iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition

Appendix A. Troubleshooting

iPhoto isn’t just a Mac OS X program—it’s a Cocoa Mac OS X program, meaning that it was written exclusively for Mac OS X. As a result, it should, in theory, be one of the most rock-solid programs under the sun.

Still, iPhoto does have its vulnerabilities. Many of these shortcomings stem from the fact that iPhoto works under the supervision of a lot of cooks, since it must interact with plug-ins, connect to printers, talk to Web servers, and cope with an array of file corruptions.

If trouble strikes, keep hands and feet inside the tram at all times—and consult the following collection of problems, solutions, questions, and answers.

Importing and Opening

Getting photos into iPhoto is supposed to be one of the most effortless parts of the process. Remember, Steve Jobs promised that iPhoto would forever banish the “chain of pain” from digital photography. And yet…

My thumbnails appear as blank, gray rectangles.

Update your copy of iPhoto to 5.0.1 or later. Then rebuild your iPhoto library.

To do that, quit iPhoto. Then, while pressing the ⌘ and Option keys, reopen it. iPhoto will promptly rebuild your library, cleaning out unneeded cobwebs of data and ensuring that all relationships (between thumbnails and full-size images, for example) are healthy and strong.

iPhoto doesn’t recognize my camera.

iPhoto generally “sees” any recent camera model, even if it’s not listed on Apple’s Device Compatibility page (http://www.apple.com/iphoto/compatibility). If you don’t see ...