Finder crashes when folder containing certain JPEG images is opened
<p>There is a problem some people are noticing with how their Snow Leopard installations handle some JPEG images. When these images are viewed using built-in image rendering technologies, the application presenting them will crash. This includes the Finde
There is a problem some people are noticing with how their Snow Leopard installations handle some JPEG images. When these images are viewed using built-in image rendering technologies, the application presenting them will crash. This includes the Finder, which will quit and relaunch when a folder containing the files is opened and previews are rendered.
Apple discussion poster "Derision667" writes:
"Finder seems to work okay until I open folders with certain JPEG images in them. Specifically, it seems to crash whenever I open a folder that has images taken with my old Oregon Scientific camera. It gets a little bit annoying, because once I open the folder, Finder crashes...and then it relaunches, with the problem window still open...which causes it to crash immediately upon reopening. And then it relaunches again, again with the same window open, which causes it to crash again, and on and on into the night."
This problem seems to be related either to how the system handles some of the EXIF metadata that is embedded in the JPEG images, or how image previews are displayed. It could be from a bug in how the system is handling certain formats of EXIF data, or probably more likely from corruption in either of these two features.
Regardless of the specifics of this problem, there are a few potential ways to get around it. The first is to use a program that has its own technologies instead of core libraries to render images, and resave the images. There are a variety of image converters that can be used for this, such as the popular Graphic Converter utility, or image manipulation programs (Photoshop or Gimp). These programs can be used to strip out the EXIF data from images if it's not needed, as well as recreate any corrupted previews.
Alternatively, you can try editing the EXIF data with an editor such as "A Better Finder Attributes" to see if the problem is with how some fields are formatted, and if editing will set them up properly.
If you have this problem you can help Apple address it by sending the company a feedback report at the following Web site: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html. Be sure to select "Mac OS X 10.6.x" as your system version, and include specifics on the camera used to take the images, and how they were imported to your system.
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