iPhoto 5.0.4 update = photo albums disappeared

[Paddy2005]

I work exclusively with Photoshop CS for editing of my photos alhtough the albums I have created all reside in iPhoto. This morning i tried opening a photo directly from Spotlight and the iPhoto program launched and prompted me to update to the new version which I did. When I tried opening the photo again nothing happened - the circular cursor wizzes around eternally (at least 30 minutes the last time before I aborted the operation)

When I open PS CS I cannot see any of the albums I had created - they have simply vanished from sight. I searched on Spotlight and now it comes up empty each time.

If necessary I will have to back up all the photos from my laptop - but I am intrigued to know what could have happened and how to avoid this in the future.
I am running a G5 with Tiger and repaired all disk permissions etc but to no avail. I also launched iPhoto pressing down on Command & Option to repair / reinstate albums, libraries etc and that didn't work either.

Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[untamedhysteria]

it could be a permission error, a bug maybe with symbolic links, which disk utility didn't pick up on. try manually going to where the photo's are stored...and them add them directly to your apps that way again...or go to the directory where they are at and use chmod from terminal to set them to read and write.

if they aren't there, then it was a bug from the update, which i haven't heard of before with iphoto...if it is, backup seems the only thing you could use to get them back.

and as a warning, when doing updates, always be sure that you have recent backups of apps and data, as updates can always lead into disaster, not usually, but it can

 

[Paddy2005]

Thanks alot for the advice and taking the time to respond. Unfortunately your suggestion didn't work either. I am in the process of preparing back up from my laptop. Thanks again and your advice regarding ensuring updated apps are installed is one worth remembering!