IPhoto thumbnail issue

I have a new Mac with Snow Leopard and iPhoto 09. I transferred stuff from an older Mac and my iPhoto library transferred nicely. Now I notice that when I double-click on a thumbnail image from a recent event I get a blurry black screen with a white circle and an "i". I've tried all the rebuilding choices using option-command while starting up and they are still not showing an enlarged version. I tried deleted the iPhoto preference file. Nothing. I have almost everything backed up but a few recent pictures. I'd like to get those pictures back. What can I do? If they are corrupted and lost to me, how can I ever trust iPhoto with my pictures again? Thanks in advance for the help.

The ! turns up when iPhoto loses the connection between the thumbnail in the iPhoto Window and the file it represents.
Option 1
Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Rebuild iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup.
If that fails:
Option 2
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords, faces and places back.
Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.
Regards
TD

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IPhoto thumbnails inaccurate

Please help, sorry if this has been asked but did a search and a few troubleshooting steps listed but still having the issue.
iPhoto 6 working for about 2 months since I got the imac, but now when I view my photos it is showing the wrong picture on the thumbnail for at least 50 of the photos. When I open that thumbnail it shows the correct picture. Know this because the thumbnail is a picture from 3 years ago and the picture was taken last month.
Troubleshooting steps:
1. Clicked rebuild but did not fix
2. Updated arrange order but pictures are in correct order but thumbnails still inaccurate.
3. Moved/renamed the iphoto library, did option-iphoto, created new library, imported from old library. Now have double the photos (many duplicates) and still have thumbnail issue.
Had 6000 photos, now after import have 12000.
4. Moved/renamed iphoto library, did a restore from a usb drive and it also has the thumbnail issue.
Any help or advice would be appreciated.
thanks,
Matt
IMAC Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Thanks for the quick reply and helpfulness. New to apple and the mac terminology, but loving every minute!
see anwers embeded below:
However, from your troubleshooting steps, I suspect
things are not rather more complicated.
1. Clicked rebuild but did not fix
Where did you click rebuild?
This is the popup gui that comes up sometimes when I start iPhoto. Is there a way to call this directly?
3. Moved/renamed the iphoto library, did
option-iphoto, created new library, imported from old
library. Now have double the photos (many duplicates)
and still have thumbnail issue.
What's 'option-iphoto'
I think it was the alt option key and then click the iphoto icon or it might have been the two keys (alt and apple)and iphoto icon. After doing this it came up with a dialogue box saying something like rebuild or import.
The reason you have duplicates is that iPhoto creates
a thumbnail of each file as it's imported. I suspect
that when you imported from the old library, you
brought over the full sized pics and the
thumbnails.
Good call, I think I imported then selected the top level iphoto library. If I do an import again should I just select the iphoto library/data directory which from researching think has the original images or refer to your next question below?
Do you still have the old library?
Yes, have the old library and also a backup from a week ago on another drive.
Regards
TD

When I upgraded my iPhoto thumbnails, my photos disappeared. How can I recover them? I have iPhoto '08.

When I upgraded my iPhoto thumbnails, my photos disappeared. How do I recover them?

There are 9 different versions of iPhoto and they run on 10 different versions of the Operating System. The tricks and tips for dealing with issues vary depending on the version of iPhoto and the version of the OS. So to get help you need to give as much information as you can. Include things like:
- What version of iPhoto.
- What version of the Operating System.
- Details. As full a description of the problem as you can. For example, if you have a problem with exporting, then explain by describing how you are trying to export, and so on.
- History: Is this going on long? Has anything been installed or deleted? - Are there error messages?
- What steps have you tried already to solve the issue.
- Anything unusual about your set up? Or how you use iPhoto?
Anything else you can think of that might help someone understand the problem you have.

