photos not syncing correctly (ipad)

I have the same problem with black photo on iPad. I tried several times to delete the "iPod Photo Cache" inside my Photo library, restart the Mac and restart the synchronization. The result is random, sometime most of photos (but never all of them) are ok on iPad, sometime most of then are completely black. The Catalina 10.15.2 update doesn't fix anything.

A nightmare !

I have upgraded my MacBook Pro to the latest Catalina update - but unfortunately that still hasn't solved the problem. I'm hoping Apple solves this before I have to convert all my photos and use one of the workarounds...

Hi CircularRuins and Everybody

UPDATE on iPad iOS 13.3.

I started a back-up/sync at 10:29hs thru Finder. As is now 'usual' the "Syncing ..." continued well after Finder had stopped indicating any process was going on [No spinning circular arrows, no filling up clock face]. The number of photos syncing crept up to the anticipated total and stopped short and has remained there as of 15:26 hrs. It is 32 images short out of 6,500.

All those scattered, extra family members' albums have collected themselves at the end of the 'From My Mac' albums and the order of those main/root albums [From My Mac] match the order as it is on My Mac. Very strange behaviour but a vast improvement. I had deleted a few .pct images and replaced them with .jpg copies. But I am not sure how that could affect the sync process as I did that before updating to 13.3 on the iPad.

The main/root albums are now showing the total number of images in each folder just below the pictures. But this does not happen for any sub-folders - there is nothing at all there.

Sadly there are still MISSING [but not 32] and BLACK images - exactly the same ones as before. These are JPG images [a lot of iPhone 7+]. I will try replacing some of those with other copies and see what happens...

Hello Comatose Marmoset,

Thanks for for your reply. I agree with you that syncing shouldn’t be about us messing around for hours. It is quite understandable that software has bugs and some are hard to solve, but this one should have been solved before releasing Catalina. It is one of biggest changes in that release: getting rid of iTunes and therefor moving syncing to Finder.

By the way I have obtained the best possible result yesterday evening: all but 6 albums synced, no black photos and 3 duplicate photos (which I think I can take out). I have achieved this by syncing several rounds, each time adding one album.

I will send feedback to Apple as you suggest.

Hi Thierry_68

Congratulations!

In Photos on my Mac I put all the images that were showing as black in the albums on the iPad into one album, called "Black Album". Despite the lack of 'Info' in the iPad app I know which images they are. Makes a rather sombre slideshow. I am locating copies of these images and will dump them all in the 'Black Album' and see what happens when I sync. All the other albums show the images I want on the iPad [with only one still telling me it is "Syncing..."].

However, the 'All' Photos section on the iPad [bottom left tab in Photos screen] still has a ghastly array of duplicates, as well as black images and white images, and way too many of them - so that hasn't improved. I have tried to clear all those by un-syncing Photos but the iPad doesn't seem to forget them even though I select 'Remove' when a pop-up alert asks if I want to remove images from the iPad.

So I am contemplating unticking the "Automatically sync when this iPad is connected" button. I can still back-up but updating the photos library on the iPad will be put on hold until Apple sorts this issue... It will probably be 'Happy New Year' before that happens.

The closest I have come to getting all of my photos to sync is to export the entire library to png format. This results in a folder af photos that is over 500 Gb in size and then syncing that folder. (Live Photos do not work as png)

Given the limitations of my hard drive storage, this meant that I had to buy an additional external hard drive. I can then sync that folder of PNGs. The original meta data is retained so original date, camera type, and exposure info is still there but of course the exported file has a current creation (exported) date.

Because of previous efforts (see some of my other postings), including exporting all original files, creating a new Library and reimporting the originals, I have had to reformat thousands of images for rotation, colour correction, and cropping.

At least I have also taken some time to clean up and delete a couple thousand images that simply aren’t truly worthy of inconveniencing the electron bits.

Live photos are still an issue. They are ALL black but if you click and hold, they do their thing and then turn black again.

This is no bloody fun at all.

The updates to iOS and iPadOS 13.3 and the latest Catalina update to 10.15.2 have not had any effect on these issues.

Hi Comatose Marmoset,

I'm sorry to read you are still struggling. I found indeed like you that the iPad somehow keeps a copy of unsynced photos. To solve this I synced to another library first and then again to the one I want to use. That does clear out all black photos. And to avoid having black photos again I synced albums one by one.

I also had a lot of duplicate photos, that occurred when I included albums containing a particular person. In such an album there were pictures that also were present in another album about a particular event. The strange however was that the duplicates did not necessarily contain photos with these persons. It really seems there is database integrity issue when syncing. I have now left out 5 albums that contain photos of a particular person each and have no duplicates anymore.

