Blank photo files

fielker · Sep 14, 2016

I am trying to sort out all my photos, but some, mainly older ones, are blank when opened in Preview. Most of these are TIFF files, though some are labelled as Document.

The TIFF files, when viewed as icons, show the picture is there.

How can I get at the actual pictures?

Ember1205 · Sep 14, 2016

Have you tried opening them in a browser? Or other app? Maybe importing them into Word?

Typically, thumbnails are stored as part of a JPEG file. I'm wondering if maybe the extension got changed somehow?

fielker · Sep 15, 2016

Moving them into Safari or Pages still results in a blank. I don't have Word.

One used to be able to attach a file to replies here, but I can't see how to do this now.

ferrarr · Sep 15, 2016

Have you run Disk Utility recently? Maybe run Repair Disk from your Recovery Partition or original Disc?

fielker · Sep 15, 2016

Disk Utility has checked my heard disk and everything is OK.

ferrarr · Sep 15, 2016

What OS X version are you running? Does your Disk Utility also have Repair Permissions?

fielker · Sep 15, 2016

I have OS 0.7.5 Lion. I have repaired permissions: still no joy.

IWT · Sep 15, 2016

fielker said:
I am trying to sort out all my photos, but some, mainly older ones, are blank when opened in Preview. Most of these are TIFF files, though some are labelled as Document.

The TIFF files, when viewed as icons, show the picture is there.

How can I get at the actual pictures?

It's a long shot I admit; but you presumably have iPhoto as an app. Could you try dragging the "awkward" photo files into iPhoto and see if it will reveal them to you?

And please post back.

Ian

fielker · Sep 15, 2016

Yes, Ian, I did try that but it didn't work!

fielker · Sep 16, 2016

I've now found that if I move a TIFF photo icon into iPhoto and edit in some way, it is converted into a JPEG file. However, blank files remain blank, even the ones that show an image on the icon. Obviously it is not TIFF that is the sole problem; it's just that most of the blanks happen to be TIFF, but some are JPEG.

fielker · Sep 16, 2016

Another curiosity: I have some TIFF files which will not import into iPhoto. Nor will those photos which are "Document".

fielker · Sep 21, 2016

Another photo problem! When I try to open some JPEG files I am told "The file - couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it." Yet when I check Get Info my name is there with Read & Write against it.

fielker · Sep 21, 2016

Well, a restart seems to have cured that problem - for the moment!