Problems using iPhoto via Screen Sharing

Question

To deal with our family's ever-growing photo library, I bought a new Mac Mini with a jumbo hard drive. For now, I want to run this as a headless server so that whoever wants to can work with the photo library from whichever of our other Macs is handy, so I've set it up with Screen Sharing.
So far so good, I've copied the iPhoto library there and things seem to work well except for one important detail: When I try to see/edit the detail of any photo, I just get a black screen! Or rather, the iPhoto window contains a big black rectangle where the photo should be. If I touch the zoom control, the navigation mini-view shows up correctly, but I still can't see the picture itself. Oddly enough, if I look at the detail of a video, I can see the first frame (but no more than that, the "play" button doesn't do anything).
I'm running Mac OS X 10.6.7 on both machines, iPhoto '11 (9.1.3) on the server.
I realize that I can access the photo library directly from iPhoto on the "client" using iPhoto's built-in sharing mechanism, but that won't give me full control of the remote photo library.
Has anyone else experienced this?

Answer 1

Do you see the same if you're working directly on the Mini?  Do you see anything in the middle of the black screen?  Maybe something like this:
Click to view full size
If so then that's an indication that the file path to the original file has been broken.
So make a temporary, duplicate copy of the library and apply the two fixes below in order as needed:
Fix #1
Launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys held down and rebuild the library.
Select the options identified in the screenshot. 
Fix #2
Using iPhoto Library Manager  to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
Download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.
Click on the Add Library button, navigate to your Home/Pictures folder and select your iPhoto Library folder.
Now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the File ➙ Rebuild Library menu option
In the next  window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed.
Click on the Create button.
Note: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments but not books, calendars or slideshows. The original library will be left untouched for further attempts at fixing the problem or in case the rebuilt library is not satisfactory.
NOTE: You do know that you can connect an external HD to the Mini and let the other computer log into it and access the library on the EHD for full access to the photos, right? However, doing so wirelessly is dangerous due to dropouts that can occur and if they do while the library's database file is being written to the database can be damaged.  So if you're wirelessly connected between the two Macs screen sharing would be the safest way to go. If you're wired then the other method would be optimal.
OT