Goblin King

Hello,

I believe this is the first time for me posting here. My parents have a G5 iMac and use iPhoto 08 version 7.1.5 to edit and organize and view their digital camera's photos. Yesterday a peculiar problem arose wherein all photos viewed either large in a window or full screen would not render properly, the effect being a digital skipping or pattern being generated within the image.
Duplicates of the images, created by dragging the thumbnail from iPhoto to the desktop, open and enlarge without any problems in Preview. There seems to be something wrong with iPhoto itself, or the way iPhoto utilizes Quicktime to display the photos in it's library.

Here are the things I have tried:

-Deleted iPhoto preferences files and restarted iPhoto.
-Deleted all of iPhoto (not the Library database) and rebooted, then reinstalled iPhoto.
-Held the command and option keys while starting iPhoto and tried each of the checkbox options (rebuild database, rebuild thumbnails, etc) one at a time.

Nothing has made any difference. Clearly there is a more deep-rooted problem than the things I've tried.

Hopefully somebody will have a thought on how to go about diagnosing the problem. Also I've included images with this post to show you what is happening to the display of the pictures. One is of the photo displayed in iPhoto and the other is of the same photo being displayed in Preview.

Thanks for reading!
-C

Attached Images

	Picture 2.jpg (266.3 KB, 7 views)
	Picture 3.jpg (202.7 KB, 6 views)

sinclair_tm

That is weird, how it even does it to the black space around the photo. I'm not sure it's software or hardware. Have you tried making sure QuickTime is up to date, as well as trashing QuickTime's prefs. Other then that, I'd want to take it to an Apple and show them.

Goblin King

I'll try deleting Quicktime preferences, thanks for the suggestion. Quicktime and iPhoto are up to date. iPhoto wasn't up to date after I reinstalled it but it didn't improve the situation so I tried installing the updates, to no avail. I'm almost certain it's a software problem because the rest of the display and imagery throughout the OS is fine.

Thanks for helping.

Goblin King

Oh really stupid of me, I forgot to mention the operating system. It's 10.4.11. I'm home now but tomorrow if it would help I could post the machine's GPU model.

sinclair_tm

Yes, iMac model, CPU, RAM, video card, and hard drive size and free space.

Goblin King

I'll get that info to you as soon as I can. Hopefully tonight.

Goblin King

Machine name: iMac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac 12,1
CPU Type Power PC G5 (3.1)
CPU speed 1.9 GHz
L2 Cache 512 KB
Memory 512 MB
Bus speed 633MHz
Boot Rom Version 5.2.6f1

Graphics:
Chipset model: ATY, RV370
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Bus: PCI
VRAM 128MB
ROM Revision 113-xxxxx-113
Device id: 0x5b62
Revision id: 0x0000

Serial Hard Drive: Capacity 149.05 GB
Model: WDC WD1600JS-40MVB1
Available space 81.9 GB
File System: Journaled HFS+

Quicktime version 7.6.0

I hope this helps!

sinclair_tm

Well, it's a 17" iMac. Are you running the screen at max resolution, 1440x900? Also, how large is the iPhoto library? How large is the image, are there any it doesn't do it to?

Goblin King

The resolution is native at 1440 x 900 and the colour depth is the full 32 bit. All of the photos are rendered this way when enlarged with iphoto and all of them appear properly rendered with other applications such as preview. I don't know the size of the iphoto library right now but I know it's between 3 and 8 GB. The photos that originated from my parents digital camera are all at 4:3 aspect ratio and 9 megapixels. I believe this puts one of the dimensions of the photos at more than 3000 pixels in length. There are a few scanned photos with varying sizes but they too are rendered badly when enlarged.

sinclair_tm

What happens when you lower the screen resolution, to say 1024x768?

Goblin King

Hmm. Well I reduced the resolution to 1024 x 768 and iphoto looks the same. I still think it's a quicktime related problem within iphoto. Unfortunately reinstalling iphoto made no difference, and quicktime can not be reinstalled without corrupting the system. I know from several attempts I made to do just that back when quicktime updated to 7.6 and was totally incompatible with a few third party applications. That was a common problem though, whereas this seems to be a one-off.
It looks as though I may have to reinstall the operating system, but then would it not be a matter of time before the same foul up occurs?

Goblin King

Here is a shot of the same thing when the resolution is 1024 x 768.

Attached Images

Picture 5.jpg (206.8 KB, 2 views)

sinclair_tm

I wouldn't reformat yet. I'd take it to an Apple store and show them, and see what they say it is.

Goblin King

Unfortunately we don't have the luxury of taking the computer to an apple store as we live on Vancouver island. I believe there may be an apple store on the mainland, and there is one in the states... Seattle I think. But those locations are at least a very expensive ferry ride and long drive away, so it will be best to reformat. Actually I'm thinking of installing 10.5, which will include iphoto 09 and be more compatible anyway. Thanks for your help though!

sinclair_tm

10.5 is a great OS. But it does not come with iPhoto 09. You will have to also buy iLife 09 to get the newest version of iPhoto.

Goblin King

I have a 2009 macbook that came with iphoto 09, I'll just copy the app to the imac when it has 10.5.

sinclair_tm

Chances are you can't just copy the app over as there is likely more to it then just the main icon in the app folder (that and technically it's illegal). Besides I'm still not convinced that it's an iPhoto/Quicktime issue. Looking at both images you posted, there are too many similarities in the artifacting to just be some random error. Have you checked out Apple's support forums on the matter yet? Apple techs will sometimes go and post in the forums there.