Aperture 2: Corrupted thumbnails? No solution? Grr.......

[Hello.there]

What's happening?

I have 'View' set on 'Browser and Viewer'.

In several of my recently created projects (ie new photos) the thumbnail-like photo in the browser at the bottom doesn't correspond with the photo I see in the viewer above when I click on the 'thumbnail'.

When I click 'update preview' it says it's already been updated.



Help!

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

hold the option key and then press Images >> Generate Preview. This will force it to update its preview.

 

[Hello.there]

hold the option key and then press Images >> Generate Preview. This will force it to update its preview.

Flippin' heck, that worked - you, sir, are a genius. Thank you!

PS Do you have to do that for each individual 'problem' preview, or is there a way of fixing all with the flick of a switch?

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Flippin' heck, that worked - you, sir, are a genius. Thank you!

PS Do you have to do that for each individual 'problem' preview, or is there a way of fixing all with the flick of a switch?

Just a few days ago I was having a similar issue as you where many of my previews were out of wack. I had to highlight my entire photo library and option click, regenerate. It took like 36 hours on my Core2duo 2.0GHz Macbook with 2GB of RAM. Then again they were all RAW photos, but that still seems like a ridiculous amount of time.

 

[Hello.there]

Just a few days ago I was having a similar issue as you where many of my previews were out of wack. I had to highlight my entire photo library and option click, regenerate. It took like 36 hours on my Core2duo 2.0GHz Macbook with 2GB of RAM. Then again they were all RAW photos, but that still seems like a ridiculous amount of time.

36 hours?!? I think I'll stick to fixing them individually when the problem arises.

Thanks again.

 

[Hello.there]

Yikes, still having trouble with thumbnail previews in Aperture. I followed the tip above and that seemed to fix the problem initially, but when I start up Aperture again the problem returns - ie thumbnails not matching the photo in the preview screen.

Any ideas on a permanent fix?

Thanks.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

well What sucks about Aperture and lightroom is that they both use proprietary formats. I would suggest to take all your photos out and rebuild the library, but that would mean you would lose absolutely EVERYTHING. So... as far as suggestions go, I'm bone dry. I can't think of anything else... are there any third party tools you've used that may be out of date? Or some haxie that could be causing the issue? Do you have Symbl installed?

 

[Hello.there]

Well, as far as I can make out the only problem photos are ones I imported from an external drive on to my iMac - they started out in Aperture on my MacBook, I backed up a vault on to the external drive, copied it on to the iMac, opened the vault (package?) and imported the photos that way. Did something go horribly wrong in that process?

 

[Hello.there]

Ah ha, this might be the solution - clickety click.

Just tried it, ie deleting the corrupted thumbnails, so hopefully that will cure the problem.

NEWSFLASH: It didn't work. Very, very, very close to tears now.

 

[Hello.there]

Okay, in case anyone else out there is having this problem - I've Googled manically and have discovered this is a spookily common problem for Aperture users....and there appears to be no explanation for why it happens, nor any satisfactory solution.

I, and a bunch of people on the Apple forum, have tried the 'solutions' mentioned above, but nothing worked permanently. It seems like all you can do is start from scratch with the corrupted projects, ie import them from scratch - pretty infuriating if you've already added keywords and made adjustments to 1,000 plus photos.

I found discussions on this issue dating back to 2006 - it's hard to believe it hasn't been sorted yet!

Any way, I love Aperture, but this is really making me reconsider using it because I'm not sure I can trust it any more. Trying to solve this issue brought me back to my Windows days, wasted hours trying to fix something, no solution in the end.

Might give Lightroom another go.

 

[Grimace]

Okay, in case anyone else out there is having this problem - I've Googled manically and have discovered this is a spookily common problem for Aperture users....and there appears to be no explanation for why it happens, nor any satisfactory solution.

I, and a bunch of people on the Apple forum, have tried the 'solutions' mentioned above, but nothing worked permanently. It seems like all you can do is start from scratch with the corrupted projects, ie import them from scratch - pretty infuriating if you've already added keywords and made adjustments to 1,000 plus photos.

I found discussions on this issue dating back to 2006 - it's hard to believe it hasn't been sorted yet!

Any way, I love Aperture, but this is really making me reconsider using it because I'm not sure I can trust it any more. Trying to solve this issue brought me back to my Windows days, wasted hours trying to fix something, no solution in the end.

Might give Lightroom another go.

I had the same issue. I tried everything in the book, and then tried exporting the entire project (adjustments and all) -- followed by a reimport, and everything was happy.

 

[seenew]

god, I hope this doesn't happen to me. I just got Aperture and it took forever for me to get all my photos migrated over from iPhoto.. 29,000 images, most are RAW. If I have to do that again, I'll kill myself.

