iPhoto: can you explain what is going on with this pic

[ChelseaFC]

I just imported my entire picture collection and so far things are good. I have a set of about 10 photos that are all about 100k or less. They work fine in the Preview app and show up perfectly. In iPhoto they show up as just black images. When you click on them they come up but it is almost like they are translucent. I have attached a screenshot that shows one of the photos being viewed in Preview and another one after it has been clicked on in iPhoto. As you can see in the screenshot, you can actually see thru the pic and see the other photos.

 

[Sky Blue]

Have you tried rebuilding the library?

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107947

 

[ChelseaFC]

I have not.

The odd thing is that there about 11 of these pictures and one of them works just fine in iphoto. Out of 8,000 or so pics these are the only ones that have any problem

I have tried reimporting them, but got same result

 

[aross99]

I wonder if there could be something weird about the actual files? How about exporting them and changing the name, and then playing around with them in Photoshop, so you are creating a new file, and then reimporting them.

If that works, you can experiment with how little you need to change them in order to get them to work. Maybe just opening and resaving them would work, although if they are critical images, that may introduce some compression isssues you may not want.

Another option would be to save your current large librarry by moving it out onto the desktop and then launching iPhoto to create a new empty library. Then import just a few pics - including the problem ones, and see if you still have a problem... You can put your large library back when you are done...

Hard to tell if this is an application issue, or a data issue...

 

[ChelseaFC]

thanks

Thanks for the suggestions. I discovered this late last night. I think I did rename and resave one and it did the same.

Will try to other ones.

I kind of thought it might have been corrupted files somehow, but thought it was strange that one of them worked fine.

Will check it out when I get home.

 

[aross99]

Are these just regular jpegs direct from your camera? Anything out of the ordinary like CMYK files, or Tiff's or something?

Seems like it would have to be something with the individual files, if some of them work, and some don't...

Haven't seen anything like that in iPhoto before...

 

[ChelseaFC]

regular

They were just downloaded from internet about a year or so ago

It would seem like an iphoto issue to me since they display fine in Preview mode

If a simple fix doesn't work. I am not going to go crazy trying to get them to work in iphoto.

It's just weird how they are transparent

 

[sreedy]

They were just downloaded for internet about a year or so ago

It would seem like an iphoto issue to me since they display fine in Preview mode

If a simple fix doesn't work. I am not going to go crazy trying to get them to work in iphoto.

It's just weird how they are transparent

I have exactly the same issue with some of my wedding pictures, these were standard film pictures that the photographer got digitized and put onto CD for me. They Preview ok, have thumbnails in the Finder ok but in iPhoto they are black in preview but when opened have the weird ghosting you are seeing.

These files work fine on my Vista and XP machines, but not on either of my Mac, one running Tiger and one Leopard.

One thing I have noticed is that they are only on the Black and White images!

I have tried re-importing from CD, copying from the Vista machine, exporting and re-importing the files..... but nothing has worked for me. They are all standard jpg images. I have 4 out of 199 photo's that are doing this.

 

[ChelseaFC]

b&w

Ghosting is probably the best term for what they are doing.

This particular set of photos is black and white. I can only think of a few more b&w photos that I would have. I will check them in iphoto to see if they are the same way.

 

[sreedy]

Ghosting is probably the best term for what they are doing.

This particular set of photos is black and white. I can only think of a few more b&w photos that I would have. I will check them in iphoto to see if they are the same way.

It's not all my B&W pics that have this ghosting but all the pictures that have ghosting are B&W!

 

[aross99]

Reading the other posts, it makes me think that maybe this is due to some issue with the photos themselves. I suspect you don't see it in preview, because preview is displaying the images on a white window, where as iPhoto is displaying them over the iPhoto interface.

It really sounds like the photos have some type of transparency turned on - although I am not sure how you could even do that with a JPEG...

Can anyone post one of these pics somewhere that we could download it and see if we have the same issues, or if we can figure out how to get them back to "normal"?

 

[ChelseaFC]

http://tinyurl.com/24rcxm

 

[xUKHCx]

The picture has an embedded ColorSync Profile: Dot Grain 20% which is probably cause the problems.

I solved it by opening it in preview and resaving the file as a jpg. This removed the colorsync profile.

YNWA

 

[aross99]

When I opened the file in Photoshop CS3, it said the file has an invalid ICC Profile. I saved it as a jpg on top of the original file, and it works fine as well.

I agree it must be an issue with the profile...

I have iPhoto to use a black background, so I couldn't see the file until I double clicked it, and then I could see the transparency...

 

[ChelseaFC]

Thanks!

 

[thefoolangel]

Thanks for the tips

Just wanted to say thanks for posting this.

I had exactly the same problem with my Wedding Pics.. not ALL the B&W ones but all the affected ones were B&W..

They were fine in Finder/Preview but not in iPhoto.

I re-saved them as JPGs from Preview and it removes the embedded profile etc and they are then fine to re-import into iPhoto.. saving them as PNG also worked but made the files bigger (BTW).

Thanks for the help.