Photos in shared album are missing parts of the image

Question

Level 1

16 points

Photos in shared album are missing parts of the image

Hello,

I discovered a strange bug when using photos in a shared album:

Some photos are incomplete, i.e. the bottom part of the photos is missing and just displays as white area. The size of this varies, sometimes it's just a small bar, in other cases literally 80% of the image are just white.

I assume that there is some problem during the size reduction before uploading as the photos show up incomplete in all places:

The local view of the shared album
In the shared album on my iPhone
Others invited to the shared album
as well as on the web gallery

Has anyone experienced the same behaviour and/or knows how to fix this?

Best Regards

Posted on Jan 6, 2016 3:26 AM

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Answer 1

judysings

Community Specialist

Jan 7, 2016 12:19 PM in response to kuetsch

Howdy kuetsch,

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities.

I understand from your post that a shared album from another person has photos that aren't loading completely. Since you're seeing this with multiple devices and users, then I suggest you get in contact with the person who created the album so they can recreate it. Another possibility is that the photos themselves may be incomplete. To get started you can refer the creator of the shared album to the information below to repair their Photos library.

Important: You should back up your photo library before repairing your library.

If Photos is open, choose Photos > Quit Photos.

Press Option-Command and double-click the Photos icon in the Applications folder (or click the Photos icon in the Dock).

The Repair Library window opens.

Click Repair to rebuild your photo library.

Photos for OS X: Repair your library

Cheers.

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Answer 2

kuetsch Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 8, 2016 3:32 AM in response to judysings

thanks for your reply and sorry if i was not clear in my question.

The problem occurs when i am sharing my photos. As soon as i create a shared album and add photos, some of them are half white. I assume that the resizing causes this, as they are reaized for shared albums and severals others here have also posted the same problem when exporting photos.

This is not only a glitch in the ui, as the shared photos have the same flaw regardless of how they are viewed, eg online web album, shared album on my library that exported it, shared library on someone elses device...

br

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Jan 8, 2016 5:46 AM in response to kuetsch

Are the original master image files of the photos that cannot be shared still o.k.? If the original is corrupted, the shared photo will also show a corruption. If you export the original image file of one of the photos that cannot be shared to your Desktop and open it in Preview, is the image o.k. or also corrupted?

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Answer 4

kuetsch Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 8, 2016 8:19 AM in response to léonie

Yes, the masters are still fine and I also managed to do an original-size export of the same album to disk. However I saw several questions posted here recently that struggled with the same problems on exported images. I think I also observed the same issue with exporting photos, but I'm not sure as I noticed afterwards that I tried to export the photos to disk from the shared album instead of the original album, which may have led to the error being propagated. (I noticed that it takes the size-reduced versions instead of the originals, as the export was a lot smaller).

Also it's not particular photos causing problems but some random photos being affected if I retry the whole thing.

Best regards

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Jan 8, 2016 8:26 AM in response to kuetsch

It is a good sign, that you could export the originals.

Try the following:

Select one of the exported files, make sure, you can open it in Preview and enlarge it.
Then delete this photo from the Photos Library - and from the Recently Deleted album, now reimport your exported photo.
Try to share the newly imported photo to a new shared album.

This should test, if there is problem with the Photos library and the versions of the image in the library.

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Answer 6

kuetsch Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 8, 2016 8:32 AM in response to léonie

Thanks, I will try sth like this. I think I'll first have a look if it's a general export problem and has nothing to do in particular with the sharing function.

If so, the easiest way is to create a temp user account and try it there. This way I have a fresh library set up and cannot mess up my existing one.

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Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Jan 8, 2016 8:37 AM in response to kuetsch

That's a good plan.

If you find it is not a general, system wide problem, test with a different library in your regular user account as well.

And with different photos.

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Answer 8

kuetsch Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 8, 2016 9:01 AM in response to léonie

Update:

It's definitely an export problem and only occurs with a small number of images (0,5%-1% of them). If I retry the export for the failed pictures it works, so it should not be related to the image itself. Photos itself does report that everything got exported properly and the Console messages do not indicate that anything went wrong.

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Answer 9

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Jan 8, 2016 9:09 AM in response to kuetsch

If I retry the export for the failed pictures it works, so it should not be related to the image itself.

It may be related to the database entries for the photos you tried to export, or to the color profile you are using when exporting edited versions. Some glitch with your system drive could explain random results.

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Answer 10

kuetsch Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 8, 2016 9:15 AM in response to léonie

We'll see, but I strongly doubt that as I've seen several complaints posted within the last days, e.g.:

Photos App Export Bug

Exporting Photos - Partial Image

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Answer 11

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Jan 8, 2016 9:56 AM in response to kuetsch

In both discussions the export of edited versions is failing.

And that can happen, if the internal databases are corrupted - if the edited versions cannot be read correctly from the Photos Library.

If it is a system wide problem, there might be incompatible software installed, that added problematic kernel extensions.

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Answer 12

kuetsch Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 8, 2016 10:14 AM in response to léonie

Sure, but then I'd expect the same photos failing to export.

Anyway, to rule out any other causes I'm going to try it with a fresh user on another machine. If it's still reproducible this will most likely be a bug.

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Answer 13

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Jan 8, 2016 10:29 AM in response to kuetsch

If it's still reproducible this will most likely be a bug.

It might be a bug or incompatible software installed. Or a bug only occurring on specific architectures.

Which version of MacOS X do you have, and which Mac?

I am currently sitting at MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), with a 1TB SSD drive, with MacOS X 10.11.2 and tested all kinds of exporting from my Photos Library, and it is working without problems. The same on my iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X El Capitan 10.11.2 and my 17" MacBook Pros. If it is a system wide bug, it will probably happen on specific architectures or system versions, or with specific graphic cards.

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Answer 14

kuetsch Author

Level 1

16 points

Jan 10, 2016 4:45 AM in response to léonie

Hi again,

I made a few tests now and these are the results:

Exporting my photos on another mac synced with the same iCloud Photo Library has this problem as well. Again it's not about specific photos but randomly occurs to some of the photos.
Exporting the photos from a fresh Photos library (made a new user account and imported the photos there) seems to have no such problem.

So, it looks like my library is to blame for this, although it's hard for me to imagine what information on disk should cause photo exports to fail randomly.

I think the only thing I can try now is to repair the library...

Best Regards

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Answer 15

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Jan 10, 2016 6:00 AM in response to kuetsch

Exporting my photos on another mac synced with the same iCloud Photo Library has this problem as well. Again it's not about specific photos but randomly occurs to some of the photos.

Repairing your local library will upload all photos again to iCloud to compare them to the versions in iCloud Photo Library. That may take a long time.

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