Files that won't import to iPhoto

I keep encountering files (png and jpeg) that wont' import into iPhoto even though they are fine in all other programs. I am using iPhoto '08 version 7.1.5. Any help would be appreciated. I use iPhoto to organize all my digital scrapbooking supplies, so not being able to import into it is a problem.
Thanks!

Usual reasons why a photo won't import:
Unsupported Colour Profile - iPhoto works with RGB (which is what camera's shoot in) not CYMK or Greyscale
Malformed Metadata on the file - try open it in Preview, Save it, and then import it.
Regards
TD

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I have 1000 photos in an iPhoto Library that won't import into Photos because it says the metadata can't be read. Yet those JPG files open just fine in iPhoto, GraphicConverter, et al. What gives?

I have 1000 photos in an iPhoto Library that won't import into Photos because it says the metadata can't be read. Yet those JPG files open just fine in iPhoto, GraphicConverter, et al. Any thoughts?

It’s part of the basic install of OS X. So unless you deleted it then it’s there in your apps folder. If you have deleted it, it’s on the System Restore disks that came with your Mac. You will be able to extract the installation package using Pacifist.
Alternatively, if you’re using almost any camera +apart from a Canon+ then the camera card is visible on the desktop and you can drag the movie to the desktop using the Finder and import from there.
No matter what camera you use, if you pop the card from it into a USB Card Reader then it will be accessible via the Finder. Card Readers are inexpensive and all round a better idea.
Why use a Card Reader?
Because it’s safer: Less risk of your images being lost if your camera shuts down during transfer.
Because it saves the battery on your camera
Because it saves wear and tear on your camera ports
Because it’s almost always faster.
Regards
TD

Photos open in Preview, won't import to iPhoto

iMac G5
MAC OS X 10.3.9
iPhoto 5.0.4
After coming home from college I noticed that the iPhoto on my family's home computer wasn't opening at all. After following the different instructions on the discussion boards with no success, I found the only thing that would work was to create a new library and rebuild it manually. I would go to File->Add to Library, then I would import photos from the individual folders in "Rebuilt Library" (I had previously used iPhoto Library Manager to try and rebuild the library and thought taking the pictures from the "Rebuilt Library" would be a good idea.)
Some of the photos would import but with others I would receive the message "Couldn't create: /Users/user/Desktop/iPhotoLibrary1/2006/08/04/IMG0702.JPG" This usually would happen with more than one photo in the folder and after all the files that could be imported were done a pop-up entitled "Unreadable Files" would appear with the message "The following files could not be imported (they may be an unrecognized file type or the files may not contain valid data).
The photos that iPhoto deems unreadable can still be opened with Preview however.
I would love to be able to rebuild the library to resemble how it was before the whole mess happened, so any help would be great!
Thanks!
Message was edited by: Danika Johnson

Danika
Those files that open in Preview, open them in Preview and then save them. Then try import them.
Regards
TD

Certain photos won't import into iPhoto?

Today I tried to import all of my photos from the past few months into iPhoto from my iPhone 5s. But what I discovered is that all of my pictures from February 21st until May 9th won't import or won't appear in my iPhoto library, but they are obviously still on my phone. All of my pictures from May 9th until now imported, but it's just within that specific time frame that none of those pictures will import and I have absolutely no idea why. I tried rebooting my computer and phone, force quitting iPhoto, selecting only the photos that won't import and trying to import those individually, but nothing is working. Please help, I'm really upset and frustrated.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Here's a fix for uploaded files that won't play.

