Could not open photo, Please try again in a moment

What is the file format of the photos you download to your iPhone from your PC? Try to stick with compatible image file formats - JPEG, some RAW formats, TIFF, PNG.

Occasionally photos cannot be opened, if an unsupported color sync profile is used. It is suspicious, that only photos you took with the iPhone camera can be opened. The upgrade to iOS13 and Catalina made some older codecs incompatible. Some photos and videos, that have been compatible with iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Mojave are no longer compatible with iOS 13 and macOS 101.5 Catalina. Compare the formats of your image files to this list: About incompatible media in iMovie for macOS - Apple Support

The list has been written for iMovie, but it can be a guide for Photos too.

Oct 29, 2019 5:22 PM in response to JacobHelpme22

Sorry I meant to post before today but had a hectic weekend. I had a response from Apple engineers and they told me that they could now see the problem with the photos and the iPhone Photo App from their data collection sync off my iPhone. This was the third data sync with their profile installed on my phone and this time they actually 'captured' the problem 'live' with several of my photos not being able to open in the Photo Library because of the error 'Cannot Load Photo'.

So finally from all the statistics collected the engineers could 'see' the problem.

Apple did tell me that they will contact me again on Friday 1st November with their 'findings' and thanked me for bringing this to their attention. So I believe it's a bug after all.

Hopefully this will bring a fix.

In addition to Mike's question about the "Optimize" feature - how much free storage is on your iPhone? You may also get this message, if there is no storage left to download the photos from iCloud. Did you upload more photos to iCloud then will fit onto the iPhone, even "Optimized"?

That seems to be the solution.

Are the files that you "Save for Web" from Photoshop also JPGs? Or GIFs, PNG, or something similar?

I found quite a few files from Photoshop, that would not sync with iCloud, but they looked like normal JPEGs or TIFFs. But Photoshop had embedded a different color sync profile, that Photos could not handle.

It's nothing to do with file format compatibility. The photos I've uploaded to iCloud via desktop are all jpeg files, which were originally taken with my iPhone in the first place.

I've had this trouble since iOS 13 upgrade not before.

Further to my comment, it seems that there is a difference between jpeg and jpg. But I don't understand why the Photos App doesn't recognise the jpg file?

I've uploaded other images to iCloud via PC as a jpg file then the Photo App won't open the file or let me edit the file.

However, if I've upload the same image as a "jpeg" file then the Photo App will allow it to open and edit.

I don't have a Mac but a Windows PC

I've had the same problem as you Charles.

I've been in contact with Tech Support and I shared my PC, Devices and iCloud app to investigate. Given my detailed report it seems like it's a bug with mismatched file type associations. It's being investigated by the engineers and probably will be a patch for it in the near future.

I've been speaking to Apple Tech Support and they have no idea what's going on. It's obviously a bug as many people have encountered the same problem in Apple Discussion. Maybe more people should contact Apple Tech Support so they know it's a problem on user's devices.

I tested a bit on my Mac. When I import a file with the filename extension ".jpg" to Photos on the Mac, Photos will change the filename. When I export the file again from Photos, the exported filename will be all capitals and the filename extension will be ".jpeg". So Photos for mac is now uploading all JPGs with the filename extension ".jpeg" to icloud. But the web interface at www.icloud.com is still working differently and not converting the extension.

On my Windows PC, when importing a file with the filename extension ".jpg" or ".jpeg" from Photos iCloud on my PC, Photos file name stays the same. It doesn't change.

When I export the file again to Photos iCloud app, the exported filename stays exactly the same.

I load a ".jpg" photo from my Canon camera into my PC DropBox then I go into my iPhone, go to DropBox and save the photo from DropBox into Photos and then I go to view my photo and Photos says "Cannot load Photo".

So I don't know what to think.

However Leonie, I do think the interface www.icloud.com is working differently and so is Photos on devices.

I can however, use the Snapseed Photo App on my iPhone and import that photo into that App, the one that Photo won't load and Snapseed has a message that - "This is image is a read only. Saving will create a copy." I make some adjustment and Snapseed creates a copy which Photos then will open.

It's really strange.

I've just been contacted by Apple Engineers and they do acknowledge that there seems to be some sort of a problem. However, I had to supply more info based on my findings via screenshots and more explanations. . . They will contact me again on Friday 11 Oct. 3.30pm Au time.

Apple Engineers contacted me today as they said they would and they cannot reproduce the problem, even though they've screen shared my devices and I've uploaded detailed step by step screenshots, they're not seeing the problem.

So this time what they did was wait until I uploaded a photo to iCloud.com and then on my iPhone I had to open the photo and as usual, Photos could not load photo. Then they were able to to perform an enhanced logging session and collect the actual data from my phone.

I will hear from them again Wednesday next week.

It just seems I'm going over and over this issue with the engineers and they're not getting it.

Perhaps if more of us contacted https://getsupport.apple.com/ they might get an idea that this is really an issue in discussions.apple.com - even though I've told them about the discussions here, I don't think they look to be honest.