Im thinking of having my sims owning a painting store. The custom paintings that she paints work fine. So I put them in my inventory.
However, when I arrive at my community lot, all the paintings within my inventory turn to that sunset default painting. Is there a patch for this? Is it because I didn't save the custom pictures right?

Here's the file I put my custom pictures in by the way:

Documents/My Pictures/The Sims 2/Paintings

Thanks in advance!

This happens a lot. As I understand it, the paintings are tied to the lot and it's very rare for the code to transfer to a new one. I've even had a portrait change to a default painting after a day, when it came out of inventory fine.

Which is a bugger, since there's a lot less point to an art gallery if people can't bring original works home. Nobody cares what the townies get, but if Don buys a tasteful nude he ought to be able to hang it on his wall.

I don't know of a patch or hack for this, but maybe someone will come along who does.

As far as I know, the only solution would be to use SimPE to extract the actual painting from the home lot package, and import it into the business lot package, then ensure that the linkages are correct. When someone buys the painting, you'd have to go through the same steps to get the painting into the new home lot package.

Of course, this is assuming that the game didn't delete the painting from the home lot package when you moved it to the business.

[Update:] A similar thread, with a sort-of answer:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=455728

Sorry for the double post. However, I just tried this and could not reproduce your problem. Could you please tell me which EPs and SPs you have (including the Store Edition, if it's installed)?

I have this problem too, however it only started happening after I installed Pets EP. I had Base, Nightlife, Uni, and Seasons before that and all my sims who were painting things in college took home their paintings just fine. Then I noticed all the paintings going to sunset default after the new EP. Unfortunately, I sim on a Mac so I can't use SimPE to get those files back.

OK, I'll try with that combination. My tests were performed with all EPs and SPs except the Store Edition.

I have all the EPs and as far as the SPs go, I have Family Fun, Teen Style, Mansion and Garden, Ikea, Kitchen and Bath, Holiday, and Glamour. However, I run my game on the Store Edition so this may be the problem. I will try it out and tell my results.

For some reason, I'm having problems reproducing this problem.

Charmful: I tried with Nightlife, Uni, OFB, Pets, and Seasons (I know that Charmful doesn't have OFB, but I already had an AnyGame set up with that configuration). I had my sim go to university and paint a portrait, a custom painting, and a still life, then drop out and move back to the primary neighborhood. All three paintings showed up properly on a residential lot in the primary neighborhood. Interestingly, the paintings remained in the dorm lot package as well. This means that it might be possible to get back your paintings using SimPE, by transferring the pictures from the university lot to the main neighborhood lot. I know that you're on a MAC, but perhaps you could run SimPE using one of these techniques:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=366580

Kukaelio_ono, I doubt that the SPs affect this problem (except M&G), but it may be that the Store Edition has a bug. Since you have M&G and still run from the Store Edition, you must have the most up-to-date version.

Mootilda, thanks for checking on that plus the link for possible SimPE solutions for Mac Users. but I am curious if you left the lot of those sims after removing the paintings from their inventory and then went back in. I noticed that the paintings from college look fine on the first removal however when leave and return to the lot, they then have the sunset default. In my game at least.

Yes, I left the lots and even exited the game and ran it again the next day, along with checking again today. I would like to reproduce the problem to see whether I can determine what's happening. I don't see how we can solve this without understanding why it's happening.

I seem to remember it happening to me rather often when my husband put InTeen in, or I managed to convince my husband to take InTeen back out. (I didn't like InTeen at all; he liked the biological clock. InTeen went in and out of our game rather regularly. ) I remember making a habit of taking screenshots of my pictures hung on a wall, so that I could cut them out and put them into the Custom folder to be repainted as needed. But my computer with Sims 2 died a while ago, so this is pure memory. It might not be helpful.