Leopard Issue - Opening Multiple Images

[NoSalt]

Hello All

I have found an oddity in Snow Leopard. I downloaded multiple images from the internet into a directory, and no matter which way I try I cannot open them all at the same time. I have used three methods:

1. Select all images in the Finder and drag them to the "Preview" icon in the dock
2. Select all images in the Finder and chose "Open" from the menu.
3. Use the terminal and enter "open -a /Applications/Preview.app *.jpg"

No matter which method I use, only two or three of the images open at a time. What is also weird is that if I open an image by itself and then use one of the methods above, it will open in the group. Meaning, that if 01.jpg, 02.jpg, and 03.jpg open in the group and I individually open 04.jpg, then 01.jpg, 02.jpg, 03.jpg, and 04.jpg will open in the group. If I open 05.jpg by itself, then that image will be be opened in the group. I didn't have this issue in 10.5 - or any other 10.x version.

Anybody have any ideas of what is causing this?

Thanks for reading.

[DeltaMac]

I have a MacBook running 10.6 - and successfully opened 25 .jpgs in Preview. I don't see your problem.
Have you tried simply restarting your Mac?
Another way to view multiple images:
select your set of images, and press your space bar, which opens all the selected images in a QuickView slide show. What happens when you try that?

Is there any possibility that you have some third party software that is not liking your Snow Leopard, and causes your image viewing problem?

[NoSalt]

I'll try these things when I get home and report back. Thanks for the tips.

[javathehutt]

I am experiencing the same problem. This looks like a Snow Leopard bug.

I have filed a bug report with Apple. I suggest you do the same. The more voices, the more likely the attention. At the same time, I'd be surprised if Apple hasn't already caught this and is planning a fix for 10.6.1 if not sooner. Still, you can file a bug report here:

http://bugreport.apple.com/

Cheers,

Michael

[NoSalt]

Ok ... rebooting did not help at all. However, I did find out something interesting. I have 46 images in all. If I select all of them and drop them on the Preview.app icon in the dock, 12 of them open in one window and a 13th opens in another window. If I close all windows and do the same thing, 13 open in one window and a 14th opens in another window. This progression happens every time I do this; one more will open in the group window and another single will open as well. I assume that if I do this enough times then all images will open.

Anybody have any more ideas?

Thanks

[NoSalt]

By the way ... this goes for any image application (e.g., GraphicConverter) and not just Preview.app.

[NoSalt]

Ok ... I've figured it out. My image files were "quarantined". I figured that there must be some kind of permission issue so I did a long listing and got many files that looked like this:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 user  admin    79K Aug 30 20:51 filename.jpg

So I did some research and found out that the '@' sign at the end meant that the file has additional "Apple" attributes. The article suggested that I run:

xattr -l <filename>

to see what the extra permissions were. I did and came up with a listing that looked like this:

filename.jpg: com.apple.quarantine: 0000;4a9b1e40;Safari;|com.apple.Safari

So, I did some more research on "com.apple.quarantine" and found out that it relates to the annoying Apple message that says:

"<name>" is an application which was downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?

The article said to fix the file attributes I should run the following:

sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine filename.jpg

I did this and now all my images open up just fine. Very frustrating indeed. So now this problem of mine is solved. Thank you very much to all who read and replied. Now I have a different question. Does anybody know how to disable this annoying feature on Snow Leopard???

Have a good one

[javathehutt]

Wow! Awesome detective work. I still hope Apple will revert this behavior back to the pre-Snow Leopard versions.

[nashish]

Do you have to run that code in terminal for each and every image you've downloaded? I download a lot of images and it's not really feasible for me to run that code on every one... Is there some way to remove this "quarantine" of files en masse?

[NoSalt]

So far, yes, I need to run the code on every image in order to group open them all at the same time. I made a shell alias to do it for me, but it's still a pain to have to do this. Leopard (10.5) wasn't near this fussy. I haven't found a way to disable it thus far but I am still looking around; and I don't mean a script or something. I want to disable that function at the core. Let me know if you come up with something.

[ganbustein]

xattr can operate on multiple files, and will operate recursively through subfolders if asked. For example:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine *.jpg
un-quarantines all .jpg files in the current directory,

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/*
un-quarantines all files in your Downloads folder, and

sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Developer/Documentation
un-quarantines all of your developer documentation.

Keep in mind that indiscriminate un-quarantining increases your exposure to infection, just like in real life. I wouldn't advise attaching a folder action to your Downloads folder to automatically un-quarantine everything you download.

[stratboy]

I've got the very same problem, but the unix solution, is good but hey, odd.. I cannot believe that there's any simple solution to the problem... Anyone knows maybe???

[Fyrisaren]

Here are two simple, complementary workarounds, which apply to folders extracted from archive files downloaded with browsers which set the quarantine attribute, such as Safari and Firefox (and others?).

A) For folders extracted using the Archive Utility (the default in current OS X)

Simply drag the folder to an application in the Dock (or in the Finder), (see also my post at the Apple support forums). Any program which responds in some way (even just by starting) to a dropped folder will do. This will un-quarantine all of the folder's contents. Holding alt+cmd while dragging to the Dock gives more possibilities for where to drop the folder. Select some application, such as Firefox or TextEdit, which can't be expected to do anything harmful to your files, or simply drag an image folder to Preview. TextEdit is one of the choices if you don't really want to load the folder into a program, because it wont open anything, but the un-quarantining will still happen.

Or you can simply type open <and drag the folder to here> in the Terminal, which will have the same effect!!!

B) To avoid the need for A above, use StuffIt Expander when possible

Unlike Archive Utility, Expander (14.0/2010) doesn't propagate the quarantine attribute from the downloaded archive-file to the extracted content, so using it when possible will avoid the problems with quarantined files.

--
For files which have been downloaded individually (even if en masse), rather than in an archive, if you want to avoid the command line, you could drop the files into a folder newly extracted with the Archive Utility, and then use the method described under A above.

For help with the xattr command in the Terminal, type xattr -h

--
I think what Apple need to do is simply make Preview.app (and other programs?) handle these quarantine attributed files in a way which makes sense to the user, which it currently doesn't ...

[Fyrisaren]

Correction/clarification:

For files which have been downloaded individually rather than in an archive: If you want to avoid using the command line, you can drop the files (contained in their own folder if you like) into a folder which has been newly extracted using the Archive Utility from an archive file which was downloaded with Safari or Firefox, and then use the method described under A above.

--
And a disclaimer: Since i have recently upgraded from a rather old version of OS X, I'm not sure about what problems could be caused by using StuffIt Expander to unpack other things than simple archives of JPEGs, text files, and similar.

But I know that Expander strips away some extended attributes, such as the quarantine attribute, so another way to unquarantine files is to just zip the files using Archive Utility (the standard Compress "..." in Finder's context menu), and then unzip them with Stuffit Expander.

[stratboy]

@Fyrisaren

Thank you, that seems to be a quite good solution, for know. In the meantime, I hope apple will refine that feature.

Bye!