iPhoto displays exclamation mark instead of photo
May 10, 2008 at 7:58 pm | In Mac OS X | 10 CommentsTags: exclamation mark, iPhoto, missing photo
Has iPhoto ever surprised you by displaying a giant exclamation mark instead of your photo? I had this experience after importing and cropping several photos today. The thumbnails appeared just fine, but when I double-clicked on one of the cropped photos I got a giant exclamation mark where my photo should have been!
I first tried rebuilding the iPhoto database (see iPhoto 4 or later: Rebuilding the iPhoto Library), but that didn’t help. Then I came across this document on Apple Support: iPhoto 6: Image appears when browsing but is blank or exclamation mark when editing. Apparently, the exclamation mark indicates that iPhoto is unable to find the file for the photo. My splitting, merging, and renaming of events (perhaps because at one point I had two events with the same name?) must have caused iPhoto to lose track of the cropped images.
Fortunately, selecting the photos’ thumbnails and then choosing “Revert to Original” from the “Photos” menu restored the photos. I then just had to re-crop them.
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Thanks.
I had the same issue. ‘Revert to Original’ did the trick. It was having the iPhoto exclamation mark issue with all the photos in one event that were in a vertical (portrait) orientation… photos freshly downloaded from my camera. Strange. Others downloaded at the same time, but in different events, were ok.
-TD
Comment by TD — December 8, 2008 #
hi im having this problem with multiple files since i have used find duplicate files on my iphoto library, basically i had many duplicates and FDF did a good job of finding them and removing them, unfortunately it has left me with lots of thumbnails that show the dreaded ! mark when i try and actually show the picture full screen. I could use revert to original but it may be a task i had to pass onto my children given i have over 2000 missing pictures. Is there not a way of asking iphoto to intelligently fix the links as I know where all of the original files are I just dont want to reinstate all of the duplicates ?
Comment by gavin — September 4, 2009 #
Awesome! I was a little worried when I started seeing this mysterious exclamation point, but ‘Revert to Original’ fixed it. Thanks!
Comment by Doug — December 29, 2008 #
Hey,
I have the exact same problem only I cannot use the Revert to Original as it’s not highlighted. Any suggestions?
Any help would be great appreciated!!
Comment by Nick — March 19, 2009 #
Thanks. This worked great. I appreciate you letting others know how to relieve the panic .!
Comment by Sue — May 27, 2009 #
I’m having the same problem and the Revert to Original command is grayed out. Any Ideas?
Comment by Hunter — July 29, 2009 #
did you find an answer, if the revert to original is grayed out?… apple sucks for getting answers???
Comment by gail — November 10, 2009 #
Please let me know if you sorted this problem. Lots of my photos cannot be seen in “full screen”. iPhoto just shows either a black screen or the “something is seriously wrong” exclamation mark.
Christopher
Comment by Christopher Sjuve — November 14, 2009 #
I had renamed some image files… but I think I didn’t use the iPhoto interface. I think I renamed them directly in their folders, via the Finder. That caused broken “links” to the full size photos. I renamed the files back to their original file names (in their folders via the Mac’s Finder interface again, not iPhoto). Then iPhoto was able to show the full pics again, not the exclamation point.
One way to access the folders where the original files are, is to right-click on the thumbnail of a photo and choose “Show File.” Be careful what you do then… renaming, rearranging, etc.
– Ed
Comment by Ed — November 15, 2009 #
AWESOME!!, quick fix for something that i thought was impossible to retrieve!! thank you….
Comment by Olivia — December 21, 2009 #