"Photos cannot load adjustments for this image" error since upgrading to Catalina

I had the exacts same problem.

One thing I noticed on my computer is that the photos where I would get the "Photos cannot load adjustments for this image" 

error message when trying to edit them were photos that had been edited (you can see that with he small three lines with dots in the upper right corner of the photo) a long time ago. It only occurred with photos of mine that had been taken and edited prior to 2016. After that no issue at all.

So I assumed the edited file was corrupted or something. So if you (1) right click on a open photo where you get the error message, then (2) you click "revert to original", and then you click ok if you have a confirmation menu).

It appears then that the old orignal file is ok and I could edit them normally. I had to do that to about 800 photos with edits which were not very important so I didn't lose anything valuable.

I hope it will work for you as well.

Hello fwallenberg! 

Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities. I understand that you’re having an issue with an error message in Photos on both macOS Catalina and iOS. 

I understand how important it is to have your photos loading correctly. 

Is this error occurring with all photos, or only with one? If this is occurring with all photos, check out the steps in this article: How to use the Photos library repair tool.

If you continue to have issues with Photos please Contact Apple Support for more assistance. 

Enjoy the day! 

Hi @DrMBliss

I understand your issue since I had the same one. Did you try my method of right click, revert to original ? Once this is done, I was able to enter the normal edit menu, and then I could crop and rotate the photos as usual as if no problem had ever occurred.

If my "method" doesn't work, then unfortunately, I can't help you.

Hope you find a solution.

Possibly we're seeing several different bugs that all result in not being able to load adjustments for images, but may have distinct causes.

In my case, I managed to diagnose the problem to the absence of some original images in the place where Photos keeps (or rather: should have kept) the unmodified originals. Those originals had just vanished into thin air; therefore there is nothing that adjustments can be applied to, and you cannot revert to a non-existing image.

So, if you are unable to revert to original (as some people report), the first step you should take is check if the originals still exist on your system or not.

On the other hand, if you are still able to revert to original (as some others report), your problem may have a different cause.

I have this error too, which is characterized by the following behaviors: (1) photo is shown in lower quality than the original, (2) editing is impossible and produces the well-known error "Photos cannot load adjustments for this image", (3) it is not possible to reset the adjustments, (4) editing in any other application produces an error, and (5) exporting the unmodified original is not possible as it produces an "Unknown error (4)". Repairing the library reports success but does in fact NOT solve the problem. From these behaviors it seems that Photos has lost the original and the library is left with a low-resolution preview. Not sure why and when this bug started manifesting itself, but I noticed it first in Mojave and it persists in Catalina. It seems to affect some photos from 2015. I have not found any working solution and it is unlike that there is a solution, since indeed the originals of the affected pictures cannot be found in the photoslibrary. They seem to have simply vanished.

Hi fwallenberg,

The next thing to try would be to rescan these images if you can. Also, if you have the original files saved in another location, remove one of the scanned JPEGs from iCloud Photos, then upload it again from the original file. See if there is any change.

If you're unable to do this step, or if the issue persists, Contact Apple Support.

Cheers!

You revert to original by right-clicking on the photo and selecting "Revert to Original". This is also in the "Image" menu. Of course, this may undo any previous edit you may have applied.

BTW, I'm speaking to Apple about this and have been escalated to senior developer level for the team that make Photos.... so let's see what happens when they get back to me!

Mine might be slightly different as I don't think there's anything wrong with the photos themselves, just buggy Photos app. Whenever I import photos, first thing I do is delete all the bad ones, then I crop them all at 16x9 to fit my screen and apply various adjustments. As I do the edits - about 10% of the time this message comes up. I wait a sec, try again and then it works. Feels like this is bad memory management/flaky memory garbage collection. I have a top of the line 2015 BTO I7 4.0 27" iMac with 24 gigs of ram and nothing else running, so don't think its any kind of hardware limitation. This has happened across many os versions including the current 10.15.2 Beta (19C32e). There's also other things that happen like momentary photos edit window freezes and leftover visual artifacts. If I quite photos and relaunch, it behaves a while, then as I continue to edit it builds up again.

JuanCadadia, Some editor programs like Aperture and Photos edit images and save them as original+metadata. Reverting to original just strips off the metadata. Other editors like Gimp make edits irreversible.

It is the metadata that, for some reason, Photos cannot process in this instance.

I haven't had any problem with my 50,000 images so I cant offer any help. They originally were imported into Photos from Aperture in Mojave and in the process Aperture's metadata was accepted. They were reprocessed again successfully when upgrading to Catalina.

Upgraded to Catalina and suddenly 6,000 photos are reporting "Photos cannot load adjustments for this image."

Don't tell me I've to revert to the originals, tag them, edit them. This is unresponsible. Went back to a backup from February but it seems the error has been going on for a while as these images are also not working. Interestingly, Photos under Mojave NEVER reported a problem and I now I'm sitting on useless backups and lost my images.

This is a nasty bag which affects several functionalities of the program, like creating slide show and exporting photos.

See my post here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250870058?answerId=251681779022#251681779022

I have been having this issue, and also another one to do with Bluetooth.

I have submitted both of them as issues through Apple support, using serial number from my 2014 macbook air.

I got quick and useful responses for both, using chat and phone response. Not all resolved, but they are definitely helpful and willing to pursue and escalate the issues. Response times are amazingly fast.

Interestingly, they always check for previous similar issues issues, and they tell me that there are very few. They don't monitor these chat groups with any regularity, so if you have a problem, its much better to go to the real deal technicians!

Go to https://support.apple.com/en-ca/contact

Still waiting for a result. They did a lot of analysis, took debug data from my computer, and escalated to engineers in the media department. Much more proactive than our discussions on chat sessions. A manager called me back a couple of times for more information. They have only had two previous reports on this issue.

They are taking it seriously.

Hello everyone.

I also have this issue. Catalina 10.15.3, Photos 5.0 (131.17.170).

A great many of my images suffer from this issue. If I try to edit I get this error: "Cannot Start Editing - Photos cannot load adjustments for this image", and if I try to export I get this error: "Unknown Error (-1)". I also sometimes see this error: "The operation couldn’t be completed. (PHPhotosErrorDomain error -1.)".

Also, all the images this happens to look low resolution, as if they're thumbnails blown up to full size.

Following suggestions above, if I "Revert to Original" it fixes the problem! I can then edit and export the images, and the look full quality.

Problem is... I have over 20,000 photos! I can't revert them all to their original state losing all my edits... that's ridiculous!

I've tried repairing the library - no luck.

This is clearly a bug, and there must be a solution!

Has anyone heard any more from Apple about this?

Thanks.