photos not syncing correctly (ipad)

That is a lot of effort by medelegantf [shame Apple didn't do as much? Harsh?] but you shouldn't have to go through all that. Photos worked fine prior to Catalina ... 

I sync my complete Photos Library from an iMac [10.15.2] to iPad Pro [13.3] via a cable.

Just tried 13.3 upgrade for iPad. Did not solve problems, made it worse if anything:

• Black images - still lots
• White images - can't see any [yet]
• Duplicates - many many many, even videos - once I worked out there was a new tick button to tick before those'd even sync.
• Missing images - yes we have missing images.
• Extra albums - new feature in 13.3 creates 'people' folders in "From My Mac" section - but not just one folder per person, multiple albums for each person with different numbers of images in each folder. Scatters folder willy-nilly in "From My Mac".
• Album order - now completely randomised - so that careful folder structure on your main computer is out the window.
• Key images - don't match originals on iMac.

The storage taken up on the iPad is suspiciously a lot smaller than the Photos library on the iMac I use. I expect compression  but the iPad is only 20% the size of the iMac. My images are mostly jpeg but some RAW [Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Panasonic]. Many of the missing or black images are taken on iPhone 4S, 6, 7+. All videos are taken on iPhone.

I send feedback every day or so - https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

I have an AppleCase ongoing but the advisor doesn't have an answer [other than wiping out the content on the iPad and re-syncing, and we know where that goes...] and hasn't responded to my latest email.

I have been a staunch Apple supporter for 26 years but this is the worst upgrade experience in all that time. I just want a simple image management app that can work on an iMac and transfer the images to an iPad in the same folder structure. It is for snapshots [Adobe caters for the serious side of photography] and I don't want to upload my library to the Cloud! SOS.

Hello,

I have the same issue/similar issue too (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250946968). Like all of you reporting this issue, I have tried many things, nothing has solved it until now. I have found a number of things that might be helpful in understanding (and solving) the issue.

• I have synced successfully from the same Photos library to my iPhone (20.000+ photos and movies), so without any black or missing photos
• The photos that are black on my iPad after syncing, are black too in the iPod photo cache folder, indicating the issue originates from the MacBook, in combination with the iPad
• The same photo may appear correctly on the iPad after syncing one time and black the next time
• Syncing a limited number of albums from the library is successful, but not directly after an unsuccessful sync; however when I first delete the iPod photo cache, syncing a limited number of albums is successful

Yesterday, I found something that I will further investigate. To my surprise syncing one album with only 735 photos gave me almost all black photos. So it almost seems that there is something in that album that causes an issue. Not sure what though.

Hi Circular Ruins, Thierry_68, Medelegantf, iClark32 & Co,

Sorry, still I have no solution. I keep trying things and sending feedback to Apple [https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html].

Bear in mind - my images that appear black are from year 2000 to last week; are RAW and jpeg/JPG; vary in size from 68kb to 40MB; are taken with 4 generations of iPhone and multiple makes of digital camera; have different colour profiles; and have previously appeared OK on my iPad.

The latest attempt involved -

1. Putting all the images, that show up black in the albums on my iPad, into a new 'Black Album' in Photos on my iMac.
2. Finding other copies of these images and importing them into the 'Black Album'. [up to three copies of each image]
3. Syncing Photos with my iPad. ALL the images in the 'Black album', new and old, SHOWED BLACK in the iPad.
4. Syncing Photos with my iPhone. ALL the images in the 'Black album', new and old, were completely OK.

So I conclude the images themselves are not to blame [a few of the new copies were even exports from Photos, re-imported, and they showed fine on the iPhone].

There is something beyond our control in the sync process between our computers and our iPads in the mal-spawned Finder process. Apple needs to hunt that down and correct it. I will try following up my AppleCase once my adviser is back in 2020.

Good luck and Happy New Year to you all.

Hi Thierry_68

I commend your persistence. But it doesn't sound as if your process solves the issue completely?

