After new iphoto upgrade 9.3 under Lion - photos distorted

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bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

After new iphoto upgrade 9.3 under Lion - photos distorted

I can barely express how enraged I get at Apple's incompetence sometimes. This is one of them.

I entrusted my photos to iPhoto, most of them taken with my iPhone.

When I got back to view photos I have not seen for a while I find some percentage of them either

1. Gone, and I get a black screen saying the photo cannot be found, even though the thumbnail was there.

2. Randomly rotated. Some photos are taken rotated and I rotate them to the correct aspect when I upload them to my computer. I go back at some point and these photos are rotated. I rotate them back, and then go back and forth and they get rotated again.

3. The latest one is the aspect ratio of the photo is distorted, like looking through a funhouse mirror ... usually way stretched out horzontally.

Does anyone else have these kinds of problems? The missing and rotated pictures I have always seen a few of, but the distortion is new - immediately after the last upgrade of a day or two ago.

I am pretty sure I am not doing anything wrong but this is really bugging me that I cannot trust Apple with my data, especially photos.

What could explain this ?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 27" and 24"

Posted on Jun 14, 2012 12:12 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,260 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:19 AM in response to bruxxx

Gone, and I get a black screen saying the photo cannot be found, even though the thumbnail was there.

Can you give us the exact error message for this?

Most everything else seems to describe a corrupted database.

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Answer 2

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:27 AM in response to Yer_Man

I am getting no error message,

what i just did was go into an iphoto event and click on some pictures at random.

one of them had the horizontal distortion I was just talking about, then I clicked

it back and in again, and instead of the distortion I got rotation?

how on earth can this happen?

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,260 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:29 AM in response to bruxxx

and I get a black screen saying the photo cannot be found

What's that?

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Answer 4

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:30 AM in response to Yer_Man

then another file where i clearly see the thumbnail, i click on it,

and i get the black screen with the triangle and the exclamation point?

can you please tell me this can be fixed and how ?

also, quite often I get this same triangle/exclamation point with movie files

that get imported along with the photos from the iphone or my other camera

earlier. the data just seems gone?

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Answer 5

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:30 AM in response to Yer_Man

sorry ... it does not explicitly say the photo cannot be found, i just get the triangle/exclamation point.

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Answer 6

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:32 AM in response to Yer_Man

the pattern is click - horizontal stretch, try again, clockwise rotation ...

and all my video files seem to have gotten the triangle/exclamation point.

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Answer 7

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:35 AM in response to Yer_Man

horizontal stretch - cloackwise rotation - and then it is stuck rotated clockwise, but is "seems" to have the right aspect ratio ... hard to tell looking at images sideways.

i appreciate your responses ... can you help me ?

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Answer 8

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:39 AM in response to Yer_Man

One thing I tried to do what to start iPhoto by clicking in Safari add image to iPhoto ... it seems to get stuck, but I had used it earlier to upload photos from my iPhone today.

Opening iPhoto by trying to add photos from say Safari or from File Manager always seems to work OK from my new iMac27", but it behaves differently, ie. broken when I do the same thing from my iMac24" ????

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Answer 9

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,260 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:40 AM in response to bruxxx

The ! turns up when iPhoto loses the connection between the thumbnail in the iPhoto Window and the file it represents.

As you've already tried rebuilding with iPhoto...

Surefire fix: Restore from backup - you do have one, right?

Failing that:

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 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.

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Answer 10

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:46 AM in response to Yer_Man

I do have a backup, yesterday at 11pm, but what do I restore?

In time machine does it have to backup the whole libary or can it incrementally backup ...

I am not sure what to restore where?

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Answer 11

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:48 AM in response to Yer_Man

By the way ... can I try a rebuild once more ... that is start iPhoto with the command-option keys pressed? Is that worth a try?

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Answer 12

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 12:58 AM in response to Yer_Man

Well, I tried the rebuild again, it completed right away and changed nothing.

Guess I will try the iPhoto manager since I have loaded several sets of new photos since my last backup at 11pm last night.

I never used the slideshows, books or calendars ... never heard of such things ;-)

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Answer 13

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 2:39 AM in response to Yer_Man

I tried to use the iPhoto Manager and it failed with the following message:

Apple event timed out ('core'/'getd' (returnID 1) { ---- = object specifier: {objectClass = 'ipal'; keyForm = 'indx'; keyData = 'abso'($73726966$); container = (null)}})

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Answer 14

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,260 points

Jun 14, 2012 3:09 AM in response to bruxxx

As this rebuild didn't work your option now is to recover any photos you added since your last back.

Restore

Import the recovered images.

To recover the images: Go to your Pictures Folder and find the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.

Look there for a Folder called 'Originals' or 'Masters'.

The images are stored in folders arranged by date on import.

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Answer 15

bruxxx Author

Level 1

45 points

Jun 14, 2012 1:18 PM in response to Yer_Man

Terence, thank you for you information and suggestions.

Guess I'll have to do my best, but this sticks in my craw as far as my formerly great feeling about my several Apple products.

iMac 24"

iMac 27"

Macbook Pro 13"

MacMini

Airport Extreme

iPod

iPad

iPhone

Having to do this because of a bug in the upgrade software of Apple is something I should not have to do.

Now I am stuck, and the quality of this stuff, and the continuing quality is a big if for me.

Thanks for pointing out the iPhoto Manager ... I am just not sure how to prevent having to do tons of work I should not have to do in the future becuase of bugs I have no control over, and this random rotation thing I've seen a lot before. But apparently if I vent too much my post will get deleted even though I consider that Apple has no real other way to understand the imporance and urgency of this to their customers.

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