UKC

I've been using Aperture for a few years and have amassed a ton of photos that have been backed up. It now appears that the back-up photos are only reference photos. Although I can view images in Aperture I can't edit, process or export anything. Its possible in my ignorance that the originals have been deleted. I thought that being able to see them in my library was proof that I have them.
Do I have any options?

In reply to Antigua:

Is it possible to do a search for every single JPEG, or similar image format, on all your storage media?

I'm guessing that Apeture is an apple product which means that I don't know how an apple OS can do this but with Windows 7, I can put .JPEG into the search box and I will be shown every single JPEG that can be found,if they exist on my hard drives. Is this an option that you could try?

In reply to The Lemming:
One of the 'benefits' of Apple is that everything remains hidden to the user hence the apparent ease with which I appear to have deleted/overwritten my original photo's.

Aperture stores all of its data or photos in a database which Apple calls a vault hence a straight search for photos by name yields nothing. I've tried connecting to all Vaults but they only appear to contain references.

In reply to Antigua:
They are in a database but its basically a structured file system that you can browse.
If you locate you library in finder (mine is called iphoto library and is in /home/<myid>/Pictures/)

Rather than double clicking on it right click and select show package contents, the file structure will be revealed.

Hope this helps.

In reply to Antigua:

That's scary. But then I've done stupid things with microsoft without realising my stupidity. Only recently I deleted gigabytes of data thinking it was backed up somewhere else only to find that I'd made a monumental bo-bo. Some back peddling helped me find most of my stuff.

I don't think any software or OS can counter user stupidity. I hope that you find your photos, either by hook or crook because I can guess the sickening feeling in your stomach right now.

There are quite a few apple experts on here that will help.

In reply to Antigua:

Missing references files:
If you click on a referenced picture that has a bad path (a little red curved arrow should be noted on the corner of the thumbnail and then right click and pick locate referenced files.

In the dialog at the top there will be the original path to the photos and you can then see if you have renamed something or even worse deleted it.

Non-referenced files
These should be in the package in a folder called masters - if you have been editing these documents within Finder and not within Aperture itself then you are likely in trouble.

If neither of these points fit I would rebuild the library and see what you get after that process. But DO THIS ON A COPY.

HTH

In reply to SouthernSteve:
P.S. I am finding Aperture quite buggy at present (Mac OSX 10.8.3 and Aperture 3.4.3) so the rebuild might be a better option.

P.P.S. The vault is a backup not an Archive, have you got any old ones backed up around the place (they are just another package and can be explored in the same way as a library)

In reply to SouthernSteve:
thanks everyone for the replies just to give an update. I've tried to re-link to the masters and Aperture has helpfully told me the name of the drive that they're on. Unfortunately I strongly suspect that its been wiped. I have some backup hard drives so am going to go through them over the next couple of days.

If worse comes to the worse can I rebuild my photo database via what Aperture is showing me now?
Thanks