Have you ever had a situation when you opened Lightroom and all thumbnails and images appeared blank? After discovering that the memory on our main PC was bad, I switched over my Lightroom catalog to my laptop for temporary access to be able to retrieve images to our clients. I opened a backup copy of the Lightroom catalog in Lightroom 3.0 and I was surprised to see that none of the images showed up, although my file path remained the same. Here is how it looked:
Lightroom blank images
I keep all images in a root folder called “Photos”, which makes it easier to open the images on different PCs – all I do is either make sure that the drive letter stays the same, or simply right-click the root folder and then select “Find Missing Folder…” and then point to the Photos folder on a different volume (by the way, if you have a messy Lightroom catalog, I highly recommend checking out my “How to organize images in Lightroom” article. If Lightroom cannot locate a folder, it typically looks like this:
Lightroom missing images
But in this case, the drive letter was the same and all paths were correct. When opening the images, Lightroom did not return any errors and the images stayed gray and would not refresh. I tried everything from deleting all cache folders to reimporting images and nothing worked.
After realizing that something completely different was causing this odd behavior, I decided to reinstall my Spyder 3 calibration software and re-calibrate the monitor. I remembered that my monitor profile was corrupt from before and could not load every time the machine rebooted. As soon as the monitor calibration process was finished, I re-opened Lightroom and voilà – all images showed up perfectly fine! Very strange, I had no idea Lightroom used monitor calibration profiles to load images.
Hope this is helpful for those who came across a similar problem!
About Nasim Mansurov
Apart from this blank image problem, I also face a strage issue…sometimes Lightroom says that my image is damaged or corrupted, but the same image opens easily with Nikon Capture NX….any clue?
Biswajit, I am very sorry for missing your comment…
As far as image corruption – do you actually see the image in Lightroom? Can you show me a screenshot?
I have the dreaded blank images showing up in LR since last night. Nothing in my process has changed. I am running Windows 7 64-bit and LR 3.2. I do not use an external calibration system (I know, egads but my prints looks great) so this would not be the issue I am having. I checked the monitor color profiles and all looks good. I am at a loss and losing work time as every minute ticks by.
Any other thoughts as to the cause?
Amy, did you set up monitor calibration through Windows? If you have any kind of monitor calibration active, you have to kill it first. Remove those color profiles from Windows and see what happens…
90% of the time, the blank image issue is related to monitor profiles.
A quick follow-up.
Had problems with Lightroom 3.2 not showing images on second monitor under Windows 7.
After installing Windows 7 and then Lightroom, Windows 7 updated the display drivers, which lost me the second display in Lightroom.
Turns out that your fix also cured this issue for me. I ran the “Monitor Calibration” in Windows 7, and the 2nd monitor returned as normal.
Thanks :-)
Thoger, I am glad that you were able to resolve your problem :) Seems like the issue with blank images has to do with color profiles 99% of the time.
This problem also appeared to me yesterday.. i was not using LR for a while and when i opened it i found blank thumbnails.. Reinstalling it didn’t solve.
So i removed monitor color profile and added it back and voilà, it’s working now!
Thank you very much!
You are most welcome Fabio :)
I thought that it was my spider 3… thanks for confirming this!
You are most welcome Derek!
I have a related problem, but slightly different.
I scanned a photo using Epson V700 at 2400 bpi. Then I reduced the bit-density using Windows Office Picture Manager and saved the photo.
When I imported this saved photo into LR2, the image was blank. I still haven’t figured out how to fix this problem!
David
David, your image is probably corrupt…
Well true, I also had a color profile defined in the my Windows Vista
> Display Settings > Advanced > Color Management, I deleted that, and VOILA!!! it works!!
Thank you!!! :D
-rJ
i have done this : Display Settings > Advanced > Color Management but nothing change.. Still the same, still blank.. :(
Hi..I had the same problem mentioned above…
I’m using windows 7….
Go to Personalize>display>Change display settings>Advanced settings>Color management>Advanced>
Try changing the device profile…..
Worked fine for me…Thanx guys