iPhoto not recognized

I tried to import new photos-- about 20. iPhoto opened and imported a few and then just hovered there saying there were 16 remaining. I disconnected, reset the camera, tried a new session. iPhoto does not open, nothing happens.
And the original 3 or 4 are not on the computer. Kathleen

kawms said:

I tried to import new photos-- about 20. iPhoto opened and imported a few and then just hovered there saying there were 16 remaining. I disconnected, reset the camera, tried a new session. iPhoto does not open, nothing happens.
And the original 3 or 4 are not on the computer. Kathleen

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I never use iPhoto to import images direct from camera or from SD card. I use "Image Capture" which you can easily pull up by typing a few letters in spotlight. On my 15 in MBP running ML 10.8.5, "ima" are enough letters to bring image capture to the top of the list of hits. You have the option to leave photos on the device or delete them. I recommend you leave them on the device until you are sure you have something properly copied to your Mac.

The down side of this approach is you are now dealing with files and folders. iPhoto does a nice job of hiding all that stuff but I prefer to manage my files and folders myself. When you plug in a camera or sd card, image capture will ask you where to put them. I suggest the pictures folder under your home folder and I further suggest you create a sub folder just for the photos you are having problems with. After importing them, navigate to that folder in Finder and see if the images can be opened by Preview. It is possible the images are in some sort of format your Mac doesn't understand. This is especially an issue with movies. Most cameras use avi or quicktime formats but there are always exceptions. What kind of camera is it? If it's a really inexpensive camera (or a really high end professional model), you can bet they didn't worry too much about user friendly file formats!

BTW, you can always import them to iPhoto later, directly from that folder on your computer, once you've figured out how to get them copied off the camera.