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User profile for user: Sloop John B
Sloop John B Author
User level: Level 1
11 points

iPhoto '09 - Thumbnails visible but no photos! (exclamation mark)

Hi everyone,

I'm in a bit of pickle here and I hope someone can help me. I take photos pretty regularly. Nothing mind-blowing, but I use my iPhone to take pics of my dogs, my girlfriend, etc. I sync my phone pretty much everyday and I just realised today that I'm missing a bunch of photos that span over 4-5 months. The thumbnail for the album itself is BLANK, but when I go into the album all the thumbnails for the photos are still there. However, when I try to maximise the photo I get nothing but a big grey exclamation mark.

I have tried different things like 'Open in Finder' and expanding the iPhoto app to show the folders inside and then try to find the photos myself, but nothing seems to work. I have also tried rebuilding my library with no success. I checked my recent Time Machine save, but somehow the iPhoto backup shows the same events in my iPhoto having issues. I don't understand how this could have happened, because I upload and sync my iPhone so often that I should've noticed at one point over the last month that my photos were missing - I have trouble believing I could've missed these missing events over the last month every single time I synced. But my last save shows the same thing and I don't understand how this is possible. I'm stupid for not having backed up my photo collection another way, but I thought I was being pretty careful.

Is there a bug that can cause this? What else can I do to get my photos back? or am I simply S.O.L.? I have read about many horror stories about iPhoto 09 but nothing that covers my situation closely enough to help me.

Any help would be appreciated. I apologise if I wasn't clear or if I didn't give you enough details.

Thanks in advance for any help!

iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Oct 11, 2010 5:25 PM

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55 replies
User profile for user: Yer_Man
Yer_Man
User level: Level 10
162,260 points

Oct 11, 2010 10:55 PM in response to Sloop John B

Option 1
Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Rebuild iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup.

If that fails:

Option 2
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords, faces and places back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.

Regards

TD
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User profile for user: Sandra Hildreth
Sandra Hildreth
User level: Level 1
15 points

Oct 13, 2010 6:50 PM in response to Sloop John B

I have a similar problem. Just bought a new MacBook Pro and migrated all my files to it from my older MacBook Pro. Have been using it for a couple of days and just now opened iPhoto for the first time. I have over 24,000 photos in my library. All the thumbnails, albums, and slide shows are there. But when I double click a thumbnail, there is no large picture. Except for 2 photos someone else sent me a year ago and I had imported them into my iPhoto Library. They both happen to be TIFF format and they open. None of my other photos open - photos in jpeg or Photoshop formats. I called AppleCare and they had me rebuild the thumbnails (they had me click the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th options). No change. I still have everything on the HD of my old computer and on a Time Machine back up. What should I do?
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User profile for user: LarryHN
LarryHN
User level: Level 10
106,110 points

Oct 13, 2010 7:06 PM in response to Sandra Hildreth

I have a similar problem. Just bought a new MacBook Pro and migrated all my files to it from my older MacBook Pro. Have been using it for a couple of days and just now opened iPhoto for the first time. I have over 24,000 photos in my library. All the thumbnails, albums, and slide shows are there. But when I double click a thumbnail, there is no large picture. Except for 2 photos someone else sent me a year ago and I had imported them into my iPhoto Library. They both happen to be TIFF format and they open. None of my other photos open - photos in jpeg or Photoshop formats. I called AppleCare and they had me rebuild the thumbnails (they had me click the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th options). No change. I still have everything on the HD of my old computer and on a Time Machine back up. What should I do?


Migration assistance does not handle the iPhoto library well sometimes - the best way is to drag the bad iphoto library from the pictures folder on the new system to the desktop, connect the two systems together (network, firewire target mode, etc) and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity from the old system to the pictures folder of the new system and launch iPhoto on the new system - it will open and convert the iPhoto library as necessary and you will be fine - once you test the iPhoto library you can delete the one on the desktop

LN
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User profile for user: ethel corn
ethel corn
User level: Level 1
12 points

Oct 16, 2010 2:14 PM in response to Sloop John B

I'm having a similar problem too. I rebuilt my library but that didn't help. 99% of my photos are backed up so I've tried starting over by deleting iPhoto and associated preference files (as recommended but probably a mistake) then reinstalling iPhoto but it will not recognize the backup photos now. No photos are recognized by iPhoto for that matter even though they show up in preview etc. I have tried reverting back to iPhoto 6 but that has made things worse and now iTunes doesn't list songs in its library even though it will play them and after reinstalling Snow Leopard 2x Quicktime has stopped now stopped working as well.

