Suddenly, several of my iPhoto pictures are not showing up in my iMac’s iPhoto library. Instead, iPhoto only shows a gray icon with an exclamation point (!). How can I recover my Photos?

With older versions of iPhoto (6.x and 7.x), under certain conditions, a photo can appear normally when browsing the thumbnails in your library, but when you try to edit the photo, an exclamation point screen may appear instead of the actual photo. This can happen for a few reasons, but notably from renaming, moving, or deleting items in the iPhoto Library folder.

Where’s my photo?

1.    Select the image’s thumbnail in Album or Library view.
2.    Right-click the photo and choose Show File from the shortcut menu. If this works, then the photo’s master file will appear in a new Finder window.
3.    Try opening the file in the Finder in Preview (or another image app) to make sure that it is readable.
4.    If that didn’t locate the photo, try choosing Show Original File or Revert To Original from the photo’s right-click menu (or in the editor view). This will revert an edited photo to its original, non-edited state.

Once you have located the photo file, you’ll need to ensure that the permissions are set correctly by following these steps:

1.    Select the file in the Finder and select File > Get Info
2.    In the Info window that appears, click the disclosure triangle near the bottom to reveal the Ownership & Permissions settings.
3.    Ensure that the currently logged in user has Read & Write access to the file. If not, you can change this using the drop-down menus.
4.    Try to view the photo again in iPhoto.
5.    If the photo still doesn’t appear, you can try dragging the original file from the Finder to the iPhoto icon in the Dock to re-import the image.

GOT A TECH QUESTION OR A HELPFUL TIP TO SHARE?

Email ask@maclife.com or write to Mac|Life, 
4000 Shoreline Ct, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080