Is this you? You've found a lot of files were uploaded, instead of matched. Some of those files might even be on albums where other tracks matched. Sure you want them ALL to match, but meantime, it would be nice if uploaded files would actually play! Sure, you can see their names, track durations, etc. but if you try to play them directly, nothing happens and if you try to play an album through, when it gets to an uploaded track, it stalls or skips past it. You've checked the file type and it's an AAC so you figure it can't be a file encoding incompatibility problem and besides, whatever the file type, Apple is red-flagging anything incompatible, tells you it's ineligible, right?
Guess Again - not all AAC files are produced with the same encoder and some of them, while they'll get past Apple's eligibile/ineligible screening process, probably shouldn't.
I routinely record vinyl using Audacity and at various times I've used different encoders (not that I knew it until now). As a result of checking which uploaded files play and which do not, I'm pretty confident of the following. While some AAC files created outside of iTunes might work, those encoded using Lavf52.36.0 will not. Neither will files encoded using Lavf52.64.2. There may be others.
So what's the fix? The same one recommended for getting files flagged by Apple as ineligible to pass muster. You need to make an AAC copy in iTunes and swap that for the uploaded files that won't play.
Here are the steps I use to get it done. You may be able to streamline the process though.
(1) Turn off wi-fi to prevent iTunes Match from attempting to match any new files until you're good and ready. If you don't to this, you may end up with files you've just created being flagged as duplicates.
(2) Select all files in an album that has some bad uploaded files. Select Advanced > Create AAC Version. (NOTE: I don't bother trying to separate uploaded from matched, just too much hassle.)
(3) Select one of the files, so you can File > Reveal In Finder. Generally this will get you to the album folder that includes both sets of tracks. The ones you just created will have a "1" in the file name.
(4) Create a folder on the desktop and move all the newly created files to it. Delete the "1" from the file names. Name the folder based on album title.
(5) In iTunes, delete the listings for the newly created files.
(6) Turn on wi-fi and wait for iCloud to reconnect. Watch the cloud icon - it'll tell you.
(7) Delete the album from iTunes (You're now getting rid of the copy that was originally uploaded, so be sure you've really got the new AAC files handy to replace them with). Note you will see an option to delete from iCloud too. Check it. You want these files GONE!
(8) Select Store > Update iTunes Match. If you do a search for the album from an iCloud enabled iOS device (I use Apple TV) after the update is completed, you shouldn't be able to find the album.
(9) Select File > Add To Library and go get the folder of tunes you created.
(10) Run Update iTunes Match again.
(11) Watch the iTunes progress bar. Once the matching process has checked to see if you've added anything to your library, you'll see fresh copies of your songs uploading.
(12) As another means of confirmation, once several of the songs have uploaded, do an iOS device search for the album. You should be able to get the album to appear before the upload is complete. You may have to back out of the search and back in to get it to work, but chances are when you first see the album, the song titles will all be grayed out. Once the update is complete, give it a minute and everything should become available to you.
(13) Pick a track that wouldn't play before and watch to see if the timer starts to move, followed by music! It is now time to do a little happy dance.
I know this is a far cry from figuring out what it takes to get songs that should match to actually do so, but that's a whole different ball of wax.

Thanks this was useful. I have been ripping my audiobooks and I was finding that they would get uploaded to iCloud in the process, which in itself was fine, but then iTunes would not let me change the media type to Audiobook, which is annoying as it effects how iTunes treats the media. Like showing you the skip back 10 seconds button.
The general outline here helped me work around the issue and change the media type before the media was re-uploaded to iCloud.
Sean

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hi
download perian from internet, it'll solve your issue.

IPhoto can't find photo even though the thumbnail is present. Any help, there are dozens of photos in my library that won't open as iPhoto can't find them.

iPhoto can't find photo even though the thumbnail is present. Any help, there are dozens of photos in my library that won't open as iPhoto can't find them. This is probably a very common question!

With the amount of information you've provided it's impossible to offer a potential solution. We need to know the details of your problem and situation, i.e.:
what version of iPhoto are you using?
what system version are you running?
what do you see when you launch iPhoto to open your library?
what fixes have you tried before coming here?
where is you library located?
how long has this been occuring?
did you apple any updates or upgrades just prior?
are you running a "managed" or "referenced" library?
what type of Mac?
how much free space on your boot drive?
What do you see when you click on a thumbnail?
OT

Advice on .jpg files that will not import

I have .jpg files that are not importing into LR even though they open fine on my Mac. Is there anyway I can find out why LR will not import them? Any advice for dealing with images like this?
Thanks.

Usually it's due to Lr perceiving some file wonkiness that your Mac is less picky about (Lr prefers to keep details of such to itself...). ExifTool could probably fix it, without re-creating image data, if you knew how, but it might be simplest to just re-save the file using any software that will work, maybe save in tiff format, to prevent quality loss due to re-jpeg'ing a jpeg, and maybe metadata will be re-written in a format more palatable for Lightroom.
R

I have NEF files that won't preview in Bridge CS6

I shot two D3s last night and downloaded both cards. One the NEF files preview like normal and the other has NEF files that won't preview but open in Photoshop just fine. Anyone know why they won't preview?

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Files that won't delete

I have a multitude of files that will not delete for any reason whatsoever. When I try and open them the message "can't be opened because the original item can't be found" and the following options occur "Delete Allias", "Fix Allias", and "OK". I've tried to delete the allias as well as fix the allias but nothing seems to happen. The main reason I'm trying to delete these files is because they are taking up a lot of space. Any and all help would be fantastic as I have no idea how to go about this anymore>
Thanks.

These are just a few of the files that won't let me delete them.