Hi medelegantf,

It is indeed no bloody fun all.

Just a few remarks that may help you. At first I thought particular photos caused the issue. I have found however that I can sync a photo that is black in my 'regular' sync, but not when I sync it as a separate photo (a library with only that photo or with a few). That does prove for me that it is not just caused by that particular photo, but in combination with other photos. I just don't know what combination.

At the moment I have succeeded in syncing 24 of 30 albums without any black photos and duplicates. I have achieved this by syncing one album to start with and then each syncing round adding another one. The remaining 6 ones cause issues (black/duplicates). The same syncing process, run in one go with all 30 albums to my iPhone, caused no issues at all.

Did someone here post a workaround previously? It involved something to do with setting up a brand new photo library, but I'm not quite sure how to do that. I've just looked through the previous messages but can't see the post I'm thinking of.

I haven't had this issue resolved by Apple yet. I don't think it is to do with camera models because sometimes the photos show up fine when taken by the same camera, and some of the black images were taken by my iPhone.

I think it is to do with something in each album, though, as the ones that do sync OK are always the same ones.

Just a quick reminder.

When you export all your image files to a new folder, you have a bunch of options. The exported images can be saved as jpg, png and as original format.

There are a number of options for each. Resolution and meta data becomes an issue. Do you still want photos to be recognized as having been taken in say, some date and time in 2014 so that photos are sorted chronologically,, whether location data is preserved, etc. ?

Exported files will have the creation date and time of the export.

Also bear in mind if you export as the original format, and here I am talking about RAW images, the exported files will be reverted to the original file format. That is to say that any cropping, colour adjustments and even rotation edits will be lost. I have had to re-rotate thousands of photos and re-apply many many edits.

With a library of 17,000 images this is a lot of work.

The single most successful export method (and then import to the iPad) was to export every image as png at the highest possible quality levels. This resulted in a folder of 17,000 images that weighed in at 535 Gb! (The storage required on the iPad was much smaller.)

Worth also noting that png doesn’t retain “Live” photo functions. These need to be exported to video formats.

HI Fellow Patients

I am not sure Apple yet have a clue. All we can do is log AppleCases with Support and offer help.

They are working on the problem - they gave me a 5-step list of procedures that, combined with a downloaded program performed Capture Data logging, and produced a file that was then uploaded for their engineers. The processes involved AirDrop of images and syncs with iPad.

My test syncs to iPhone are always OK so the issue is definitely iPad related.

For the moment it is best in Finder to uncheck the 'automatically sync when connected' button for your iPad and work out a routine that gives you the best result. Then wait for Apple to sort themselves out [though judging by all the other stuff that doesn't seem to work properly (or should I say 'behaves unexpectedly'?) I would carry on breathing.

My 'solution' is to stop syncing routinely, usually just back up. Also, to move all 'black images' to one Album [panoramas excepted] then if I have any major changes to albums in Photos on my iMac I do a major un-sync with the iPad [takes all photos from My Mac off the iPad] then re-sync with appropriate Albums ticked.

As you've probably noticed it does take a long time - Finder does not show you that a sync is continuing. Do you look at the 'Photos' section in Photos on your iPad [left-hand button at foot of screen] during a sync? Down at the bottom under the images it shows how many Photos, Videos have synced. It usually will continue to say 'Syncing ...' even after it has finally finished. Mine usually maxes out 32 images short of my total library[that is another mystery] but it always says 'Syncing ...' even when disconnected so I check the image count.

Let's hope the mute swan blithely gliding along as if nothing is wrong is hiding under the calm exterior some furiously working engineers.

I have settled on a work around that has been working but is rather tedious. So far, I’ve decided to limit applying the export images as PNG to older photos that were originally saved as jpg before I started shooting in raw (Nikon nef).

the png exports are on average 4 times larger than the jpg files.

after exporting the jpgs to png format, I delete the jpgs (the ones that were just synced as black on the iPad.) from the Mac Photos app. I then import the exported pngs into Photos app and sync to the iPad.

This replaces the black images with the newly imported png versions.

So far, using this work around I have “fixed” over 1500 photos. There are still some 7000 or so images that are black. Many of those are raw images (typically 12-20mb files) that would be MUCH larger if exported as png.

There are quite a few “Live” images that do not work as png. And I no longer have any of the old album classifications i had set. Thankfully, original metadata is retained for the YMD organization of Photos as are most other tags

Has anyone spoken to Apple's senior advisors about this? Was there any fix advised? I haven't really had any luck...

Hello,

Did anybody test 10.15.3 update ?

Does it fix the problem ?

Nope.

Neither 10.15.3 nor iPadOS 13.3.1 resolve the issues with photos syncing.

truly frustrating.