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Help My pictures are getting "grayed" out! Need help!

C

chicagoandroid

Lurker
Wondering if anyone is having this problem - I take a picture on my phone, turns out great, then I go to access it later, and half the picture has a grey block over it! I don't have a photo editor installed and I'm not cropping the pics. But it keeps happening.

Is this a defect or am I accidentally hitting something? Any help would be appreciated, as I've lost a couple of photos that I'd like to get back!
 
Image is attached. For some reason, there's a gray block that appeared out of nowhere, covering up the majority of the pic. Any suggestions??
 

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chicagoandroid said:
Image is attached. For some reason, there's a gray block that appeared out of nowhere, covering up the majority of the pic. Any suggestions??
Click to expand...

Why did you attach a PDF and not just provide a few photos via image hyperlink!? :confused:

Also are you using the stock software for the camera or a third party app?
 
chicagoandroid said:
Image is attached. For some reason, there's a gray block that appeared out of nowhere, covering up the majority of the pic. Any suggestions??
Click to expand...

Looks to me that the write to SDcard or Ext-SDcard is failing about halfway through. Where are you storing the pictures? If to the external SDcard then try re-seating it, if that does not work a reformat, and if that does not help then a new card. A reboot is always a good idea too.
 
I attached a pdf, rather than the hyperlink, because I didn't know how to use it! This is my first time using a forum. And a jpg was too large of a file.

I am using an external microSD, where all my images are being stored to. The picture actually came up fine the first few times I looked at it after taking it, then just one random time, it went gray.

I'm wondering if there's any thoughts on how to correct this photo or you think that re-seating / re-formatting the SD card moving forward is the best option?
 
Take the card out and take a few picture to see if it does the same thing. I too think it is your card. Is it a good card-not a China knockoff? Someone will correct me if I am way off base, but it was my understanding that when you take a picture it resides initially on the phones memory while it writes to the card. This is why it may look fine when you take it but fails writing to the card. I had a card fail on my camera and it looked similar.
 
Too many unknowns for a "real good" solution. Are you viewing this photo on a PC or the phone, only one photo out of many corrupted, did you unplug the usb before a write or update was finished, what app did you use to view the photo, is the photo still corrupted, on and on, ....

If it were me, I'd just copy everything from the SDcard, re-seat it, reformat it, copy everything back to the SDcard, and try a whole bunch of photos that are throw away to see if the problem looks solved.

Worse case, trash the SDcard and buy a new one.
 
I had a full size SD card go bad in a point and shoot camera. About 15 vacation pictures looked just like the one you posted. It's a bad SD card. You can try reformatting it, but I wouldn't trust it. Just get a new SD card.
 
Thanks a lot everyone for the feedback - I'll try to copy the pics to the phone and then use the SD card again, but it's likely that it's a bad SD card.
 
I am getting gray pictures when using my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0(GT-P3113) to take pictures. Happens about 75% of the time and only affects the rear camera, the front facing camera always works. Talked to Samsung about it and they were clueless. My brother told me his is doing it too! ( Same model) Samsung had me do a complete reset but that didn't make a difference.
 
I had the same problem. Took scores of pictures of a tiger while on safari, but all came solid grey. Luckily doing a 'Reset' from the camera settings itself fixed it , but i had to be satisfied with some shots of deers.
Please note i don't have an sd card.
 
Seems like another issue with S3 and external micro sd cards.

I've had similar situation on a few pics that were ok originally but came up bad later. I've also had S3 complain about SD card going bad, but still able to reformat.

Also have seen other posts about issues with S3 and micro sd cards. I've had it complain about 2 different 32 gb Micro SD cards. Lexar brand from FS.

Yesterday couldn't play mp3's from phone. Player said it didn't work with that format file. Also couldn't play via kies. Something corrupted all files on the SD card, but S3 still thought card was fine. Couldn't delete any files either so had to format.

Sorry if I hijacked this thread. I was going to post about my issues when I saw this thread.

I'm on JellyBean, but had issues on ICS as well.
 
I am having this same problem with my new Samsung S8. Photos are saved to my card. However, not all photos have the problem, on some of them. Took a series of 5 photos today and the thumbnails are fine, the photo opens fine but 4 of the 5 immediately grey out 90% of theach photos as I am viewing them. I texted one photo and it was fine in the text but my original greyed out in the Gallery. I saved a copy from my sent text and it is still find. What is going on?
 
Same problem on my S5 for the last year or so. It happens intermittently, and can happen with only one of a series or many of a series taken at the same time. Note that the thumbnail is the full image. The grey portion varies from 25% to 80%. I can't figure out any pattern.

On another image, I could switch from another photo to the damaged one and the full image showed for a split second. I don't know if it was showing the thumb or it had a good image and the blocking was happening on reviewing.

If anyone has more info from any source, please post.
 

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Similar here with my Galaxy S5. Took pictures about two weeks ago - no problem. However, starting today (have not taken any pictures in the interim), if I take pictures with my rear-facing camera and have them stored on my SD card, the pictures are corrupted. I have included a screenshot of what the thumbnails in Gallery look like. The first eight thumbnails in the Gallery screen are pictures I took today. Only one came out (blurry, but that was my fault). If I click on the one with vertical multi-colored bands, it actually displays a good picture. Clicking on the others, the ones with horizontal multi-colored lines or the exclamation mark, displays a grey picture.