I have even scanned my Hard Drive with Drive Genius and Disk Utility but no problems have been found there. According to iPhoto Library manager sometimes "iPhoto's import Applescript command stops working correctly"... this seems like it might be related to my problem but i can't confirm it. I just can't express how frustrating this is and I need help!
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User profile for user: Yer_Man
Yer_Man
User level: Level 10
162,260 points

Oct 16, 2010 2:43 PM in response to ethel corn

Rebuilding your Library with iPhoto Library Manager would have solved the issue in 99% of cases but I'm afraid after

deleting iPhoto and associated preference files... then reinstalling iPhoto


and

reverting back to iPhoto 6


that you've pretty much made any recovery of the Library out of the question.

So, your way forward is to create a new Library and start over from scratch.

Regards

TD
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User profile for user: aliris19
aliris19
User level: Level 1
0 points

Oct 20, 2010 11:00 PM in response to Yer_Man

I have what I thought was a similar problem, only now I'm not so sure. It seems instead to be linked to the faces feature.

I recently migrated from a macbook to a macbook pro. However my 30K pictures are contained not on the computer but on a separate external HD. I plugged the HD into the new iphoto '09 and get all the thumbnails. However when I click on one the screen goes dark: no photo. I read this thread but before rebuilding anything, since the photos wouldn't have really been affected by migration assistant, I don't think, I decided to just quit iphoto and see if things fixed themselves this way. When I reopened iphoto indeed the pictures do load at first, but then after faces starts scanning it stops bringing up any photos.

So.... it takes a very long time to scan 30K faces but when it finally does, I get instructions to click on a photo, then on faces and start identifying photos. I can't get that far because, again, when I click on a photo the faces feature does highlight, only I can't see the photo.

¿ Does it really make sense to rebuild the library under these circumstances? I don't see how it can have been affected by the migration.

¿ Any ideas how to get faces to stop disabling access to the full photos, if that's what's happening?

Many, many thanks for your thoughts....

p.s. The old library was set up for iphoto '07 (or whatever came before iphoto '09) and upon trying to open up in iphoto '09 I was prompted to tweak the library for the new software ... I wonder if that could have resulted in a need to rebuild?

TIA!!
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User profile for user: queenstoni
queenstoni
User level: Level 1
0 points

Nov 11, 2010 12:46 AM in response to Sloop John B

HELLO ALL. SO HAS ANYONE YET FIGURED OUT THE EITHER GREY EXCLAMATION POINT OR BLACK SCREEN PROBLEM ON AN iMac WHEN TRYING TO OPEN A PHOTO (iPhoto 9, SNOW LEOPARD) TO EDIT SIZE? I SWEAR I AM GOING NUTS TRYING TO FIGURE THIS OUT AND HAVE EXHAUSTED ALL SUGGESTIONS, ESPECIALLY BY U DEAR TERENCE! I CALLED APPLE TODAY AND WHEN I GOT TO MY QUESTION...GET THIS..."KEITH" HUNG UP ON ME AND NEVER CALLED BACK!! BUT THEY WERE SURE TO FIRST ASK ME FOR MY AMEX INFO. NOT KNOWING WHAT ELSE TO DO, I ARRANGED A GENIUS APPOINTMENT FOR TOMORROW. 8-(
ALSO, WOULDNT IT SEEM OBVIOUS THAT THERE WOULD BE A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO LOCATING DUPLICATE PHOTOS INSTEAD OF HAVING TO SUFFER THROUGH 12,000 PHOTOS!
ANY HELP VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!!
NYTONI
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iPhoto '09 - Thumbnails visible but no photos! (exclamation mark)

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