Morten Y

Q: Edited photos in Photos App is missing after MacOS Sierra update

After updating to MacOS Sierra, all my edited versions of my photos is missing.

 

Updated to:

MacOS Sierra (10.12)

Photos App (Version 2.0 (445.1.15))

 

Story goes:

- Updated from El Capitan to Sierra.

- When updated, I started Photos App and updated the library (260gb).

- Took the Photos App tour while waiting.

- After updating all the thumbnails was missing, but the photos could be seen by clicking them.

- Photos App have now rebuild all the thumbnails, but the photos I have edited is still missing, and can't even be seen by clicking them (like the non-edited).

- The missing files are both .jpeg and Nikon raw (.nef) files.

 

missing.png

 

Have tried:

- Editing existing photos works

- Editing the missing (previous edited) photos, sometimes shows the missing photo, but it does not always make a new thumbnail.

 

Any suggestions of how to make Photos refresh edited photos?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013), macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Sep 23, 2016 3:41 AM

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Q: Edited photos in Photos App is missing after MacOS Sierra update

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  • Helpful answers

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 23, 2016 5:29 AM in response to Morten Y
    Level 10 (108,058 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 23, 2016 5:29 AM in response to Morten Y

    Have you been running any cleaning applications on your mac to remove duplicates or similar?  Some cleaning tools are not safe to use.

     

    How did you edit the photo in question? Has it been edited with Photos adjustments or did you use a photo editing extension?

    - Editing the missing (previous edited) photos, sometimes shows the missing photo, but it does not always make a new thumbnail.

    Have you tried to revert the photos with the missing thumbnails to the original version in the Edit panel? 

    And can the photos be exported from Photos or do you get an error message?

  • by Ben Bloks,

    Ben Bloks Ben Bloks Sep 23, 2016 10:06 AM in response to léonie
    Level 4 (2,302 points)
    Sep 23, 2016 10:06 AM in response to léonie

    Have a similar problem.

    In one of my Libraries about 5% of my Photo's don't show the thumbnail, but an exclamation mark. Clicking brings me to the Photo. Start editing without any change shows the thumbnail agian, however after closing down Photo's and re-open the thumbnail is still missing. Doing an edit on the Photo and save, then the thumbnail stays. Doing an edit and then undo, will still (after reboot) not show the thumbnail.

    Repairing the database didn't help. So I have to go to each efeected single file, make an edit and save to solve the problem.

    Helas I cann't figure out what happened with the specific Photos. Either edited by Photo's or extension. In anycase I cannot find any consistency. It happens with Photos already brought over from iPhoto in the past as well as newly imported in Photos before migrating to Sierra. Most Photo's (also already edited, are ok, some not)

    Have a second library with far less Photo's (and without Faces) no problems.

    Seems a bug to me.

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Sep 23, 2016 10:18 AM in response to Ben Bloks
    Level 10 (85,205 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Sep 23, 2016 10:18 AM in response to Ben Bloks

    Same questions need to be answered

     

    and you can try booting into the recovery volume and using Disk Utility to repair permissions

     

    About OS X Recovery - Apple Support

     

    LN

  • by Ben Bloks,

    Ben Bloks Ben Bloks Sep 23, 2016 10:48 AM in response to LarryHN
    Level 4 (2,302 points)
    Sep 23, 2016 10:48 AM in response to LarryHN

    LarryHN wrote:

     

    Same questions need to be answered

     

    Sorry Larry, I don't understand your remark. Am I missing something in the forum protocol ?

     

    and you can try booting into the recovery volume and using Disk Utility to repair permissions

     

    About OS X Recovery - Apple Support

     

    As from El Capitan there is no such thing as "repair permission". However I did a volume/disk repair in recovery mode to no avail.

     

    Thanks for taking the effort to help finding a solution. 

    Ben

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Sep 23, 2016 11:11 AM in response to Ben Bloks
    Level 10 (85,205 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Sep 23, 2016 11:11 AM in response to Ben Bloks

    Really simple English - you have the same issue so we need answers to the same questions ask of the last poster - not a difficult concept - when you answer them maybe we can help - maybe we will still need more info - until you provide details we can not even guess

     

    LN

  • by Ben Bloks,

    Ben Bloks Ben Bloks Sep 23, 2016 11:26 AM in response to LarryHN
    Level 4 (2,302 points)
    Sep 23, 2016 11:26 AM in response to LarryHN

    Ok Larry,

    My English is getting rusty I guess. I think I understand.

    In the mean time I "solved" my issue by simply re-edit every photo which had a "thumbnail" with exclamation mark and re-saving the edit. Took me about 30 minutes.