Not, upon doing some more experimentation with the front-facing camera, sometimes the thumbnails show the exclamation mark but clicking on the thumbnail will display a good picture.

My phone has automatically done several updates over the past two weeks, so I am guessing one of those updates may have caused the issue, but I am not 100% sure.

No older pictures on the SD card are corrupted - only new pictures that I take.

I tried using a different camera app, Open Camera, and it has the same issues when storing to the SD, too.

Hopefully someone has a resolution, besides doing a factory reset. I'd hate to have to reinstall and re-customize the phone.

Thank you,
Al
 

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breezex said:
Too many unknowns for a "real good" solution. Are you viewing this photo on a PC or the phone, only one photo out of many corrupted, did you unplug the usb before a write or update was finished, what app did you use to view the photo, is the photo still corrupted, on and on, ....

If it were me, I'd just copy everything from the SDcard, re-seat it, reformat it, copy everything back to the SDcard, and try a whole bunch of photos that are throw away to see if the problem looks solved.

Worse case, trash the SDcard and buy a new one.
Click to expand...
The same thing has happened to me on a Samsung S4. I had accessed the pictures many times and then some of them came up for a second then were blocked out. And others taken at the same time still worked, over time many more are completely blocked out they are on an sd card. Many other pictures are still ok for now. Its really wierd. The other stuff on the sd card like music is still fine. I dont think it is the card....it is just so random!
 
SD cards ... even authentic ones ... are notorious for failing in unpredictable ways. I think the best thing to do is to take the card out of the phone and use a PC to scan it for file integrity. I'll be you'll find a bunch of bad sectors.

Please, if the files (photos) are important to you, back them up quickly and frequently.
 
Nobody has mentioned the fact that this could be a trojan or a virus? I had this happen to several pictures.

Not only my pictures but my mp3 music files were affected. One out of every 20 songs would skip halfway thru the song, or not play at all.

I bought a brand new sandisk sd card. And the last one I bought is name brand. Let's look at the obvious that its yea possibly the sd card for some, but mass devices have been infected. Any comments?
 
Well it can't be a virus because there aren't any Android viruses in the wild (I believe a concept has been demonstrated in a lab, but the OS design makes them difficult). A trojan is possible, how likely depends on where you install apps from.

But have you tested your SD cards after buying them? Named brand means nothing if it's a fake card (and I've had a lightly-used Samsung card fail totally after just a couple of month, so even genuine ones aren't immune from problems). Even reputable suppliers sometimes get some fakes in their supply chains, but sites like eBay or Amazon Marketplace are full of fakes. If the only symptom is file corruption then a problem with the card is still the most likely. If it keeps happening with the same phone you could also consider a fault in the phone as a possibility.
 
Aaron R said:
Nobody has mentioned the fact that this could be a trojan or a virus?
Click to expand...

Let's refer to this as 'malware' since there's a lot of misinformation out there about what constitutes a virus. Long gone are the days when the main purpose of intrusive code was to simply cause damage. There's simply no money in it. Malware has three main objectives. One is to steal your information. It would do this by stealth and try to keep itself as inconspicuous as possible. Corrupting files would be a BIG red flag. The second purpose would be to steal service ... either make your device act as a relay on a bot network for spam or to use processor cycles to mine cryptocurrency. Again, doing things that alert you to a problem is going to be counterproductive for these guys. Finally would be the ransomware aspect. But they'ed want to encrypt, not corrupt. Since Android 6 and greater is encrypted by default, ransomware hasn't been an issue for mobile devices.

Aaron R said:
One out of every 20 songs would skip halfway thru the song, or not play at all.
Click to expand...

If it's always the same song and replacing it from a backup or copy fixed the problem, then it almost assuredly is your storage medium. If however, it's random and the songs that wouldn't play will be fine after a reboot, then I'd look at your phone and it's power and resources. You might simply have too much going on for it to handle and it hangs up after a certain point. You didn't mention if your phone get's hot when this happens. This would confirm a lot of processor activity and power consumption and the problem might simply be thermal protection circuitry kicking it.
 
Me and my wife have this problem on numerous pictures when saving to an external SD. I now only take pictures to the on board memory, then transfer them over to the SD if I need space. Doing that, I've never had a problem. We've tried multiple cards, ranging from cheap ones to the fastest and most expensive. They all have done this from time to time.
I will say it's forced me to pull pictures off my phone more frequently and back them up on alternative storage. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Previously, I'd let that 32gb card fill all the way up then struggle with 32gbs of media files and getting them off it. It's always a bit nerve racking unmounting a card with a years worth of pictures, hoping it didn't fail some how....
 
I am having the same problem with some differences on a brand new Galaxy 9. Not all of my photos are affected - some turn out fine. The affected ones are not always completely covered and are not always gray. They are various colors. Also the thumbnails of the affected photos are sometimes covered with a solid color or sometimes with what looks like a transparent colored filter. Only one of the photos comes up with the transparent covering when you open it but the rest are covered with a solid color. I tried to attach some samples of the affected photos but was unable to edit them - kept getting a "corrupted jpeg file" error. So I've attached screen shots. Sample-02.png Sample-03.png Sample-01.png
 
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