Recently I discovered that one of my albums imported by reference was getting the unsupported image format triangle with the “!” in the middle. This has happened before, and I simply did a library rebuild to fix the problem. This time it didn't work.
Both before and after the library rebuild, I went to the finder and saw that the JPEGS had become inaccessible to Preview as well. The thumbnails were gone and when I try to open the file, I get this message:
'The file “[jpeg file name here] could not be opened. It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize.'
In the past, I've sometimes had this same error happen on referenced images to Aperture. But when I rebuilt the library, the images were mysteriously readable again by Preview.
Strange thing is, I went to my backup drive to check the images, and I'm getting the same problem on my backup copies—they also seem to be corrupted in this way; they won't open and I get the same error message. I'm not sure how Aperture could have affected these files, other than the remote possibility that it has something to do with having my Aperture backup vault on the same drive.
It doesn't seem logical that it's a hard drive issue, because both the referenced images and the backup images are stored on separate external hard drives.
It could be a CF card issue, but when I oringinally copied them from my CF card to the external disk I store all my referenced files on, the images were fine; good enough to import into Aperture by reference and work with a bit. I did a disk utility check on that hard drive and it says it's fine. Shortly after copying the images to the reference drive, I copied them again to the backup drive.
Is there any way that Aperture itself can corrupt my referenced JPEG images? This seems odd, since Aperture is reading FROM, rather than writing anything TO the referenced files, correct? I don't understand why, in the past, getting the 'unsupported image format' warning could affect my files from opening outside of Aperture, and then be corrected after a library re-build (without the external hard drive being even plugged-in to my computer).
I'm a professional photographer. These particular images aren't precious, but I'd like to understand what's going on so that I can avoid this problem in the future on a critical project.
As an add-on, can anyone recommend any good JPEG recovery software for mac? I’ve been looking around and most of the programs I’ve found searching for JPEG ‘recovery’ or repair have been geared to recovering deleted files, and are set up to have you search a whole disc or volume. I just want a program which I can direct toward an individual corrupted, non-deleted JPEG file and try to recover it. I tried Stellar Pheonix JPEG repair (For windows XP on my Parallels Virtual Machine), but it said the file was non-recoverable.
Jeremiah,
I’ve been sitting idly by hoping someone else would chime in on this one. I guess not :(
I’d suggest that it’s not possible for Aperture to corrupt the files for the reason you state — it’s reading from, not writing to, the images. The only way it can write to the file is you explicitly use the command to embed IPTC data into the Original. You didn’t mention that so I’ll assume you’re not doing this. Of course I can’t say unequivocally that it’s impossible for Aperture to corrupt a file, but it’s designed specifically to not do that sort of thing.
You said you ran Disk Utilities; did you do permissions repair? Also have you tried copying the “broken” JPEG to another drive, or even better across a network, which will reset the permissions? I wonder if it could be as simple as a permissions error.
I don’t know of any image recovery software, sorry.
@PhotoJoseph
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I’m going currently through a similar nigthmare: Since Version 3.3 i have 574 missing files in the library! Mostly CR2, Canon Raw Files, all external on a FW HD. The files are gone not only from the external HD, but also from the time machine backup (spotlight does not find it) which is on a different FW HD.
Also, and on top, the library contains a project with 224 images, but none are shown: No thumbnail, no dotted square, nothing! But the files are still where they have to be: All external, all managed. Import refueses to import it.
I will try a rebuild directly with 3.3. As i have stoped TM to not overwrite valid backups, i still can go back to v3.2.4, but thats not what i want.
PeterG
Peter.Guttinger
Missing images from backup vaults is not good. I have done about 6-8 library rebuilds and repairs and now with two good Vaults again Im feeling more secure. What Im trying to get across is that I don’t think one rebuild finds all the problems and that doing them does not hurt anything. At least on my computer. I a HD failing HD at the same time so Im not sure where the original problem was started. Also had and still have a few left tiffs with extra alpha channels from a previous PS workflow. All causing problems.
keep doing Repairs and Rebuilds it can only help. Unless you imported the images where they were ,CF Card, and never really got them onto a HD or managed Lib. That would be an OOPs!