 

[ChrisA]

god, I hope this doesn't happen to me. I just got Aperture and it took forever for me to get all my photos migrated over from iPhoto.. 29,000 images, most are RAW. If I have to do that again, I'll kill myself.

You should never have to do that again. That's what backups are for. You could always restore from the last good Time Machine copy.

I can guess about the reason for the problem. Using a vault to transfer images between two aperture installations. Aperture makes up names for some of it's internal fliles, the ones you never see. It makes a unique name for each of them. But if Aperture runs on two computers each computer will likely have file names that are the same.

Aperture does have a built-in way to move photos from one computer to another. Apple even allows you to install Aperture twice, once on a desktop and once on a laptop. But you have to move projects not vaults. Projects are self contained "aperture universes" that can be moved as a unit between computers. Vaults are intended to backup just one library and not to mve between libraries

 

[Hello.there]

I can guess about the reason for the problem. Using a vault to transfer images between two aperture installations. Aperture makes up names for some of it's internal fliles, the ones you never see. It makes a unique name for each of them. But if Aperture runs on two computers each computer will likely have file names that are the same.

That sounds like what's happened alright - stupidly when I used the vault to transfer the photos I had a feeling that wasn't the way to do it, but I went ahead any way

The real frustration here is there seems to be no way of fixing it without starting all over again with the screwed up project. I've tried generating thumbnails from scratch (as per the link above) but that didn't work. Nothing works!

 

[Grimace]

That sounds like what's happened alright - stupidly when I used the vault to transfer the photos I had a feeling that wasn't the way to do it, but I went ahead any way

The real frustration here is there seems to be no way of fixing it without starting all over again with the screwed up project. I've tried generating thumbnails from scratch (as per the link above) but that didn't work. Nothing works!

Try exporting the project (to your desktop) -- delete it in aperture -- then import the project again. It worked for me when nothing else did.

 

[winterquilt]

as far as I got.

I am in this mess. Le me tell you how I handled it, sort of, but its no solution. I had a corrupt drive and a back up and I restored to my new HDD from Time Capsule and a restore from a Vault. Just like you lot.

Now when I load Aperture it has no thumnnail, only about 30 I'd say, which i'd say out of 50k is not much. Luckily I had read about recovery software from DiskWarrior of which can recover data - luckily for me it did and I got pretty much my whole drive back, the old broken one, but it was physically damaged still. But then I remembered reading that it lets you run programs from the bad HDD, so I ran Aperture.

Aperture, for one time only so take a screen shot, flashed up all the unsaved images yet to be in my vault, then preceeded to connect to my newly formed Library on my new computer, but linking to the images on my bad HDD - the result was that all 50k of the images thumnails were being generated, on a 5400rpm HDD and over USB 2 this took about 8hrs. I woke to an almost complete library.

I then took the method of exploring inside the library to see projects tht had not been saved and comparred file sizes, all of the pictures that were not in Aperture were in the Photo folder, sort by date os a good method and I had about 200 not saved - which most were shot on a camera in a single day.

I then tried copying and pasting the projects to the new library and seeing if it would repopulate with the pictures not saved, it didn't but did create a new project with an affixed "(1)" - you have to open the library when Aperture is closed, c&p from the old library (from your corrupt hdd) and then open Aperture. Like I said the images are not put back in, the ones not saved in your last backup of Aaperture and I haven't trued importing the right ones which would can tell from the Photo folder sturcture, but that could work as Aperture could match up the file to the metdata present in the project you copied in, maybe.

But then I did a show image in finder and all of the images in my copy of apeture, no matter if accessing Apeture form the new HDD or the old broken HDD linked all images to the old HDD! oh no!

This is too confusing, so I'm going to recover from TimeCapsule as I did a fresh OS X install then from TimeCapsule because the HDD wouldn't show up - you might have un into this problem. But I intend to restore from TC as I don't have access to my TC backups otherwise.

Then using DiskWorrior I will restore the Aperture stuff and hope it all works. Oh and guess what the library I had was from before the point releases, so if you access the Library (mine was from 2008) its actually got to be updated to work with the current (2.1.4 ~or something) release, then I stumbled upon another library, which cannot be diectly linked to (where I found those missing projects) in a folder called "ap2", which is adding more confusion.

Good luck, but I'm reinstalling (at great time cost) from TC, not a fresh OS install, then recovering my HDD from Disk Worrior.

Now I've scoured the web but nobody has gotten more info than that on this issue. I didn't backup the Library because just a single kb change from metadata or even closing down Aperture not even using it can change the file size and its a multi GB file so even Apple recommends excluding it from TC but I think I'll have to maybe make a copy. Apple needs to release Aperture 3 with TC compatibility BIG TIME!