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Live Photos stored on my Mac

How do the Live photos from my IPhone get stored in Photos (Catalina 10.15.6) on my Mac? It seems like a jpeg copy gets stored as well as the same one in the HEIC format. This looks like lots of duplicates. How are other people thinking about storing these Live photos. I use Live sparingly but I take lots of photographs.

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 10, 2020 8:34 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 13, 2020 10:54 AM

When you import Live Photos from your iPhone to Photos, they should be stored as a pair of a high resolution still frame, a HEIC file plus a video component, typically a MOV file in the HEVC format.

  • If the settings on your iPhone are set to "Settings > Photos > Download to Mac or PC" > Most Compatible, the phots will not be downloaded as HEIC and HEVC files, but rather as JPEG and H.264 videos. Have you changed the Setting to Most Compatible at some time?
  • If you have My Photo Stream enabled, you might get additional JPEGs.


Where are you seeing the duplicates as JPEG and HEIC? I. the Info in Photos, or are you using a duplicate detector, or are you looking into the Photos Library in the Finder`

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 13, 2020 10:54 AM in response to CCA19

When you import Live Photos from your iPhone to Photos, they should be stored as a pair of a high resolution still frame, a HEIC file plus a video component, typically a MOV file in the HEVC format.

  • If the settings on your iPhone are set to "Settings > Photos > Download to Mac or PC" > Most Compatible, the phots will not be downloaded as HEIC and HEVC files, but rather as JPEG and H.264 videos. Have you changed the Setting to Most Compatible at some time?
  • If you have My Photo Stream enabled, you might get additional JPEGs.


Where are you seeing the duplicates as JPEG and HEIC? I. the Info in Photos, or are you using a duplicate detector, or are you looking into the Photos Library in the Finder`

Aug 16, 2020 11:04 PM in response to CCA19

Andrea, as your Mac is using macOS 10.15, compatible with HEIC, I would change from the Settings Camera from "Automatic" to "Keep originals". Then you will avoid the conversion and only get HEIC. It will be better for the quality. Do the JPEGs have an "E" behind the image number? Then it may be edited versions.


Some background reading: Implications of shooting HEIF on the iPhone or iPad and How to Control the Format - Apple Community

Aug 16, 2020 5:46 PM in response to léonie

Léonie,

Very interesting, first let me answer your questions:

  1. On my iPhone settings>Photos>"Transfer to MAC or PC">"Automatic". My only other choice is "Keep Originals". It does say that "automatically transfer photos and videos in a compatible format, or always transfer the original file without checking for compatibility". As you say, the photos should be downloaded as JPEGS and H.264 videos however, I get JPEGS and HEIC downloads. I will play around with this a little and see what happens.
  2. I do not have My Photo Stream enabled.
  3. I am seeing the duplicates as a JPEG and HEIC in the info in Photos.

Is there anything else I should know about Live photos?

Thanks,

Andrea

Aug 13, 2020 7:33 AM in response to markwmsn

I am moving photos from my iPhone via File>import in Photos with a cable connection. What would be better? I am not using iCloud Photos since I have a very large photo library of 70,000 photos. I am currently backing up my photo library to a hard drive. I have so many photos partly because my Mac was the iTunes Mac (during the iTunes days) for my family of 5 and everyone used my computer to back up their iPhones including all their photos every time. As a result, I have lots of duplicates and bad photos, taken by my children, which they have confirmed, they no longer want now there are in their 20s. Many of these photos are goofy, shaky, upside down photos that can easily be eliminated. As I worked through my Photo library, that is what has lead me to discover this issue of having multiples of the same photo in both the jpeg format and HEIC format.

Live Photos stored on my Mac

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