Hi David, thanks for a lll your advise.
I have checked some more. I had re installed Photoshop cs6 & Bridge once
because Phototshop suddenly did not recognise my Canon printer.
Of course I re installed the printer (Pixma OP 4950)
I had tranferred all my images to this hard drive, before re installing
Photoshop;
then put them back on the Mac. That when I found the damaged Photos.
It could be possible that all this back and forth did the damage.
I am going to change to an new back up external hard drive - as you wrote -
just to eliminate the possibility of corruption.
Ah and yes photoshop prints again
Gisela.