Lion considers some of my pictures as System files

Hello,

Spotlight and Finder are unable to find some of my jpeg pictures unless I include System Files in the Finder search.

Any idea why this is or how to fix it?


Additional information:

- Only auto-rotate tagged pictures exported from iPhoto as originals are problematic (based on a couple of dozen or so tests).

- Exif etc. data or settings shown by Finder don´t show any significant differences between problematic and non-problematic files.
- - However, only the problematic files have the combination of auto-rotate tag + color profile changed automatically by iPhoto, but this doesn´t seem like a logical reason for the problem.

- Re-naming or moving to different folders doesn´t help. Neither does re-indexing the spotlight, restarting the computer or repairing permissions in Disk Utility.

- I am running Lion 10.7.3.


Thank you in advance!

simsaladimbamba said:

I don't know why it is that way, but have you checked Finder > select some picture deemed as "system file" >> GET INFO >>> Sharing & Permissions yet?

Image​

Mac OS X - Setting Permissions

Click to expand...

Yes, I have done that. The permissions are identical to those files that behave normally. (The permissions are: myself - Read & Write; staff - Read Only; everyone - Read Only.)

Does anyone know how to search for jpegs in system files only, so I could see all the affected files?

I have tried several alternative spotlight applications but to no avail.

I was instructed to check out the metadata of the files using mdls -command in Terminal. I believe I found the most likely cause for the problem:

I found one property and value that was only present in problematic files:
- kMDItemSupportFileType = (iPhotoPreservedOriginal)
None of the non-problematic files had any mention of kMDItemSupportFileType, while all the problematic files had added this property and setting.

Even though I have no idea what I am doing, I believe that simple logic would dictate that this is causing the problem, right?

Any idea why iPhoto does this to auto-rotate tagged photos when exported as originals?

Any idea why Lion considers these as system files?

Any idea how to fix it?

Furthermore, is it possible to search all the files that have a kMDItemSupportFileType?