Some pictures will not open on Edit view

Question

Hi,
Using iPhoto 5.0.4, all the files are (.jpg) I have a roll of pictures imported off the digital camera thru the application that when I double click, open up in the edit view as a black window. Every other file opens fine. I can see the small pictures in the library and the album of these files. If I try to expand any other files they instantly expand. In the case of these problem files, they instead after a delay, end up as an outlined box the color of my background. in this case grey.
However if I go directly to the iPhoto library, locate the file, and open it with Preview, it opens the file beautifully and I can cover the entire screen with the photo, so the information is obviously there.
I looked for answers on the discussions, I tried someones suggestion to check permissions, for the entire library which I did with no change in the problem. I have several copies of these files, the problem is with all of them. And when I tried to export these files to a CD as an archive, other files were okay, these did not copy, instead their title, file #, etc showed up on the directory for the CD, but each file contained 0 KB.
Thanx to anyone who can figure this out. I suspect it has happened to others, but not to me. I don't like this.
iMac G5   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Answer 1

Hi Dr. spock,
this sometimes happens when files are renamed in the finder (specifically the iPhoto Library folder in your Pictures folder.
Try this suggestion from Old toad our forum guru:
There is a way you can recover your library. Here's what I developed and it worked for me. But make a backup copy of your iPhoto Library folder beforehand just in case:
How to recover those photos lost due to renaming in the Finder1 - do a search of just the iPhoto library folder with the following criteria:
File name contains ".jpg" (or .psd) and File size is less than 1 KB. (You can just do a search for File size less than 1 kb but do not delete the other zero sized files that are of a non image type).
That will find all of those zero sized files that were created when iPhoto couldn't fine the originals.
2 - move those zero sized image files to the trash.
3 - now delete those "bad" photos from the iPhoto library using the normal method within iPhoto (if you don't they will be recovered every time you do a library rebuild with the "recover orphaned photos" option selected).
4 - launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys depressed and when the rebuild menu comes up select the last option, "Recover orphaned photos in the iPhoto Library folder".
This will recover those renamed files and put then in a new roll. The only downside is that their titles in iPhoto will be "Roll xx-1, etc. You can do a Get Info on them, find the actual file name and change the title so they are the same.
So it can be done with a little work.
The only way to rename files that have already been imported into iPhoto is to export them to the desktop, rename them there and then reimport. Once imported you can delete the original set.
Hope this has been of some help. Good luck.
O.T.
here is an Apple kb
iPhoto 6: Image appears when browsing but is blank or exclamation mark when editing
-make sure you have the latest quicktime installed or reinstall Quicktime.