    I have really no clue what has happened. As mentioned I use two libraries. Both Libraries had pictures taken with the same camera's as well in RAW (two different camera's) as jpeg (same camera's and iPhone 5). In both libraries there have been made edits but also photo's not edited. Again one library is fine, the other had some problems (as well with edited as non edited photos), that I solved by the procedure I mentioned. (Was the most efficient one for me).

    Thanks again

    Ben

  • by Tom Ritch,

    Tom Ritch Tom Ritch Sep 23, 2016 5:10 PM in response to Morten Y
    Level 2 (206 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Sep 23, 2016 5:10 PM in response to Morten Y

    I have an issue which seems similar, but may have differences. 

     

    I am running Photos in El Capitan 10.11.6.  Photos on my Mac Pro, Mac Book Pro, iPhone and in iCloud were all synched, everything seemed OK.  No problems were apparent, but I ran Repair Library on Photos on my Mac Pro in case any Photos issues had been found and corrected as El Capitan matured.  After "repairing", the library automatically re-synched with iCloud.  After the synch, about 100 photos which had been added to the library last spring were missing their thumb images.  After another Repair the thumbs were still missing.  This is the part that looks like the problem reported by Morten Y.  The library which was in good shape lost the images for small fraction of its photos, and Repair does not restore the thumbs. 

     

    I tried the manual repair method suggested by Ben Bloks.  Opening the blank place-holder for editing leads to the image being displayed.  If the edit window is simply closed, or "adjusted" with Photos built-in tools, the image disappears when the edit window is closed.  If the image is edited with an extension and saved, the thumb is created and displayed; it seems the damage is repaired. 

     

    Taken all together, I think what we see is a bug in Photos in El Capitan, which remains in Photos in Sierra.  The bug is revealed by Repair in El Capitan, or Update from El Capitan to Sierra.  Once made revealed, the visible part of the bug is a small group of photos which loose their thumb images, and Repair Library does not restore the thumbs.  In El Capitan or Sierra, the damage can be manually corrected by editing each image and saving the edit, which leads to generation of the lost thumb image. 

     

    Morten Y, does editing and saving the edit restore your missing thumb images?

  • by Ben Bloks,

    Ben Bloks Ben Bloks Sep 24, 2016 12:54 AM in response to Tom Ritch
    Level 4 (2,302 points)
    Sep 24, 2016 12:54 AM in response to Tom Ritch

    Thanks Morton Y for this post.

    The remarkable difference with your and my experience is that if I use the "adjustments" with Photos built-in tools and save them, the thumbnails are generated as well.

     

    Time for a "feed-back" to Photos I guess.

     

    http://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 24, 2016 1:14 AM in response to Tom Ritch
    Level 10 (108,058 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 24, 2016 1:14 AM in response to Tom Ritch
    I tried the manual repair method suggested by Ben Bloks.  Opening the blank place-holder for editing leads to the image being displayed.  If the edit window is simply closed, or "adjusted" with Photos built-in tools, the image disappears when the edit window is closed.  If the image is edited with an extension and saved, the thumb is created and displayed; it seems the damage is repaired.

    Photos is creating new original master files and stores them in a different part of the library,  if you use a photo editing extension. This is necessary to save the image returned by the photo editing extension.  Your photos library may have lost track of some of the additional externally edited originals.

    Have you tried to duplicate one of the  problematic photos with "Image > Duplicate" and then revert the duplicate to the original version, before editing it? That will discard any additional master files created by the external editor for the duplicate and go back to the original you imported.  If the duplicate works well, delete the first version.

  • by Lotto Mac,

    Lotto Mac Lotto Mac Sep 25, 2016 9:22 AM in response to Morten Y
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 25, 2016 9:22 AM in response to Morten Y

    I performed a cleanup with CleanMyMac (MacPaw) after upgrading to Sierra. Since then, in Photos, any photo that was previously modified (cropping, etc.) had a triangle with an exclamation mark.


    Repairing/rebuilding photo database did not work. I contacted MacPaw tech support, and they came up with a solution!


    Select all photos that need new thumbnails at once - it does not matter if the selection includes photos that do not need repairing.

    Then rotate the selected photos back and forth by first pressing ⌘R (Image > Rotate Counterclockwise) and then back by ⇧⌘R (Image > Rotate Clockwise).


    All photos now back to normal.

