I am having this same issue with Illustrator CS6. Currently, it's having trouble placing a photoshop file, but it also had trouble yesterday placing a png, and a jpeg. The only file type I could get to place reasonably was a PDF. Resaving my PSD to a PDF allowed me to place the file and continue working, but this is obviously not ideal.

Unfortunately, I don't use Illustrator often enough between updates to know if the latest update caused the issue, or if this has been a problem for a while longer than that. I can say that about a month or so ago, placing PSDs worked just fine for me in CS6.

Hope that helps.

I think it is the new FontExploerer Plugin, I have disabled it, and it works.

Now that is a good one.

I updated the fontexplorer plugins today and I could not place any images in Illustrator anymore.

I recently installed the latest plug-in for Illustrator 5.1 in FontExplorer X. I had no idea that this would the cause when I was unable to place images in Illustrator. I removed the plug-in in FEX and I was able to place images again. Hopefully Linotype will fix this soon.

Thanks for the tip!

Same results here. I struggled all day to figure out what was going on. Neither CS5 or CS6 versions of Illustrator would place any images.  I went into the Plug-In Manager in FontExplorer Pro and turned off the Illustrator Plug-ins and Presto!  Thanks to all who reported their results here. - dj

I was in a complete panic, having just installed Mountain Lion on my Mac -- and suddenly I can't place any images in Illustrator; placing a jpeg crashes it instantly, and all of my documents show blank areas where the images were. I was just about to reinstall my Mac OS to go back to Lion when I saw this thread... and yes, turning off the plug-in solved it instantly. THANKS!!

The Plugin deactivation worked for me as well: Ai CS 5.1, OSX 10.7.4

What's interesting though: I installed the new plugin two days ago and everything kept working, just until a few minutes ago.

thank you!! i've been trying to fix this one for a few hours now! :/ now I'll be off to try to recoup the time lost...

I had teh same problem. I removed the FontExplorer plugin from the Illustrator plugins folder and now I can see my placed files.

I saw the update too, through the FontExplorer app, but the update isn't downloading for me. Go figure, so I have removed the FontExplorer plugin and everything is working for me.

I have emailed Font Explorer and sent them this post. I am too afraid to muck my computer around until they have fully dealt with this problem.

Well, hows this for a huge coincidence?  I just noticed the same problem everyone else is experiencing (except I'm on CS5).  In addition, when I try to open up custom swatch libraries (.ase files), the swatches don't show up.  I had the swatches issue first, and was finally prompted to google when I noticed the placed file issue.  In the process of reading this thread, I quite Font Explorer, and when I relaunched it, there was a notice that there was an update available, and the changelog specifically addressed all of these issues! 

So, folks, go into your FontExplorer now and run Check for Updates.  I actually couldn't run the updates (it starts to download, then nothing), which I suspect has to do with some serious permissions problems I'm also trying to resolve, but provided you can successfully update, this should be your fix.

Disabling the plugin for Illustrator did work in the mean time for me.

Just a comment:

I find it unbelievable at this day and age, and after almost 30 years of graphics and desktop publishing... that FONTS and Font Management tools... can so thoroughly hose a system and/or screw up a program as to be unusable.

It's still the #1 problem in the graphic industry, and the very first thing I look at when troubleshooting. <shaking head no>

It has to be that version then. ntExplorer 3.1.1. (?) was working fine in CS 5.5 for me.

Indeed, and updating in Fontexplorer gives an error message. I already submitted 2x support request (1 for the issue, 1 for complaining they don't respond), but I think they are hiding somewhere for there customers. Would not label them 'professional' in this, more like Adobe with their helpfiles: pure amateurism.