When importing photos from my iPhone black boxes appear in place of random photos in the library and in Photostream.

I am having this issue as well. Random photos in my my Photo Stream are blanked out and show up as black images in iPhoto. When I double-click them, I am shown a big exclamation point/triangle icon that says unsupported image format (see screenshot below). Troubling, considering the photo was taken on an iPhone, went through Apple's Photo Stream service, and now unable to be viewed with iPhoto, an application that Apple makes.

I also have random photos that appear to have been improperly filtered (see screenshot below). Trust me, that is not a photo of the latest Christmas sweater I saw at Barney's New York.

This is in iPhoto 9.4.2 on OS X 10.7.5 on a MacPro 1,1 with the Radeon 5770 video card.

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

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 Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.

If that fails:

Option 2

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In Library Manager it's the FIle -> Rebuild command)

This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, 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

I performed Option 1 and it repaired a lot of the missing/corrupted thumbnails.

I still have a few thumbnails that, when clicked, still display the unsupported format icon. Most of these are photos taken on my iPhone 5 that I am viewing in the Photo Stream in iPhoto or Aperture.

Thanks for your help.

Which is this "unsupported format" icon? Do you mean the ! - as I said above, that mena iPhoto has lost the link to the actual file and has nothing to do with format. Move on to option 2.