CR2 files won't import into iPhoto

Have recently done a photographic course and was advised to shoot in RAW from now on. Just taken a load of pictures in RAW using a Canon 70D). But when I try to import them, I get this message:
"The following file could not be imported. The file is in an unrecognized format."
I'm using iPhoto 9.2.3 on an iMac using OS X 10.6.8.
Canon's own software will imprt them but I can't get them into iPhoto.
Any suggestions gratefully received.
G.

Hi Rudegar
Followed your advice and looked at Genieo. But this seems to be a front for an alternative web browser. Indeed I'm wondering whether it could be malware because now I can't get rid of it! Every time I drag it from the Applications folder to the Trash bin I get this message:
I've shut down the computer and restarted it. I've dragged all the elements to the Trash bin - and now it won't allow me to empty it - instead I get this message:
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Is there a particular CR2 you would recommend?
And, how do I get rid of this new stuff?
Many thanks.
G.

Files from camera won't import into iPhoto Library

I have a problem that came up just recently. Whenever I try to import .jpg and .mov files from my camera (Kodak EasyShare), only a few or none of the files are imported into my Library. A window comes up that says, "The following files could not be imported. (The import failed.)" Also, if any files do upload, it takes a very long time. I never had this problem earlier this year, and I've been importing files for a year or so. Please help! Thank you so much!!

Yuzu
Welcome to the Apple user discussion forums
Are any of the movies long (ie large files)? iPhoto sometimes does not like large movies imported directly from the camera but will import them from the desktop
Things to try
1 - will your camera mount to the desktop - if so you can import directly into iPhoto using the File menu ==> import to library command or can drag the photos form the card to a desktop folder and then import them from there into iPhoto
2 - use image capture (in your applications folder) to import to a desktop folder
3 - a USB card reader
LN

IMovie won't import from iPhoto (this is different than all the other post)

Before you think, "Oh... this is the typical 'iMovie 7 isn't importing iPhoto movies' question" this isn't. I've looked through a ton of threads and questions trying to find something similar to this.
Q: I have all my digital camera (Canon SD500 camera (not camcorder), no known compatibility issues with Apple) movies, which are in .AVI format, in iPhoto. iMovie is being weird as in it will only import SOME of my camera movies. For some events, it imports ALL the movies in. For some events, it won't import ANY of the movies in. For some events, it will only import SOME of the movies included in it.
If someone responds, "Your camera is incompatible" OR "the file format isn't supported" they should have points deducted from their account because they didn't read anything except for the first sentence and decided I don't know what I'm talking about.
Here's some interesting things that have happened:
1) I found ONE event in question called "Wedding Pictures & Movies" that wasn't showing up in iMovie. The camera we took movies with has other movies in other events that have successfully been imported into iMovie. But anyway, I realized that for some programming languages (I don't know if this is true with iMovie, I doubt it) that the ampersand (&) sign is used in code and shouldn't be used in titling things. So I shortened the name down to "Wedding" and all the sudden (more like after iMovie asked me if I wanted to create the thumbnails for the movies), SOME of my movies were put into iMovie, not all.
2) Upon realizing that either: the event name was too long OR the & sign actually did screw it up, I shortened another event in question from "Reception Pictures & Videos" to simply "Reception". Upon opening iMovie, it never asked to build the thumbnail library with movies from this "Reception" event that I did the exact same thing to as the "Wedding" event.
3) I thought I would try and force iMovie to refresh the thumbnail database (or build thumbnails for another movie again) by taking another movie with said camera above, the same one that I've taken all the other movies with, and imported the movie into iPhoto. Upon opening iMovie, it asked me to build the thumbnail, but only did so for the movie that I just took.
What could be going on that movies from the same camera aren't showing up in iMovie? I can understand other cameras, but these movies are all from the same camera. Some will show up while others will not? Does anyone have a clue what could be going on here?
BTW, the movies have not been edited in any way. They are all still in the exact same format and everything since they were imported into iPhoto.