Same for me, the best result I get is if I untick the button - "Sync photos to your device", then do a sync. This clears the synced photos "From My Mac" off the device. Then I disconnect, restart everything and when I reconnect tick the button "Sync photos to your device" and do a sync. There are still black images but it is the same ones as when the problem first arose [less a few I have replaced, which synced OK]. The folders are in order and mostly they indicate how many images are in the folder [except sub-folders, which don't], and with only a few persistently indicating they are "Syncing ...". I take that as a win. [Better than duplicate images, white and black ones and random folders]. But spending hours on what used to be an automatic and quick process is not what I want to do, and I don't think we should have to be doing all this messing around.

I am stopping connecting my iPad to the iMac and will wait until Apple fix this - which, if the AppleCase I have is anything to go by, will be never, they just don't seem interested. I get the impression Apple don't know what they have done wrong and don't know how to fix this. Alarmingly I found an image in my Photos Library which had an incorrect image number and couldn't possibly have been taken on the device the info indicated and it was all black. Annoyingly most of the problem images were taken on iPhones.

Keep sending feedback to https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html 

Thanks, Circular Ruins. I was going to try buying a new iPad, as well. I had hoped it might solve the problem but it can wait.

It seems to be :-

1. Finder doesn't indicate what it is doing.
2. Finder does not fully sync Photos sub-folders.
3. Finder does not fully sync videos [I have 53 videos (taken on iPhone) in Photos on my iMac but only 3 show up on the iPad].
4. The number of photos on the iPad varies, does not match the source and a lot of folders indicate "Syncing ..." even when the iPad is disconnected.
5. Random photos show up BLACK in the iPad Photos app.
6. Fiddling around changing image formats, re-importing them [with edits!] is not a viable solution for large libraries.
7. Apple support experts cheerfully offer 7-step procedures that take a lot of time and achieve nothing.

We should all not have to go through this palaver. I can only agree and sympathise with iClark32 & medelegantf & yourself. I have used Mac since 1993 and this is the worst experience. I am disillusioned to say the least.

Hello,

I have managed to get a fully correct sync as follows:

1. Make another Photo library then the one you are trying to sync from the system library (could be a copy of the one you want to sync from or just a random other one)
2. Restart you Mac
3. Start a small random sync with just one album. Finder will ask you if you are ok with deleting all existing synced photos from your iPad, confirm
4. While it syncs you can delete the folder iPod Photo cache from the library you actually want to sync from
5. After sync has completed, make the library you want to sync from your system library and restart your Mac
6. Sync your library to your iPad, starting with the first album only. After it has completed, tick the second album (keeping the first one ticked) and so one. It takes a lot of time, but it does produce the desired results for me.

I have 30 albums in total and the syncing goes wrong when I add multiple albums in one 'round'. And very strange: I have an album that will have black photos even though I use the above procedure. When I untick that album to correct the issue I get black pictures in all the other albums I successfully synced in the previous rounds. While trying several things I noticed an error message in Finder saying it could not sync a certain movie because it wouldn't play on my iPad. It turned out to be the only slow motion movie I have in the library. I removed it, hoping it would solve the issue, but it didn't. The slow motion movie was in the album that is still causing trouble for me, so it seems something is wrong in that one, I just cannot figure out what.

Hello CircularRuins,

I have tried this at some point, but it didn’t solve the issues for me. If you would like to try, then do as follows:

• Export all your photos from your library on your Mac to a folder; use multiple folders to export albums
• Close Photos and open again on your Mac while holding Option key and choose to create a new library
• Then import your photos from the folders

I have this problem as well. This is by far the worst experiance I have ever had with software upgrades on Apple products since my first Apple ][+.

I am running an iMac 27 inch (Late 2013), an iPhone 6s and an iPad Pro 11 inch.

My Photos app has over 17,000 images. These images include Nikon NEF files ((raw) from 2 different models), Pentax Optio (jpg), Kodak Z7560 (jpg), iPhone 4s, iPhone 6s and some png images from screen captures.

I had purchased the iPad in September, updated it to iPadOS. Deliberately decided to set it up without migrating from a gen1 iPad Air and held off syncing to the iMac until after installing MacOS Catalina.

