In this work we identify and study the presence of extremely intense surface resonances that frustrate the coupling of photons to photonic crystals for crucial ranges of energy. The practical utility of photonic crystals demands the ability to exchange photons with the external medium, therefore, it is of paramount importance to acknowledge the presence of these surface resonances and eliminate them. Moreover, we demonstrate that these resonances lie in the regions of photonic band gaps for two important photonic crystal structures that include the widely used artificial opals. This has led others to conclude that the structures they were investigating were functioning well as photonic crystals when in fact the optical properties being measured were due to surface resonances and not the bulk photonic properties. We demonstrate that by modifying the surface geometry it is possible to tune the optical response or eliminate the resonances to enable full exploitation of the photonic crystal properties.