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
Right now i’m repairing the library because i had to “Force Quit” Aperture because it was “not responding” anymore after i moved a few images from a newly imported project into another project.
For me, AP V3.3 is less stable than 3.2.4
Peter.Guttinger
The repair job popup indicates 100% complete - for about 10 minutes now.. What’s wrong with my library? or Aperture??
Peter.Guttinger
Thanks, Joseph,
I’ve tried viewing the files on three different drives. First, my external HD that I use for photos where I normally reference to, then checking to find that the files on the backup drive were the same (probably backed up with in a few days to two weeks of adding the files to the drive and importing them by reference to aperture right away). Then I copied one of the files onto my desktop and same issue.
That said, I didn’t do a permissions repair, I just clicked verify disk and it said it was fine.
The oddest thing is that both the backups AND the referenced files are corrupted, but they still imported into Aperture fine. I suppose if they got corrupted some time between my import and backup to the second external HD, that would explain it. They are not important photos, so I hadn’t really gone back to them. Mostly this is a preventative measure for the future.
OK–actually I just tried repair now and came up with ‘disk appears to be okay’. I have had some repair issues on the disk many months back (middle of last year) but the disk utility fixed them fine.
Any thoughts?
Thanks for your help!!
I’m afraid I’m at a loss. I’d start doing some google searches on damaged jpeg, repairs, the exact error dialog, etc. Maybe look in Console and see if you can get any more info on what is or isn’t happening. Remove Aperture from the equation since they are damaged everywhere (not saying Aperture wasn’t involved, just saying to start the search simple).
good luck,
-Joseph
@PhotoJoseph
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A Failing HD can damage jpegs and bad ram (I think). Does this first occur on one specific HD. Does your HD make a chattering noise. Can you build a new library on a different HD and see if you get the corruption Sorry if you posted this already.
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
It’s been my experience that it is rare for software to “corrupt” a file … it is more often a problem with storage device (either mechanical failure in HD’s or possibly static discharge for flash storage) that the file is being saved to. I’m not aware of any recovery software that can repair a corrupted jpeg … simply because, if the image data is missing, the software would have no idea what data to use to repair the image …
Like has been stated, there are many options than can discover latent data on storage devices by rebuilding directories and actually analyzing the current data held in storage that may have been previously removed from the live directory … but to repair a corrupted image, not so much …
I guess it depends on why it’s corrupted. If it’s just a damaged header, then it may be recoverable.
-Joseph
@PhotoJoseph
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When Aperture first came out, it was heavily criticised for using the ‘sidecar’ system for metadata. Apple explained at the time, that writing metadata to a file can corrupt it, but relented to user pressure and allowed metadata to be written as an alternative, into the file’s header, for convenience. This may be what has happened.
Within the Aperture database itself, Aperture doesn’t do anything to the original … it just sits there.
I have had some similar issues myself in the past, with not particularly supported formats … DNGs from Sinar in particular. Sinar’s DNGs now conform 100% to the latest DNG format and I haven’t seen any problems with these. However, even the ones with corrupted previews in Aperture, were absolutely fine when exported as originals and opened in the Sinar software itself.
JPEG’s seem to be most prone to damage when large amounts of metadata is written into them. I guess they weren’t designed to handle so much. It is a very old file format after all. It would be interesting to try stripping out the metadata from one of these corrupt jpegs and saving a copy to see if it becomes readable.
Try downloading a trial from here “http://basepath.com/site/detail-ExifExtreme.php”
and see if can open it.
It’s based on a freeware package called ExifTool which is excellent but you would need to be cmd line savvy to use it …
My Tuppence
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Andrew Mumford
Hoping this ends soon: The number of missing files increased from 574 to 590!!
(How can i add a screen shot here? Would show how it looks)
Peter.Guttinger