PSE15 Broken thumbnails in Organizer

Report · Feb 10, 2017

Hi,

I have just installed PSE15 and opened Organizer. I added Bulkfolders (23000+ at once) and the thumbnails are build. After building some of the thumbnails changed to broken image. The files are correct and still visible within Explorer.

I tried to correct the thumbnails with F5 and the menu option to renew the thumbnail. This has no effect.

I tried to correct the thumbnails by renaming the thumb.5.cache file. No effect either.

Can someone please help?

Best regards.

Report · Feb 10, 2017

Which camera was used to take those pictures?

It happens that some photos from smartphones are considered as 'corrupt' or with non-standard exif data by the Editor.

If you can open those jpegs from another software (your browser for instance), save them with another name. Would they open in the editor after that?

Broken thumbnail may be shown for very large file sizes (>30 000 pixels in one side), but you'd get an error message in PSE15.

Report · Feb 10, 2017

Hello Michel,

Thank you for your reply. The photos are taken by a Canon IXUS400. All the photos in the same folder. Of the totaal of 29 photos, only 5 have a correct thumbnail. The exif data is the same. When I open a photo by paint and save it with a different name, the tumbnail is created corretly. Strange. The exif data has not been changed by paint. Because this happens on a lot of photos, it is not a workflow to open-and-save them. I cannot open the photos by clicking either.

Above happens at more folders/photos, not only the example mentioned.

For your information: I am changing from Picasa to PSE. All these photos were correct in Picasa.

It looks like PSE has difficulties with the filestructure while Picasa/Explorer/Photoviewer/Paint don't. Strange.

I hope there is a solution, so I can use PSE for all my photos.

Best regards.

Report · Feb 10, 2017

JdW2017 wrote:
For your information: I am changing from Picasa to PSE. All these photos were correct in Picasa.
It looks like PSE has difficulties with the filestructure while Picasa/Explorer/Photoviewer/Paint don't. Strange.

With the number of people switching from Picasa to Elements, we should see hundreds of posts about similar problems as yours. That's the first time I see this kind of problems. Yes, there are questions and issues about retrieving some Picasa people recognition metadata and other specific ones, but none like yours in my experience.

When I open a photo by paint and save it with a different name, the tumbnail is created corretly. Strange. The exif data has not been changed by paint. Because this happens on a lot of photos, it is not a workflow to open-and-save them. I cannot open the photos by clicking either.

You mean that the thumbnail is created, but nevertheless you can't open the jpeg in the editor? From your first post I was not sure if that was only a thumbnail creation problem or also a problem to open files in the editor.

I am at a loss what to suggest now, expect perhaps to ensure that such 'problem' files can't be opened in Elements by other users.

Report · Feb 15, 2017

Hello Michel,

Thanks for your reply.

For your information, I am unable to open the jpeg with the editor either. Opening with paint is no problem. Saving As is working well. Now I am able to use the photo within PSE and all is as it should be.

Because the problem is on many photos, it is not a nice workarround.

Another question is: What will happen in the future with new photos? Will I get this problem also? What can I expect of PSE because we don't know what is causing the problem?

I understood you are at a loss to suggest. I am also out of possibilities and a bit disappointed because of this.

Do you know how to contact Adobe about this?

Best regards.

Report · Feb 15, 2017

I would try to find what is common for those problem files. The camera, the file size ...

If basic photoeditors can open and save those files in a way that Elements or Photoshop can read, that means that there is something non standard in the metadata section of the jpegs, something which is ignored by advanced editors and which is not present in the files they save.