I hope this is the right forum. I keep all my photographs in picasa3 and also in picasa web album. And I can view them from picasa3 at my leisure.
Last night when I opened picasa3 I found that all the .jpg files have vanished, but not the .pdf files. I tried to view the individual .jpg files with gwenview (:loading metadata information failed), display (:empty input file), pqiv (:no image left) and djview (:cannot decode document; unexpected end of file). I then tried GUI by clicking on the files from Rudra's Home and got tthe message :Error interpreting JPEG image file (Improper call to JPEG library in state 200). In a desperate state I checked Picasa Web Album and was relieved to find all the .jpg albums there.
Till at least the middle of May there was no problem in viewing the .jpg files.
First, I would like to know what is happening to all the image viewers.
Secondly, what is the rescue mode?
Oh, I am now with Debian Jessie.

google changed the name a few years ago
and the very old Windows-XP "picassia " gui web interface is microsoft only

then to add insult to injury google is doing it's HARDEST to wage a war on "albums" and folders
the current round of "google photo" changes well changed a ton of things, and not for the best .
Google broke the third party programs

the images online are in "by-date" order( NOT the folder order) and only the last few are displayed by default

https://photos.google.com/
and login to your google account

It looks like an operation with surgical precision. All the files in all the photo albums are intact. So I couldn't detect anything amiss when I ran 'ls'. But when I ran 'ls -l' I found that all their contents are 0 B. Can it be a virus or a hacker's operation? I am now paintakingly downloading all the albums of the last 10 years from Picasa Web Album.

no
google changed the online archive

so remote accessing it in gwenview no longer works

you ALSO now have your photos in your G-Drive

I see. Murphy's law is working.