Upon connecting my iPad to the iMac, I used the Finder to sync to my Photos library. About 800 of the most recently imported (to the iMac) photos from my Nikon came across to my iPad without many issues but of the other 11,000 images, there were thousands of them that simply presented a black square. There was no discernible file type or image format that failedto synch properly. Some "Live" photos were fine while many others were just black. The same with panoramas shot on the 6s - about half of the 200 or so were black. Of the other image file formats and sources, some appeared to be fine while many, many were just black place holders.

I tried emailing some of these black images to myself. They were received as black images but I could see the file names. Searching on my iMac for the filenames, they did not exist on the iMac.

Attempted to rebuild the Photos Library - Sync issues remained.

Tried syncing smaller batches. individual albums, you name it.

Exported all images as original files to a folder - sync that folder to iPad - similar result - also worth noting that RAW images were reverted to original format (cropping, colour tuning, rotation etc restored to original)

Exported all images to a folder in jpeg format - Photos crashed after exporting 9081 images - Sync that folder to iPad - Fewer than 100 images are visible - ie.: almost 9,000 black rectangles.

I have spent several hours on the telephone with Apple Support. Apple escalated me at least 3 levels while dealing with this nightmare. They asked for permission to access my iMac remotely and walked me through a number of procedures. On their request, and I agreed, they had me download a utility that would grab multiple log files from Photos, MacOS System logs and some other data.

I have continued to try additional work arounds (I am no novice having been in a past life an Distributor Supported Apple Value Added Reseller).

I have also ensured that I have updated to any point releases of MacOS and iPadOS.

My most recent effort.

Export about 900 various images from Photos as jpeg, medium quality, medium size.

Sync to the resultant export folder.

Images sync to the iPad and they look ok on first viewing but the resolution and definition is pure garbage - barely tolerable to look at on full screen. Jpeg image compression just results in far too much loss of quality.

At this resolution, the quality would not be useful to print at anything more than 2x3 inches.

Still no solution.

My next attempt is to export some images as PNG and see how tolerable that may be.

I have communicated more of my findings to Apple Support and I do have a case number but I won't share that case number here.

I have now sucessfully synchronized at least 3 Photos albums to my iPad. I did it by exporting each of the three albums to a new folder (one subfolder for each album).

I started with a single album exported as PNG files into a test folder. I chose the following pulldown selections:

Photo Kind: PNG

Color Profile: Most Compatible

Size: Full Size

Include: Title, Keywords and Description - Checked

Include: Location Information - Checked

File Name: Sequential

Sequential Prefix: "AlbumName"

Subfolder Format: None

I have done this export for well over 1000 images and every last one has synced to my iPad with full resolution and all metadata intact.

It still is a tedious method to work around the issues. I am not pleased that I am losing the reversion capability of the RAW file format. The file sizes are also significantly larger than the original files (as much as 3 times larger).

I will continue to work on this issue and look forward to hearing back from Apple on what may be done to salvage or correct the problems with this synch issue.

There is no way I would consider reverting to Mojave. while so far this is a workaround, I am prepared to live with it if necessary.

Hi iClark32 [& medelegantf] -

Sorry I have no solution, just the same problem. You have my sympathy. My experience is nowhere near as severe. Do you mind if I add more info? [In case Apple read all this!]

My 'Black' images are taken with iPhone 4S, 6 and 7+, as well as Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Ricoh, Fuji & Pentax cameras. They range from early 2000 to late 2017, as far as I can tell nothing more recent.

Other images in the same formats as the problem images are fine - jpeg, jpg, CR2, NRW, etc etc even psd and slide scans.

Other images taken in the same sequence as the problem images, at the same time on the same equipment, are fine.

I have noticed in Finder when I highlight the device being backed up/synced and look at the Photos tab, the list of folders displayed did not match the list of folders in the actual Photos app on the iMac. New folders[Albums] were not shown and when I moved or renamed them the display in Finder did not update. This suggests the Finder process is not getting live information from Photos.

On my iPad when I open the folders where the problem images are, the number of images is usually less than the original folder on the iMac and on the iPad below the images that have synced there are the words "Syncing ..." However, other folders show the same number of images as the original folder on the iMac, just that some of them are completely black.

The date of the problem images appear to match the original files. I did have three images, imported yesterday into Photos, that somehow went to some time in 2038 but I think [and hope] that is unrelated.

