kb6kgx Loc: Simi Valley, CA

What is happening with PHOTOS when, instead of the photograph that had previously been imported into the program, it shows, instead a blank rectangular "shape" where the photo used to be?

sumo Loc: Houston suburb

I don’t have this issue. Occasionally when the photo is loading it will appear as an empty square where a photo should be, but a couple seconds go by and the picture appears

Eric Bornstein Loc: Toronto Canada

I may be the 'poster boy' for issues experienced with the Photos program. I have been in discussions with the technical people at Apple since late December 2019. My conclusion thus far is that the issues have only risen recently and a software fix is required but such fix has not yet been developed. You can 'recapture' the image by bringing it up on your screen and click 'edit'. Once the image opens, test which edits you did that have resulted in a grey box. My experience is that I can apply crop but other ones such as 'filter' and 'adjustments' turn the image to a grey box. I have other issues where sometimes the photos program simply is frozen. In these cases I must force close the program and re-open it. I have other issues too frustrating to recount. The most curious is that 'one day' the program works perfectly and 'the next day', it is inoperable. This is a pattern that I have reported to Apple. I must say that the Apple people, in the early stages of my issues, were fabulous. They helped me get to a point where I could use the program effectively, yet experience 'blackout' periods without reason or cause. The se so-called blackout periods happen each time that I use the program, at various lengths of time. At those times, I persist and force close the program repeatedly so that I can complete the tasks that I had begun. Unfortunately for the past month, at least, I have not received any encouraging words or fixes from Apple.

secular

I don’t use Photos extensively but do use it often on my Mac, iPad and phone and have had no problems. I would suspect that the poor response from Apple for the past month may have to do with work place issues resulting from the virus. The seemingly random nature of your issues suggests a possible hardware problem. Maybe some ram or a graphics hardware degrading. Just a thought.

Eric Bornstein Loc: Toronto Canada

Hello secular
As part of the overall issue, my hardware was checked by Apple. Apple has acknowledged that the issue is software related.

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

This is a Lightroom story for the same problem. I recently transferred over 120,000 picture files to a new hard drive. Lightroom recognized the drive and all seemed ready to go. For the first time since LR3, is was buggy, acting just like your PHOTOS program, giving me gray boxes instead of pictures, long periods with the wheel of death spinning around, freezing to the point of having to force quit. Eventually it was suggested that maybe there was a problem with the Previews file. Read online how to dump it and rebuild all the previews. Took awhile but completely solved all the problems. Don't know how Photos works with previews, but it might be something to check out.
...Cam

Eric Bornstein Loc: Toronto Canada

Thank you. I will pass this to my contact at Apple. I'd rather not play with anything for fear of losing photos. This had already occurred with Apple's 'time machine'. I still don't know what this is but I know not to go there!

JohnR Loc: The Gates of Hell

Only recently moved from Aperture to Photos however I had a similar issue when transferring images from an external HDD. In Photos Preferences under the General tab there is an option to "Importing: Copy items to the Photos Library" If this is unticked the originals will remain on whatever it is you're importing from. If for example that's an SD card then ejecting the card removes the original and Photos cannot find it hence showing only a grey box. Maybe this is your problem - maybe not.

good2gonc Loc: Greater Raleigh, NC Metro Area

I hate Photos. I was a dedicated user of iPhoto and had NO, ZER, Nada, None, issues with it. I know it was 32 bit but why not reengineer it for 64 bit? I have been a Mac user for many years and I am seriously unhappy with Photos. Just my 2 cents.

levinton

I dislike Photos. Have another computer just with folders and photofiles. Works wonderfully. I am not sure what the advantages of Photos are - really poor search function, inconvenient interface with various photoediting software. Wish I could export all my photos within their respective folders out of this software. Any ideas or experience?

hj Loc: Florida

I use Apple's PHOTOS app extensively and have experienced none of the problems mentioned in this thread. However I do have one problem when I use the crop tool. After I import photos from my media card, if I then crop the photo it degrades the image drastically and creates multiple images of that shot including parts of other images ALL IN THE SAME FRAME. Example attached. I have discovered this doesn't happen if, after downloading the images to PHOTOS, I close the PHOTOS app and then reopen prior to making any crop. I've lived with this for a long time and so follow the routine of download, close Photos app, reopen photos app and then proceed with post processing including crops. Otherwise my PHOTOS app works great.

(Download)

Sally A

I've experienced the same, but generally with photos that are 15 years old or more and were imported from previous versions. I was wondering what to do about it, and for the past 20 minutes I've been slowly doing as Eric suggests and for the most part I am having decent luck with recovery. It was one of those things I sort of put off since the photos weren't necessarily critical. Thank you Eric!

kb6kgx Loc: Simi Valley, CA

My experience with iPhoto was nothing less than excellent. It suited my needs, it did what I needed it to do. Although I have been relatively happy with Photos, I'd rather have iPhoto back.

John from gpwmi Loc: Michigan

I've seen that too. It's a pain, but photo is still there. Go to another photo nd come back sometimes works or close and reopen PHOTOS. My computer is old and has issues, so I've written off to that.

kb6kgx Loc: Simi Valley, CA

My iMac is a "mid-2010" version and, even though I've upgraded the RAM to 12 GB, I've been told by Apple that the "missing" photos and "pixilation" when I do extreme cropping is due to an underpowered video card that can't handle the job I'm asking it to do.

Wish I could afford a NEW iMac at this time, but I have to keep using THIS one.