Participant

Question

Images disappearing or turning black

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 18, 2024
9 commentaire
9904 vue

Illustrator has been increasingly glitchy for a few months now. When working on files, images will randomly turn black or disappear - the image is still clearly there as it highlights blue when I hover my cursor over it, but the photo or graphic will not show up. It usually comes back briefly if I save, close, quit Ai, and reopen, but shortly it will happen again. I am using MacOS Sonoma 14.1.2 with the most updated 2024 version of Illustrator. All my images are .jpg or .png in RGB stored on an external hard drive. I store the images in their proper folders before importing them into the Ai file, so they aren't missing or unlocated. I have noticed it doesn't happen as frequently when I save the project file on Adobe Cloud and work from there, but that doesn't solve my problem completely - still have disappearing images.

Please help! My workflow is so interrupted by having to close and quit the program every 10 minutes!

Bug

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi everyone,

Thanks for sharing your inputs and for your patience while we looked into this. The team is aware of this issue and has requested the exact reproducible steps along with an affected sample file for testing. Please share these so we can investigate it further. Using the Place command continues to work as a temporary workaround.

Once we have the required details, we'll share updates as soon as there's progress.

Thanks again for your cooperation and for sharing recordings and observations

Abhishek

joannax2560345

Participant

I am having these issues for a couple of months now, it's incredibly frustrating. I am relinking the images, and they disappear a second or two later if I move anything on the artboard, it's really not ideal, on a deadline and this is so bad. Please sort it asap! I have to move everything over in Figma now.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @joannax2560345,

Thanks for sharing the details about the disappearing images. I completely understand how frustrating this must be, especially when you’re working on a tight deadline. To help us investigate further with the team, could you please confirm the version of Illustrator and macOS you're using? It would also be helpful to know if this happens with all files or only certain ones.

Could you also check if this issue still occurs on the latest version of Illustrator, v29.8.1? I'm coordinating with the team to look into this, and knowing whether it persists on the newest version will help us pinpoint the cause.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

M

marcel81

Known Participant

i have Sequoia 15.6.1 with Illustrator 29.8.1. I made a quick video of the issue.

Bildschirmaufnahme_2025-09-11_um_14-46-24.zip

M

marcel81

Known Participant

for me, it happens since v29, first i thought that it happens only when the document was not been saved before,

but even if i save the document, the image disappears - but only sometimes.

Bildschirmaufnahme_2025-07-04_um_08-33-03.zip

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Marcel, it looks very much like this:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447-illustrator-desktop-bugs/suggestions/49703918-images-disappearing-after-drag-and-drop-on-mac

S

Studio_Miyabi0278

Participant

Hi there,

Also having this issue and it's incredibly frustrating. I can relink the image and it then appears but after a few minutes of working on the file, the images are gone again. Adobe team, please fix this - we pay far too much for an issue like this to go on for so long and it's disruptive to my workflow.

A

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @Studio_Miyabi0278,

Could you share more details, like the version of the OS/Illustrator installed, if this happens with all files or file from a specific folder location along with a small screen recording of your workflow and the problem, so we can better assist you?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

K

karina_9096

Participant

Been having the exact same issue for the past couple of months! It doesn't seem to matter whether the links are embedded or not, my images are still turning black or completely disappearing, and actually get worse the more I work on a file. I've sent my ai files to coworkers and it doesn't seem to be an issue for them. Sometimes I can see the image on the artboard but the image ends up exporting all black. Using MacOS Sequoia 15.5 and the latest 2025 version of Illustrator.

I've tried saving images on my external hard drive and internally on my computer but still get the same issue. The creation and modification dates shows as February 6, 2040 for all my links as well so not sure if that could be a separate problem or part of the same bug.

I attached screenshots and a screen recording of the issue on three completely different ai files and projects.

Screen_Recording_2025-04-28_at_10-25-18_AM.zip

S

Studio_Miyabi0278

Participant

Hi there,

Also having this issue and it's incredibly frustrating. I can relink the image and it then appears but after a few minutes of working on the file, the images are gone again.

Adobe team, please fix this - we pay far too much for an issue like this to go on for so long and it's disruptive to my workflow.

J

jaclyn_3201

Participant

I am also having this issue. Has there been any fix?

A

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @jaclyn_3201, @annep16849260,

Would you mind sharing more details, like the version of the OS/Illustrator, if Illustrator behaves this way with all files or files from a specific folder, and a small screen recording of the problem (if possible), so I can better assist you?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

J

jaclyn_3201

Participant

Hi there,

Thanks for getting back to me. I re-downloaded version 28.7.5 of 2025 Illustrator and I haven't experienced the issue since. Potentially something with the latest version?

I did also try new Beta version and same issue - I took some screenshots when it was happening but note, it was happening on 2025 too. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of work when the bug occured so I'm hestitant to replicate again.

Image 1 shows how the image has disappeared - You can still see a line of what the image was at the top.
Image 2 shows when I'm in Outline View (command + Y) and can see that the image sillhouette is there and I can select it but when I leave Outline View the image is still gone/empty.
The link on the link panel also showed as empty - Sorry I didn't get a screenshot.
Please let me know what you think could be the issue!

A

annep16849260

Participant

I am also having the same issue! Please fix this Adobe!!

S

sydnney2672703868foAuteur

Participant

Upon further investigation, it seems that the links are being broken. If I go into the links library, I can manually relink the files and the images will reappear, but I don't understand why this is happening and so frequently. I've been using the same workflow forever and have never had this issue before.

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

The links should not break if the file path to the files do not change,. You should also show a red chain icon showing the link is broken.

You are showing no icon which means the file is embedded. Please flip the triangle underneath to confirm what happened to the file.

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

If you are logged into an incorrect account, or maybe you have a slow connection you will have more problems with saving to the cloud. Why not create those gradients in Illustrator instead? If you ned more help please flip the triangle to show the information on the image file in question, so we can better help you.

kglad

Community Expert

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from using the community bugs">

S

sydnney2672703868foAuteur

Participant

thank you!

Inscrivez-vous

Login social

Bienvenue

Login social

Analyse virus du fichier

Ce fichier ne peut pas être téléchargé