Before you think, "Oh... this is the typical 'iMovie 7 isn't importing iPhoto movies' question" this isn't. I've looked through a ton of threads and questions trying to find something similar to this.
Q: I have all my digital camera (Canon SD500 camera (not camcorder), no known compatibility issues with Apple) movies, which are in .AVI format, in iPhoto. iMovie is being weird as in it will only import SOME of my camera movies. For some events, it imports ALL the movies in. For some events, it won't import ANY of the movies in. For some events, it will only import SOME of the movies included in it.
If someone responds, "Your camera is incompatible" OR "the file format isn't supported" they should have points deducted from their account because they didn't read anything except for the first sentence and decided I don't know what I'm talking about.
Here's some interesting things that have happened:
1) I found ONE event in question called "Wedding Pictures & Movies" that wasn't showing up in iMovie. The camera we took movies with has other movies in other events that have successfully been imported into iMovie. But anyway, I realized that for some programming languages (I don't know if this is true with iMovie, I doubt it) that the ampersand (&) sign is used in code and shouldn't be used in titling things. So I shortened the name down to "Wedding" and all the sudden (more like after iMovie asked me if I wanted to create the thumbnails for the movies), SOME of my movies were put into iMovie, not all.
2) Upon realizing that either: the event name was too long OR the & sign actually did screw it up, I shortened another event in question from "Reception Pictures & Videos" to simply "Reception". Upon opening iMovie, it never asked to build the thumbnail library with movies from this "Reception" event that I did the exact same thing to as the "Wedding" event.
3) I thought I would try and force iMovie to refresh the thumbnail database (or build thumbnails for another movie again) by taking another movie with said camera above, the same one that I've taken all the other movies with, and imported the movie into iPhoto. Upon opening iMovie, it asked me to build the thumbnail, but only did so for the movie that I just took.
What could be going on that movies from the same camera aren't showing up in iMovie? I can understand other cameras, but these movies are all from the same camera. Some will show up while others will not? Does anyone have a clue what could be going on here?
BTW, the movies have not been edited in any way. They are all still in the exact same format and everything since they were imported into iPhoto.

Movie won't import into iPhoto

Hi. I have a Canon Powershot A570. Up till now, I've never had any problems importing movies/images from this camera or previous Powershots to my Mac using iPhoto. However, this time, all the movies/images were imported from my SD card except one--a movie in AVI format that's about a minute long. I have repeatedly tried to import this movie, but to no avail. Each time, iPhoto begins the process normally, but then after a couple of minutes, it just stops importing without giving any error messages. Does anyone have any idea why I can't import this movie? Thanks for any help.

Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
I don't know why it happens, but I have the same experience with longer videos and iPhoto 6. If iPhoto won't import a movie, the solution is to launch Image Capture (in your Applications folder) and use it upload. You can choose "Download Some" and then preview the files on your camera. Select the clip and import it to a Desktop folder. Don't believe the importing progress meter - it goes from nothing to 100% with no indication of how long you should wait. I've found that if I'm patient the clip will upload fully. Once on the Desktop I've had no trouble getting iPhoto to import it to the library.
Regards.

Files unable to be imported into iPhoto 5

Using Migration Assistant I transferred all my files from an older Mac to a new Power Mac G5 running 10.4.2. I am unable to import or drag and drop any picture files into iPhoto. When I try, I get the message "The following files could not be imported (they may be an unrecognized file type or the files may not contain valid data)" Pictures in folders on my desktop will open in Preview but will not import to iPhoto. I get this same mesage when I choose Add to Library from the iPhoto Edit menu and try to import photo's from my Pictures folder.
This problem has appeared twice before in these discussion pages: on 2/6/06 from El Pinguino and on 3/1/06 from Homebushboy. I did not see a solution to either of these postings.
power mac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

bummer! Let's see if you can do a rebuild:
Try this:
Before doing a rebuild make sure iPhoto's trash bin is emptied. You can do this by control clicking on the trash bin, or from the menu bar under iPhoto.
Close iPhoto
Duplicate the iPhoto Library folder
Drag the duplicate to the desktop (hopefully you have enough room on your hard drive for the duplicate.)
Launch iPhoto holding down the Command and Option keys until you see the rebuild options screen.
Choose the first three options. If you were missing photos in your library, also choose the last option. Be advised that you will get a roll of orphaned photos and it might be quite huge. Most of them will already be in your iPhoto library, but use caution when deleting anything from this roll until you are sure the photos are still in your library in another place. It might be a good idea to share/export this roll of photos just in case you need to import them again.
Back to the rebuild, depending on the size of your library it might take some time. When it is done, hopefully your photos will be there.
You might see some unexpected results as I did when I did a rebuild. Photos had been moved to wrong dates, video clips had lost their duration info and some were even orphaned from the jpg pointer file. It took me some time to straighten it out again.
This is the reason to make a duplicate before you rebuild, in case you do not like the result. If you don't like the result, close iPhoto, then delete the rebuilt library and drag the duplicate back into the Pictures folder making sure the name is iPhoto Library. Launch iPhoto and it should open the library in the Pictures folder.
iPhoto 4 or later: Rebuilding the iPhoto Library

Files that won't import to iPhoto

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