Photo Retrieval Help Needed ASAP!

<p>I have a huge problem! I shot a wedding recently and downloaded all my cards to my PC, then backed them up on my external hard drive for safety, then I erased them from the CF cards because I had multiple shoots the same week. I've since purchased a iMAC and want to edit these photos that were on my PC on the new iMAC. So I made a CD of all the RAW files from the wedding and downloaded them onto my MAC. The problem is that all the photos show up on my desktop in a folder and when I open them the photo shows up but it says the file is LOCKED so i can't edit it. I can unlock the photos and/or make duplicates but none of them appear in my iPhoto section(where I'm doing all my editing, color corrections, etc). To make matters worse, my PC has something seriously wrong with it and whenever I open this wedding file in my old editing software program(adobe bridge and digital photo pro) it immediately crashes, thus I have about 1500 files that I can't edit right now. Do you know how I can get these photos imported into iPhoto instead of just on my desktop?</p>

<p>Any help would be appreciated greatly. I need to get this wedding edited ASAP for my client and I've tried everything I know how to get these photos transferred into my iPhoto to edit.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance!<br>

Michael</p>

<p>Have you tried them on another PC? That won't help, of course, if the files were corrupted by the PC from which you wrote the CD.</p>

<p>Is it possible that you can recover the photos from your CF card(if you did not do a Reformat) then download them to your iMac from there ? If I remember correctly, I ran into several problems trying to read files from a PC with a Mcintosh computer about 3 years ago.</p>

<p>I'm at work, so I don't have the link handy-Cardrecovery.com or something to that effect- it was posted to my query re: cards that could not be read on another forum. Using this service, I've been able to recover raw files intact, even on cards that were recently formatted but not overwritten. </p>

<p>Mukul - I haven't tried another pc because I only own 1. The files downloaded fine onto my mac without issue, I just can't get them into the iPhoto program to edit them.</p>

<p>Harry - Is that possible? If so, how do you recover photos you've already deleted from a card? I've never had to do that before but that would make life much easier as I could just edit them straight away on the mac. I always erase the files from the CF card as soon as they are downloaded onto the computer but I havent ever specifically reformatted the CF cards. Since this wedding I've shot about 4 sessions on these cards and then deleted those as well(although those were transferred directly to my MAC, thus no problems)</p>

<p>try this<br>

on your Mac,<br>

- select the folder (the one you made from the CD)<br>

- make a Command + I (Get Info).. a small window will appear<br>

- on the Ownership & Permissions section (at bottom), change all the access to READ & WRITE<br>

- click "Apply to enclosed items"</p>

<p>good luck</p>

<p>I do not have a Mac, but I have had similar problems with files on a PC.</p>

<p>I suspect that when you made your CD the READ ONLY attribute on the file on the CD was set. This is logical; CDs are READ ONLY. When you copied the files to the Mac, the READ ONLY attribute remained.</p>

<p>I know how to reset the attributes on a PC, but not on a Mac. If you do not know how, maybe one of the Mac users on this forum could help. If not, a quick trip to a Mac store would be in order.</p>

<p>Regarding recovery of the files from a CF you've already "erased," you can use any number of software packages out there to do so. When you erase a card, I believe you're only erasing the directory, not the actual files (unless you use a utility that cleans the card completely. The images are available on the card -- even after it's been erased -- until you capture more images that take the place of the original on the card.</p>

<p>If you've used the cards again there's a good chance that you've overwritten the original images and --barring another method that another Photo.net'er might suggest -- they are gone. Both SanDisk and ParetoLogic (among others, I'm sure) make data recovery utilities that work; I've used them both successfully.</p>

<p>The files being locked and the files not showing up are two different issues. On the latest Mac OS, they have implemented a versioning system, where the OS locks files after a certain amount of time. You can easily unlock them and make duplicates. This is normal for all files now, you can look at Textedit as an example, there is no 'save as' menu option any more.</p>

<p>But your iPhoto problem is different. Can you please explain what you mean by not showing up in your 'iPhoto section'. What is a section? Sounds like you just need to import them into iPhoto using File->Import to Library</p>

<p>This may have been suggested: when you write image files to a CD and then back to a hard drive they are transfered back as Read Only. On a PC you can go into properties and remove the Read Only lock--It sound like you may have tried this on the Mac (I have no Mac experience).<br>

There are a lot of things that I would try before trying to recover files from a media card that had been written too since the files were originally written. You have the files on a CD so there has got to be a better way. It's not like you have truly lost the files--just frustrated getting them where they need to be. <br>

I would make a suggestion that you transfer the files to a jump drive to even back to a media card, just a file transfer rather than going throuh a software probram and then download them to the Mac to eleminate the Read Only designation created by CDs.</p>

Since you Mac is new, you have AppleCare Support for one year.

 

Contact AppleCare and they will tell you how to unlock the files.

<p>iPhoto will import locked files no problem. I just tested it and it's fine. So the fact they are locked will not stop iPhoto from using them. You need to import them with File->Import to Library, that's all.</p>