Digital pictures problem

[dalesman]

Several times now some of the digital pictures I have stored on hard drives, USB memory sticks have shown a colour cast over a section of the picture, ie. green or magenta or grey.

Has the image data become corrupt for some reason?

If so what causes it as it seems to happen for no reason, the picture will be fine for a while after downloading from the camera but then show up with this part colour cast some months later.

[Flogger]

have you tried going to your camera's company website to see if this is a common issue. it may be the software you are using to transfer the pictures also. good luck.

[dalesman]

These are photos that have been taken by three different cameras. All the photos downloaded ok & had no probs.

The colour cast just seems to happen several months later for no reason.

This shows that you need several backups of your photos/data.

[BlobbyBob]

Are you sure it isn't your monitor? I know that our TV downstairs sometimes gets geen or meganta blotches on it, something to do with the Sky TV box underneath.

[dalesman]

No, it's the photos themselves. When viewing a group of photos as thumbnails the odd one shows up with this colour change when previously it had been ok.
I'm thinking the file data has become corrupt somehow.

[dalesman]

The colour changes you have on your tv with the sky box may be caused by the transformer inside the sky box. Stray magnetic fields will cause a colour shift in a CRT tv, speakers will do this also.

[garbo]

Assuming the photos themselves aren't corrupt and the monitor is fine, it could be the visual interpretation of the display program you are using. If you are viewing them through a browser such as Explorer or Firefox, they will appear different than through Photoshop. Jpegs may appear a little different than .tiff or .eps images. The basic paint programs through Microsoft do not have the same mechanisms to read the color codes embedded in the image. My Mac will view images in "Preview" mode to eliminate the need to open Photoshop. The images in preview mode are not as rich and the resolution is not as high. Casting of colors can also be a function of the hue and saturation controls in your paint program as well. It is possible that the calibration of whichever program you are viewing in is not adjusted properly.

Try to view the same images on another computer if possible. If the problem remains, it is likely the image is corrupt.

[JeepNude]

Sounds like a case of 'bit rot'. Burn-able CD's, removeable storage, etc. all suffer from various degrees of bit rot. Literally, the breaking down of the physical material itself which stored the data in a physical form.

2 backups are mandatory for anything you care about.

[Liam C]

Sounds like a case of 'bit rot'. Burn-able CD's, removeable storage, etc. all suffer from various degrees of bit rot. Literally, the breaking down of the physical material itself which stored the data in a physical form.

2 backups are mandatory for anything you care about.

I'm an idiot about such things, but I know from sad experience that this is true and good advice. When I saw the original post my first thought was "corruption".

[dalesman]

Loss of data seems to be the explanation then.
This happened on pictures that I had copied onto a newish USB hard disc though which made me wonder what had happened.
I've deleted the damaged photos otherwise I would have posted a sample one here to show what had happened.