I’m sharing this fix with the world, so that others need not live my pain.
Last night, I returned from Lake Tahoe with 451 beautiful shots of our family snow trip, all taken with my Canon 40D SLR. Each shot was captured in both large format JPG and RAW format.
Unfortunately, after loading all my images into iPhoto ‘09, I ran into a real problem:
When I double-clicked any of the JPG files to edit/view them, they displayed a purely black screen. It was strange because the thumbnails were fine, the RAW files were fine, and when I opened the JPG files in Photoshop CS3, they were fine.
There was no way around it. Relaunching iPhoto did not help. Rebuilding the library did not help. Rebuilding thumbnails did not help. Reloading the images from the compact flash card did not help.
I shuddered to think about the wisdom of upgrading to iPhoto ‘09. After all, at least iPhoto ‘08 could display JPG files. My only hope: the Canon 40D is a popular camera, and has been out for a while. This must be a solved issue.
My searches on Google turned up a few articles and discussions, but nothing convincing. Some threads on the Apple Discussion forums. A post or two on other Mac sites.
Fortunately, I found the answer. But let me first tell you what it wasn’t:
- It wasn’t the PowerPC (I have an Intel-based Mac Pro)
- It wasn’t file size
- It wasn’t iPhoto ‘09
- It wasn’t the Canon 40D
Unfortunately, several sites fingered these things as culprits. All wild goose chases.
Here is what it was:
- A corrupted install of Mac OS X 10.5.6
Hard to believe, but the auto-update I had done just before leaving for vacation was the culprit. Thanks to one tip, I downloaded the full combo installer for the Mac OS X 10.5.6 Upgrade from Apple.
A full re-install of the update, a reboot, and all was well.
I hope this tip finds someone out there in good stead. Seeing your precious photos reduced to a black screen is frightening to the core, even if you know the photo files themselves are not corrupted.
Thanks for your post. I also own a 40D and just purchased an iMac. I updated the system as soon as I got it home and have not even loaded any photos yet but am glad to have read your post.
Cheers.
Hi,
I tried your solution but it didn’t work for me… I’m wondering if you re-installed a fresh 10.5 before applying the update?
I have found I can “work around” it by opening my scans in Photoshop and saving with “Progressive” encoding (seems to work reliably so far!); saving from Photoshop with “Baseline” encoding exhibits the problem as well.
It seems to me to be an iPhoto issue as the “problem” JPEGs display fine in Safari, Preview, Photoshop, … and even in full screen Slideshows in iPhoto!!!
I am really looking forward to a fix for this!
Thanks!
The black screen in Edit Mode affected a number of my photos. This worked:
1. Drag thumbnail to desktop to get duplicate
2. Delete thumbnail in iPhoto.
3. Drag copy back into iPhoto – restored normal function.
Note: If this image had already been edited, I would search in the iPhoto files for the original.
Unfortunately, I have tried changing to Progressive and also dragging to desktop but nothing works for me!
Anyone else with any suggestions? It’s oh so frustrating.
I was working in Photoshop Elements 4 and it was working the day before but the next day it started to display this black image.
Any other suggestions from anyone?
Cheers
Carol