Iphoto thumbnails

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Better to just fix the thumbnails, no?
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Iphoto thumbnails disappear with each reboot

My iPhoto thumbnails disappear any time I reboot or log out of iPhoto.
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My iPhoto library is in the correct location on my laptop hard drive.
This all started with editing photos.
I backed up to time machine, then deleted @350 photos from a recent download.
iPhoto froze up with this, and I did a force quit.
Re opening iPhoto came back with all black thumbnails.
I option-command opened iPhoto and rebuilt the data, and the thumbnails.
The photos are there, but every time I log out of iPhoto, the thumbnails are gone again, and I have to rebuild.
So... I restored from a journaled copy of iPhoto photos, from time machine. The problem persisted.
To restore however I had to move my iPhoto library (30 Gigs) to an external hard drive because I did not have enough
room on my hard drive to restore from time machine.
The data is all there, but the thumbnails just won't persist.
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There are several threads in this forum about the iPhoto thumbnail creation bug in iMovie 7.1. The only way around this so far is to put all your iPhoto video clips into the iPhoto trash (but not empty the trash). Then add a few back at a time, launching iMovie after each addition. This "small bites" approach allows iMovie to create the thumbnails without choking/crashing.
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I restored all my data to my new hard drive from my Time Capsule. After iPhoto finished all it's rebuilding and updating thumbnails, the thumbnails for all my videos (imported from my iPhone) in iPhoto are still missing. The videos are all still there and in the right "events", but without the thumbnail photo, I have no idea which videos are which. How do I get the thumbnail photos back for my videos?

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Regards
TD

Serious iPhoto thumbnails

Hello!
I am getting quite worried about my iPhoto 9 library. A few days ago my iMac - unusually - locked up while iPhoto was open (I'd had an extremely rare kernel panic earlier in the day) and I was forced to do a hard reboot. Ever since then, iPhoto has failed to display thumbnails for (apparently any) photos: they either appear as blank grey boxes or as pixellated repetitons of one single, seeming random photo. However, when these thumbnail fails are clicked, the actual photo opens, so these all appear to be present and correct (thankfully!). I tried opening iPhoto with cmd-alt held to rebuild the thumbnail cache, but this did not work: the restore process quit before completion. I then tried restoring iPhoto from my Time Machine backup but this also - initially - to restore the thumbnails, until I tried to quit the app. This launched a lengthy thumbnail restore process, which initially appeared to have worked. However, on examining things, I found that some grey blank boxes were still present, which when clicked on produced a triangle error, and other thumbnails were the wrong way round. So I trashed this version of the library, and went back to the original pre-restore version (which I'd kept), and had another go at rebuilding the thumbnail cache using cmd-r. After the progress bar had chugged promisingly away for more than an hour, I was suddenly presented with a lengthy succession of 'such & such a photo not present' errors, each offering only 'cancel' and 'find photo' options. Not having any real idea which photos were in dispute I clicked cancel on each, thinking I would sort it out later. However, after the 20th or so error, and fearing the process might continue for hours, I force quit iPhoto in disgust.
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So if I restore to a sufficiently early date with Time Machine I should be able to fix this issue and be presented with a fully thumbnailed up library?
In theory, yes. However, I wouldn't worry about the thumbnails, they can be rebuilt. It's the ! that would worry me.
I find myself also wondering why, if the database is corrupt, it is not responding to the cmd-r repair routines within iPhoto?
Because it's too bunged up for the tools available. At that point my suggestion is
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.
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Importing into iPhoto - thumbnails but no full-size pics

I'm setting up a new iMac with OS X Lion (10.7.2) and iPhoto '11 (9.1.5).
I've Imported to Library over 1,000 photos from iPhoto '08 (7.1.5) from the originals folder. They show up fine and I can see them as Events (after autosplitting) and Photos but when 1 choose one and click on it, I see a black screen. At the top is the date taken (top left) and on the right 6 of 6 (for example) showing how many are in the event. At the bottom are the thumbnails. When I show information, I can see how it was captured, the pixels and the file size plus a photo number and a date. When I resize with the zoom bottom left , I can see a thumbnail of what is happening but no full siz photos.
Can anyone suggest what is wrong or what I am doing wrong?
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John

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1. Permissions in the Library: Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Include the option to check and repair permissions.
2. Minor Database corruption: Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild.
3. A Damaged Photo: Select one of the affected photos in the iPhoto Window and right click on it. From the resulting menu select 'Show File (or 'Show Original File' if that's available). Will the file open in Preview? If not then the file is damaged. Time to restore from your back up.
4. A corrupted iPhoto Cache: Trash the com.apple.iPhoto folder from HD/Users/Your Name/Library/ Caches...
5. A corrupted preference file: Trash the com.apple.iPhoto.plist file from the HD/Users/ Your Name / library / preferences folder. (Remember you'll need to reset your User options afterwards. These include minor settings like the window colour and so on. Note: If you've moved your library you'll need to point iPhoto at it again.)
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Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Create Library'
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IPhoto thumbnail issue

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