December of 2003 and I find SOME photos from them that have masters. When I click on those and click reveal in finder I find the path as masters/2013/02/24. TODAY“S DATE! I'm pulling my hair out.
I'm worried that I am totally screwed and I'm heartbroken. I can still see the photos which is what I don;t get. I guess in the worst case I can go through and do shift-cmd-4 and take screen captures of any critical photos as a means of creating a new jpeg.
I'm wondering if someone can help me. Is there some way to batch reproduce the masters from the data that I do have? It's not just a thumbnail—it's a high quality image. Have I some how created versions and deleted orginals? Can someone–anyone help me?
DBM—I missed your response. Thanks for chiming in. Long story short–I found most if not all of the Masters. It appears that the file size was reflecting the Preview File size. When I extracted them using the iPhoto Library Manager almost all of the files with missing masters came out much larger files size with higher resolution. This makes sense only because the size of the Aperture Library was still about 90GB as if no masters were missing. If half of the masters were indeed gone and replaced with previews the LIbrary size would’ve been about 50% of this. Anyway–now I am trying to deal with removing duplicates and keeping only the highest resolution version. I started a new thread on this challenge. Thanks again DMB.
I imported a photo set today from a D800 SD card including a 1 minute HD movie (.MOV) file. It imported OK. It played OK. I tried to export the original and Aperture lost it. It is just gone! I did a find in a Terminal window and the Preview version is all that can be found on disk. I opened the Preview file from a Terminal window (open <filename>) and QuickTime opened it, but it played only a black screen. The Aperture Library still shows a thumbnail for the movie, but it now shows a yellow triangle icon with an exclamation point in it indicating the original is missing. I tried to repair and to rebuild the Library. Nada.
I an confident this is a bug in Aperture. I’m going to open a bug report with Apple.
Aperture 3.4.3
OS X 10.8.3
Retina MBP
Photographer | https://www.walterrowe.com | https://instagram.com/walter.rowe.photo
Hi Miles
Thats a long post but full of information, thanks. To start this conversation off for others to join and myself let me ask basic questions. Did you try the File…Locate Referenced files for those images that are fr Dec 2003 and seem to be in the reference HD under 2013/02/24? I guess I would do a smart Album for file status missing and get all the missing images together[highlight all} and then start reconnecting them with Locate Referenced. Sometimes if aperture can be told where some missing images are it will find the others. Aperture may have stored you images as the date they were last modified. My reference lib is not perfect either but as long as Ap can find them I guess I don’t care. Hopefully you will find them all Let us know
dbm
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