Weird Photo Editing Bug

Jamie Cox — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:45:42 +0000

I have been seeing weird behavior in iPhoto and Aperture when editing photos. This is happening pretty much every time I try to use certain photo tools, such as crop or straighten. Here’s some examples. I took photos of the screen with a camera, because this is too weird for a screen capture, I think.

First, select an innocent photo of a bird in iPhoto, and select the straighten tool:

Now the slightest adjustment of the straighten tool:

Here’s another manifestation using the crop tool. That weird rectangle in the upper left shouldn’t be there. Also notice the appearance of the overview thumbnail (it looks like the same junk as the photo above).

The first time I saw this, I though my photo was probably ruined, and I would have to reboot. However, I have found that the problem is only on the screen. Fortunately, the photo is not permanently affected. Usually, as soon as you exit the edit mode and look at the picture, it looks normal again.

I called Apple Tech support about this once, but didn’t really get anywhere. The problem was present under Leopard and persisted after the Snow Leopard install. I am using a 20″ iMac 2GHz Core 2 Duo.

Update: Nov 30, 2010. I am now on 10.6.5, and I haven’t seen this problem for a while. I’m thinking that it was fixed by one of the recent system updates. I haven’t installed iLife ’11 yet.

Update June 20, 2011. Now on 10.6.7, and iLife ’11, and no recurrences of this at all! Yeah! Thanks Apple.
-Jamie Cox

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Weird Photo Editing Bug