Preview not displaying images since Snow Leopard

[Spazztichero]

Hi,

Since I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I've been noticing that Preview does not display images. A box will open and the background will be there, but no picture. I can scan images, and the automatic preview image that pops up is blank. I can download images from the internet, and they will appear as icons on my desktop, but when I double click them I get an appropriately sized blank Preview box. I can save the image to a thumb drive and put it on my girlfriend's computer (we run identical iMacs, for reference), and it will appear on her computer, but she is using the Adobe suite.

Has anyone else been having this problem? Is there an easy fix for it that I am missing? Or is there a difficult fix that I can work through?

Thank you for any help you may be able to provide!

 

[NoSmokingBandit]

Did you do a clean install or an upgrade?

 

[Spazztichero]

I believe it was an upgrade. I was running Leopard and I put the snow leopard desk in and let it upgrade my system.

 

[NoSmokingBandit]

For future reference, its always a good idea to back up your data, format, then install clean.
But for now, open Preview and click Preview->About Preview and see what version number it is. It may not have upgraded properly. My version says "5.0 (501)"

 

[Spazztichero]

Ahh...thank you for that advice! I keep active backups of my computer via Time Machine, so that would not be a problem at all I don't think.

As to Preview, my version does say 5.0 (501), so it is the most up to date. Should I uninstall Preview and re-install it? If so, how would I go about doing that since Preview comes as part of the whole operating system?

Barring that, would I have to go all out and format and boot back up from my Time Machine backup?

 

[MythicFrost]

Hi, unfortunately once you do a clean install, if you then go and install from time machine, or migrate from an existing hard drive, it defeats the purpose.

Are you running SL 10.6.1, try maybe opening preview, have a look what preferences you can change, maybe force quit preview once.

I don't think the issue would be so much with the preview app (I believe there is one, might be wrong though) then it would the OS.

Kind Regards

 

[Spazztichero]

Well, I just tried force quitting preview, and sure enough, that worked! I even ran a test scan to see, and the image showed up. I am surprised and yet happy that something so simple fixed it!

Thank you both for all of your helpful advice! I really appreciate it, as it was getting very frustrating having a blind Preview! Now I have a tactic to try if a program is acting up like that again. Believe it or not, I had quit the program and restarted it several times, and have even restarted my computer several times over the past week, and none of that fixed it. However, force quit did the trick! Go figure...

 

[MythicFrost]

Glad it's fixed

 

[pradnica]

it's quite strange, why force quit or reinstalling clean-install snow leopard should fix this problem?
i have the same problem, some figures are not displayed, obviously they are ok in acrobat reader. I tried force quit (hehe) but obviously did not help... it seems that there's a bug in the preview itself.