Unable to open some pictures in iphoto

Some of our photos are not able to be seen in the iphoto library...when you scroll over them they are visible but they disappear when clicked on. Visible in the preview pane at the bottom but just displaying an exclamation mark on the viewing screen. Anyone have any ideas what to do?

Launch iPhoto with the option and command keys held down. You will get a dialog box of rebuilding/repairing options. Check all the boxes, and let it do its thing for a while (go make a cup of coffee or something).

Following this, just for good measure, restart the machine. Then launch iPhoto as normal. That should fix the issue.

Chas,
Thanks for your help. Things have improved after following your suggestion. All the main photos can now be displayed but some thumbnails are missing.

is there anything else I can try?

Glad to hear that!

You can try running the exercise I described above again, only this time just tell it to rebuild the thumbnails.

Another option to try if that doesn't work is to try dragging one of the photos in question out to the desktop (this creates a copy). Now try dragging that photo back into iPhoto (yes, this will create a duplicate). See if that duplicate has a proper thumbnail. If it does, just delete the "original" one with the bad thumbnail. Repeat as needed.

Chas,

I think I know whats wrong. When I drag the files to desktop that im having a problem with I can see they are all .cr2 files which are raw files from my canon 30D. Any idea how to correct this?

Thanks again,

Mike

What version of iPhoto and MacOS are you using? Are both fully updated? Canon's raw files are not exactly new, but if you happen to be missing the code that deals with this format, this could be a symptom.

Thanks,

Mac OS X 10.6.8 and Iphoto 11 v 9.2

Mike

ISTR this problem with .CR2 files -- make sure you're running the latest Digital Camera RAW file update (just check Software Update, or you can download it yourself from here)

Thanks Chas,

Updated RAW file software and still the same. Im beat. I think I will need to reopen all raw files and save as Jpeg which seems really stupid but I cant think of anything else..

Appreciate everyones help...

Mike