Comments on: iPhoto ’09: Fix for JPEG Files Displaying as Pure Black on Edit

By: tpf

tpf — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:17:13 +0000

Same issue (10.6.8) with multiple cameras. iPhoto 09.

By: wilson

wilson — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:57:01 +0000

It works for me!! thank you so much for this solution, Lion has it’s installer as well. Thank you again! it was my nightmare!

By: CM

CM — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:08:58 +0000

well u are right .. now i have 10.6.8 .. and i am still facing this issue .. and i just upgraded the version 15 days back … any permanant solution ?

By: Daniella

Daniella — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 01:54:44 +0000

Thank you so much for posting! I was FREAKING OUT that my photos were all lost! I’m going to try this now!! I’m still nervous that somehow they are going to disappear though :/

By: Janet Tate

Janet Tate — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:38:38 +0000

I have a Nikon D-60, and I get black screens in iPhoto after editing. If I revert the picture to the original, then I can see it. I heard that this is a problem because Nikon won’t give Apple their code? Do I need a different camera?

By: Anderson

Anderson — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 02:19:29 +0000

There’s one scenario not covered here, which was affecting me and took me forever to figure out.
If you run a Diamond BVU 195 USB graphics adapter for external monitors, you will never ever be able to see your pictures (at least under current driver). This scenario and a solution for black pictures in iPhoto with external monitors is described in the below link. I hope this might help someone like me, since most discussions only have the standard 3 suggested solutions.
http://www.liferacker.com/iphoto/2011/10/21/iphoto-shows-black-screen-cant-visualize-iphoto-pictures/

By: Sally B

Sally B — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 03:09:26 +0000

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for posting this. I couldn’t work out what was going on with my iphoto and in my google searches, I noticed that you had the same problem. I had just done an automatic software update the day before and the edit part of iphoto kept giving me a black screen. I tried a number of things, then I found and applied your fix and voila, problem solved! It now works.

Awesome

By: Dennis

Dennis — Mon, 02 May 2011 00:43:31 +0000

You folks mentioning which cameras used…forget it. I’ve been having this problem for years and with a multitude of different cameras…it has nothing to do with the camera.

My problem began when i installed a trial offer of Aperture…what a mistake that was!

By: professional seo

professional seo — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:07:08 +0000

To correct this issue, I closed iPhoto from both accounts, then used a terminal window to cd into the newest folder within the Originals folders and list the file permissions.

By: marc

marc — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:07:59 +0000

For me, the issue was b&w mode for my pictures. I had to open them with photoshop, mode/rgb color and reimport them in iPhoto to save the issue. I have iPhoto 08 and Snow Leopard.

By: Dannny

Dannny — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:33:30 +0000

I have just taken delivery of an iMac and iPhoto is doing some weird stuff, I can import my entire photo library from a PC but the thumbnails are blank if sized to anything over a quarter of the slide bar in the bottom corner. So, if the size is small you can see the thumbnails but if you increase the size they go blank, then, all the Events thumbnails are blank, regardless of size and iPhoto crashes every few minutes, but only if the photos are in the library.

If I create another user the other account gets none of these problems, so it only happens in the Admin account.

Help…..

By: Chas

Chas — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:29:02 +0000

The problem seems to be the permissions on the files within the Originals folder of the iPhoto library. To correct this issue, I closed iPhoto from both accounts, then used a terminal window to cd into the newest folder within the Originals folders and list the file permissions. For me this is :
cd /Shared_iphoto_library/iPhoto Library/Originals/2010/16 Apr 2010
I then granted rw to the group (staff) for all newly imported photos using chmod g+rw *

This seems to sort the issue, but will be a real pain if I need to do this after every new import. I’ll see if I can see the permissions on the folder to cascade upon creation of new files.

By: Chas

Chas — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 07:50:13 +0000

Same problem here for one user of a shared library. The main user can display the photos fine, and the other user can see the thumbnails fine, but opening some of the pictures gives a black image. Interestingly, adjusting the window size shows a preview of the picture, but it goes blacks when you stop resizing the window.

By: Cybolord

Cybolord — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:21:32 +0000

iMac 24″ with iPhoto’09 8.1.1 (419) running on OS 10.6.2

same to us: since we bought the new Nikon D5000 we also got pure black images in edit mode; we are using a shared iPhoto library instead: when user 1 imports JPEGs from Nikon user 2 is not able to edit them (black) – and same verse visa… the older Casio Exilim never got this problem with iPhoto…

did someone fix this problem meanwhile?

Thanks for feedback

By: sima

sima — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:02:14 +0000

Macbook Pro core2 Duo
10.6.2

The same problem also with movie. I still did not manage to localize & fix it.

Apple does not give any answers.

By: Carol M

Carol M — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 09:47:31 +0000

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

By: Grog

Grog — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:49:28 +0000

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.

By: Ed Renaud

Ed Renaud — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:05:23 +0000

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!

By: Mick Phillips

Mick Phillips — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:48:21 +0000

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.