I have the same picture displaying on all 3000 photos in iphoto. The original pic can be found by clicking on a photo and it is under the identical one over the 3000.

Have you rebuilt the library following instructions on IPHOTO SUPPORT Page

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2638

Your reply also assumed that everyone has the same size system in re to memory, processors, disc drive.

No it didn't. I believe that I said:

The amount of disk space used by iPhoto makes no difference unless your disk is over full.

And that is true. Any recent Mac - last 5 years say - is more than capable of running an iPhoto Library with the stock Ram. Again, you miss my point. DVD has no future, it's going the way of the floppy disk and the zip drive. There is a single Mac model currently available with an optical drive built in. Other manufacturers are dropping them as well. In 10 years, assuming the disks survive (and there's very little guarantee of that) it will be as easy to read a DVD on a computer as it is to read a floppy disk now.

A scanned picture is a digital picture. I've no idea what you mean by

IPHOTO edit may work for digital pictures - but not for older scanned pictures.

Give this a go:

Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library

1 - download iPhoto Library Manager (iPhoto 8 or earlier or IPhoto 11 and later) and launch.

2 - click on the Add Library button and select the library you want to add in the selection window..

3 - Now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the

File ➙ Rebuild Library (iPhoto 8 or earlier)

or

Library ➙ Rebuild Library (iPhoto 9 or later)

menu option to rebuild the library.

4 - In the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed.

5 - Click on the Create button.

Note: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments. However, books, calendars, cards and slideshows will be lost. The original library will be left untouched for further attempts at fixing the problem or in case the rebuilt library is not satisfactory.

TThe problem has not been solved.

I was afraid that might be the case. It is hard to suggest anything to do but the "repair/rebuild", because you cannot give us precise information on what you have done. We cannot see your Mac and have to rely on what you are telling us. Otherwise anything we suggest might make matters worse.

And the disconcerting thing is, that the problem keeps coming back, after you repair your library. Some software you are running routinely must be causing this. Are you really sure, that you are not running any cleaning apps, like MacKeeper, CleanMyMac2, Gemini?