Mac iPhoto Help Needed

[Matt-P]

I've had a panicked call from my brother for help as he fears having lost 7 years of family photos.

It seems he had an old imac running snow leopard and kept all his pictures on it using iphoto. He then got a macbook running mountain lion and tried to open the iphoto pictures from the macbook by opening the library over his home network.

He could see the photos fine, but when he tried to open them again on the imac it said they could no longer be read.

I'm guessing the newer version somehow updated the library - can anyone shed any light on what's happened and how to correct it so he can view them again on the older imac? He says he can still see them if he navigates to them through the network using the macbook .

Thanks in advance.

 

[MarcM]

I'm guessing the newer version somehow updated the library - can anyone shed any light on what's happened and how to correct it so he can view them again on the older imac? He says he can still see them if he navigates to them through the network using the macbook .

Thanks in advance.

That's exactly what's happened by the sounds of it.

It's just one of the ways Apple keeps you firmly on the upgrade treadmill!

As far as I know, there is no going back once the library has been updated. The only option is to carry on using it on the MacBook, or update the iMac to a later OSX version.

Alternatively, you could export the photos using the MacBook.

Backups???

Hope this helps.

 

[Matt-P]

Thanks for the thoughts - I'll check whether he had time machined his imac, but I think youre right, migrating to the macbook might be the best way forwards.

Thanks for the thoughts

 

[Kasalic]

Yup - when he opened up the library on the new laptop it would have told him he needed to update the library. At that point the library would not run on the old iPhoto on the iMac.

Reverting to backups is one option, another would be to export all photos to an external drive and import them into a new iPhoto library on the iMac,

 

[Matt-P]

Thanks both for your help - he's migrated the whole library to the Macbook now, and started doing proper backups!