Only half a picture vs full view thumbnail???

[Bayoublaster400]

I have some pics taken at my step-daughters high school homecoming event and although most can be viewed full size, some pics only show the upper half of the pic and not the lower half, but yet they all show the complete pic in thumbnail view and they are all preety much the same size in bytes. Any ideas what I may be doing wrong or how to fix the pics? I need to make a 8 X 10 of one of them. I've tried numerous photo editing software programs without any luck. They are no longer on the memory card. Thanks again.

[Frog]

Windows or Mac? I don't even know if that makes a difference.
What are you viewing them with?

[Bayoublaster400]

Windows OS (vista but have tried in XP Pro also) Have tried viewing them with Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Excifer, the standard Windows picture viewer, Lightzone.

Hope this helps.

[SmartWombat]

The thumbnail is put in the file when it is created, probably in the camera if it was saving in .JPG format.
It sounds like a few corrupted files, because jpeg files are compressed a small error in the file can cause the decompression of the rest of the file to fail.

The photos MAY be on the memory card, if you have not filled it with new pictures.
Even if you reformatted it.
I got essential photos off a card for a colleague, that were taken about a year ago and the card used since then. I was lucky she'd not filled the card again and recovered photos of one of her friends.
I used Zero Assumption Recovery.

You may be lucky.

[drg]

Welcome to PR, even if it isn't for the best 'first' reason.

As you have some/many images that display properly it first sounds as if some are damaged or corrupted. The thumbnail is frequently a separate file/image embedded in the larger one. This could explain part of the problem. The other is that the CODEC(software program) that decodes the image to generate the thumbnail are often written to read only a portion of the file (like resizing, but via reading every other or 4th or some number of 'lines') and thus if there is corrupted data it skips over it.

You say they are all the same size? Do you mean the files that will not display? Are they a different size than files that display properly? If so that sounds like a known symptom of a corrupted file. If these are all in a non-proprietary format, such as JPEG, TIFF or the like, try a file recovery program to see if it can fix the damage. There are several problems from checksum to eof marker that may be correctable.

One possible problem is that you have a highly fragmented disk. It is a rare occurrence to affect an image but it can happen. Copy one or two files that are not displaying correctly to another device (thumb drive, flash memory(such as a card in a reader), etc. and then see if the file opens correctly from that device. If not go back to the file recovery software concept.

If you have had this problem often, first replace your memory card in your camera or at least format it! I format cards every time I use them (after unloading the photos ).

Let us know how you come out with the problem. Again welcome to Photography Review and hope you will return with better news and share some photos too!