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Sep 25, 2016 9:44 AM in response to Lotto Mac
    Level 10 (85,205 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Sep 25, 2016 9:44 AM in response to Lotto Mac

    Ok but you were lucky - CleanMyMac is Malwear and has totally destroyed many iPhoto and Photos libraries and can even make your Mac un-bootable - I strongly suggest you get rid of it now

     

    and you may still have a corrupted library that will bite you later - be sure to keep your backup from before you ran CleanMyMac - yo may very well still need it

     

    LN

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Sep 25, 2016 10:53 AM in response to Lotto Mac
    Level 10 (108,058 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 25, 2016 10:53 AM in response to Lotto Mac
    All photos now back to normal.

    They are probably working now and looking back to normal.

    But you will have lost image quality for your edited photos.  What CleanMyMac does is that it replaces the original image file of your edited images by the JPEG version of the edited photo and throws away the original file. That will save a lot of storage, but the edits are now burned in and you can no longer revert the edited photos to the original version. And the image quality has been reduced to the quality of the edited jPEG.

    I would restore the library from the last backup you made before you cleaned it to recover the full quality original image files.

  • by Tom Ritch,

    Tom Ritch Tom Ritch Sep 25, 2016 6:03 PM in response to léonie
    Level 2 (206 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Sep 25, 2016 6:03 PM in response to léonie

    Thanks, léonie.  Reverting to the originals helps.  However, I have found that there is more to this. 

     

    As described above in more detail, my System Library on my Mac, set to store originals of photos and videos, seemed OK.  Then about 100 thumbs went missing after running Repair Library and re-syncing, and Repair Library was not able to restore the thumbs. 

     

    A week ago, I unchecked "iCloud Photo Library" for this library.  A dialog appeared, warning "505 photos have not completed downloading.  If you turn off iCloud Photo Library these partial downloads will be deleted."  I thought these "incomplete downloads" might include the photos which did not have thumbs. Maybe if the incomplete downloads were deleted, when I turned iCloud Photo Library back on, good copies might be downloaded.  A strange part was that this library had always been set to "Download Originals To This Mac", and the photos missing thumbs were added to the library last spring.  That seemed plenty of time for "downloading" to complete, especially since this library had full sized versions in the first place, before they are uploaded to iCloud. 

     

    I proceeded to uncheck iCloud Photo Library.  The dialog again warned, I clicked OK.  Then I watched the library.  The count of photos dropped, but not by 505.  I continued watching.  After a few minutes the count dropped a few more, but still not enough.  The process of deleting the "incompletely downloaded" photos took over an hour, during which Photos provided no indication that the library was being modified.  What did indicate a process was running was Activity Monitor, which showed Photos taking about 100% cpu time.  (With multiple processor cores on my system, Activity Monitor can report up to 800% cpu time.  So "100% cpu" means a process is taking about 1/8, not all, of the available compute power.)  When Activity Monitor showed Photos cpu use dropped to near zero, I checked the photos count in the library, and waited a little longer to confirm it was stable.  I looked and found the photos which had been missing thumbs, were still missing thumbs.  The photos incompletely downloaded, which were now deleted, must have been others.

     

    At this point, in Preferences I checked iCloud Photo Library, so the library again was my System Library. on my Mac.  Photos automatically began to sync with iCloud.  That was about a week ago.  Yesterday the sync completed.  Counts of photos and videos agreed between Photos on my Mac, and Photos in Safari / iCloud.  I was also pleased to find that almost all the 100 or so photos which had lost thumbs, now had thumbs images.  Very good result, the way it is supposed to work. 

     

    Unfortunately, three photos and two videos still did not have thumbs.  One photo I edited with an extension, and saved the result.  The thumb was created and appeared.  Then léonie suggested simply reverting the edited photo.  I did this for the remaining two photos without thumbs, and the thumbs were drawn.

     

    All photos now have thumbs.  Two videos are still missing thumbs, the problem was to figure out why. 

     

    First I noticed that the two videos were only 1 second in length.  These were taken by mistake.  I thought I had deleted all like this, but here they are.  When I mouseover the video, the thumb appears.  With Get Info I inspect more closely.  "No camera information" and "No lens information", as expected for video.  What I did not expect was "23.98 fps".  These are all standard video shot on an Olympus OM-D E-M1 camera set for NTSC.  NTSC video should be 29.97 fps.  I looked at older video clips in my library.  Almost all are 29.97 fps, a few very near this value.  The two videos which do not have thumbs have fps of 23.98 and 23.98,, and length 0.01 minute.  I suspect problem s with the frame rate and thumb creation may be because the video is too short.  The solution is to delete the too-short videos. 

     

    Syncing with iCloud created issues, then syncing with iCloud cured the problems.  Kind of strange, but my library is now in good condition, I think.  The few problems not due to syncing issues I think were photo files poorly formed due to editing glitches, or videos which were too short to have proper structure.