The problems vary each time I sync the iPad - some folders on the iPad show Black key photos one time then are fine another. Sometimes they show the correct and full number of images. at others the dreaded "Syncing ...". As I have been typing this my iPad has been connected to my iMac and a folder on the iPad that was previously OK suddenly displayed a Black Key Photo and the number of images is showing as 31, not the 65 in the original. Finder does not indicate any process has been going on. I can't trust the iPad as a resource anymore.

I keep telling myself "At least the images are still in my Mac" and hope Apple are on the case!

I too am having the same issue. The issue is definitely with the upgrade to Catalina, since I bought a brand new iPad recently and set it up as new and it has the same problem. Interestingly, I seem to have resolved the same problem on my iPhone by erasing all the data on it, but the issue persists with the iPad.

There seems to be a workaround if I export the photos into the affected albums into a folder and then reimport them all as JPEGs; but I am averse to doing this unless I absolutely have to because I don't want to lose resolution in the originals (and I don't have the space to keep two different sets of pictures).

I also find the sync process very haphazard on Catalina; sometimes the arrows go round and then nothing happens. It's incredibly annoying not to be able to know what photos are or aren't syncing - at least iTunes told you where in the sync process you were.

Hello fellow users in misery.

I have spent a a lot of time on the phone with Apple Support. 

From my initial call, my issue with syncing to a new iPad Pro was escalated at least 3 levels. A case number was assigned, and Trina, my contact at Apple Support, walke me through a bunch of tests to identify the issue sources. 

Trina had me download some diagnostic utilities that pulled a series of log and error files after I had made multiple attempts at synchronising data. I was told that the issue has been escalated to both MacOS System Software engineering and to the Photos system engineers.

As I have mentioned in previous postings, I tried all the methods that I knew to rebuild Library files for Photos. 

I exported all original files from the Photos Library (original Nikon .nef files, jpegs and png sourced from Pentax, Canon, iPhone 4s, iPhone 6s and other sources) This amounted to over 17,000 images and a folder that was 137.8 Gb. I then tossed that Library and started with a fresh version of Photos with no images and reimported the 17,000 images. This effectively reverted every single RAW file to the original, unedited, uncorrected, uncropped and in many many cases, unrotated images - a major hassle to find and rotate let alone re-crop and aother adjustments. (But of course that is one of the beauteous features of shooting RAW - complete reversion without loss..)

This did not correct the overall black images issues.  Live images came across as black but it you opened one, it would initially be black but would actually play through the frames and stay on the index frame until you closed the window at which point it would go black again.

I have continued to experiment with various methods and I have found one method that seems to give the best possible sync to the iPad. I exported the entire Photos Library to a Folder simply called "pngs". I exported the images as PNG files. These files are considerably larger than the raw, img and jpeg originals. In my case, the originals when exported produced a folder with 18,580 items weighing in at about 512 Gb. (Most images were in the range of 20-30 Mb).

Here is the so-so good news... this folder of PNGs when synced to the iPad, almost every image was perfect. I did also export some sub folders that contained panoramas, Live photos, videos, long exposure and bursts. Where these images apeared as part of the bulk export as well as the subfolders,  there were some issues.

As mentioned previously, converting every image as jpeg or png is not particularly desirable. Jpegs are too lossy and png files are larger than desirable.

In conclusion, I still have serious issues with the synchronization of images to the iPad. 

To my mind, I suspect that the issue is related to something missing in the reading of the .nef files produced by different versions of raw produced by various camera models. The Nikon nef files that were produced from a model D3000 camera seem to be much more problematic than those produced by a new Nikon D3300.

Given that I don't seem to have any problems with images synched to my iPhone 6s running iOS 13.2.3 but the iPad running iPadOS 13.2.3 does have these issues and there doesn't seem to be any issues on my iMac (late 2013) running MacOS 10.15.1, there is a problems with how Photos/MacOS handle their interactions with iPadOS.

BTW. I have an AppleTV (4th gen) that accesses my Photos Library from my iMac for the screen saver. All random images from my iMac are fine (other than the many photos I still need to re-reotate.) ie: No black images at all. 

I do hope you have all taken up the chance to speak with Apple Support over the phone!