Portrait type photos are corrupted (grey area appear) when transferring from iPhone to PC

Almost a year later and this is still not fixed! Many photos that I didn't catch and deleted off my phone are ruined. Yes, the workaround is to transfer "Automatic" as JPG, but I thought we are transitioning to HEIC.

Any "edited" photo from the iPhone transferred to PC will have this issue. The file name starts with IMG-E***. Affects photos you applied some edit to on the iPhone, or portrait mode.

@Ryder_del_Fin, Refer my answer on the other post about this issue in Apple Communities: Portrait Mode Photos Corrupted (Gray Bar) - Apple Community

To summarise though:

• yes, I'm using the Windows iCloud app, not a web browser (although there's a partial workaround to the download size for unedited photos in a web browser, it doesn't help us with the grey bar issue).
• you can change the name of the folder where iCloud saves photos. I've called mine "Download" in the location you saw in my screenshot.
• no, using an external drive doesn't help. Not sure why you are seeing a difference?
• The only workarounds I found were to use a 3rd party cloud backup tool (I tested OneDrive, Dropbox and iDrive and both work to get the full resolution edited photo)

Other important points to note:

• the issue is not just "Portrait" mode photos. Can't remember what setting I used for the below landscape photo, but clearly the grey bar occurred.

• The issue doesn't only occur on Windows. It happens in certain circumstances on Mac too - see: Portrait Mode Photos Corrupted (Gray Bar) - Apple Community . I've seen another post from someone saying they saw it on Linux.

Note: My reason for mentioning the HEIF extension was that I was just adding to @davidg82's post to explain which extension on MS Store to use.   It's not really relevant to the grey bar issue - just friendly advice because someone was saying they didn't know how to display (valid) .heic files on Windows.  FWIW, I have Windows 10 and it certainly didn't recognize .heic files by default. I needed to install the extensions to be able to display the photo in an .heic file.  Based on my Google'ing, WIndows 11 doesn't support .heic out of the box either - you need to install the extension for it too. If you don't have the extension installed, you can still open the file with 3rd party tools that support .heic, or you can open it to examine it at byte level with an editor that supports doing so. As you're adamant photos with a grey bar are just mis-named jpeg files, it sounds like you've probably done that.

jo3553 Said:

"[...]I'm so glad I found this posting, because having exactly the same problem, except I'm not using Windows but a Linux PC[...]Clearly, this is not a problem with Windows."

-------

Do your Part:

Inform Apple of this, as Bug, as mentioned above.

Mabuse777 Said:

"Dear Apple team, would you please finally start working on this!!!!”

———

Leave Apple Feedback:

Refer to my Reply that has been marked as"helpful”. Note that Apple barely reads these replies as it is.

I have this problem to, since 2020... first with my Iphone xs and now same problem continue in my Iphone 12 Pro Max... My dad experience same problem too since 2020. His Iphone is 11 Pro and he use his own PC (Win 10).

I lost several several photos because of this problem, because when I saw and discovered the problem, I went to review the photos from last months and several had the problem, but I had already deleted the original from iphone.

How long time Apple will delay to fix it?

-------

Iphone 12 Pro Max 256GB

IOS 14.5.1

Windows 10 Pro

Version 1909

Comp. SO 18363.1500

The problem dont happened only with Portrait photos, as you can see bellow, theses photos were exported today (05/22/2021). But is true that this problem happen only with "IMG_E...." photos.

S314-EsPi Said:

"Portrait type photos are corrupted (grey area appear) when transferring from iPhone to PC"

-------

I. Contact Microsoft:

Find out what's going on, from Microsoft's end of things. If no fix yet, Apple probably has yet to play their role in this.

How to Contact Microsoft:

Start here, with the Virtual Support Agent. Start a chat with a rep, asking them where this all stands. I'm most certain that Microsoft has yet to do their part in catching up with all these changes made by Apple.

II. Provide Apple Feedback:

Do your Part. Seeing seven "Me To" marks as of this reply, this seems to be a common issue - most certainly a bug. So, inform Apple of this bug - Apple won't get back to you directly, but the more feedback they receive on this, the more they will know what bugs are occurring and needs to be fixed.

How to Give Feedback:

1. Go Here: Feedback - iPhone - Apple
2. Select: "Bug Report" for "Feedback Type"
3. Inform Apple: of how you came across this issue, and how you've troubleshot it thus far.
4. Proceed from there as necessary

waltereleven Said:

“Boots are disgusting, but you've reach the next level. I don't think you've read everything I wrote, otherwise you wouldn't give me those ‘advises’.”

———-

As the OP Said: “transferring from iPhone to PC, but it seems that there is a bug when you are importing the Portrait type of photos that should be copied as JPG”

So, if there is a bug, then that is why to contact MS and Apple. They are the developers of the Operating Systems. If a bug, they’ll look into it, and MS may know something on their part.

Hi to the 22 people facing this issue

Following up, Apple advised me today to update my iPhone to iOS 14.3 and replicate the issue, even when I was so skeptical (since I've read all the changes via About iOS 14 Updates - Apple Support for iOS 14.3), there's no changes for Camera/Photos aside of ProRAW for iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, even do, I decided to give a shot but again, I'm getting the same result...

I'm about to loose my mind, I spend more than a $1.2k on a device that I can't even use it as it's supposed to. Portrait is one of those "enhance features" for Pro and Pro Max models... this is so frustrating.

I'll keep you posted in case I have further information/support.

Best regards,

Walter

Hello everyone,

And yet we're still here... and yet TheLittles keep trying to "advise" us to leave feedback...

And yet many of you have even shared binary, raw and metadata; we're certainly tech savvy users, aren't we?

And yet the I have this question too button keeps rising up (212 as of May 13th 2021)...

And yet after 7 months, 4 iOS golden master updates, and so many, many beta sprints were released; we still stuck here...

As I said on my conclusion post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251982667?answerId=254921715022#254921715022

I lost my faith long time ago.

I'm glad this thread is being helpful to let so many people know this is a well self-user-known issue, but please do not except this is going to get fix soon, we well probably need to stick on JPEG, 8bit w/ no DeepFusion/ProRAW, etc.

Do not hesitate to keep updating this thread in case you have have something to share, eventually, you're going to get tired and will probably resigned thereafter (like me).

Take good care everyone,

Walter

Please make sure you submit feedback to Apple directly as outlined in the second response to the question:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Apple may not be aware of the wide impact of this issue and sending feedback may help amplify the impact of the issue and drive corrective action.

Hello,

iOS 15.0.2 is out but still the same issue. Confirmed to happen on Windows, MacOS (see Bosny post on Jun 22, 2021 who also has a win 10 machine) and Linux (another post from lencastre on May 16, 2021).

Come on Apple ... one year now ... do something ...

Hope this helps !

If windows does not support the file format you would need to get an extension or codec that can play that format maybe from Microsoft store. I have not tested the extension out, so check out the reviews they do have others as well just search the extension.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/heic-image-viewer-converter/9n8k5qxzsjnv#activetab=pivot:overviewtab

The Image Extension enables Windows 10 devices to read and write files that use the iphones unique format. You will still need to associate the extension with the photo viewer, or you can just download a photo app that supports the extension.

Apple doesn't supply your windows computer. Thats why it works when you import using "compatible" which says it all right there. The key word being "compatible" it slipped past me before too .... windows imports them, but cant read them properly because its not programmed for it most likely, which im surprised it opened/imported it at all .

more info

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/photos-app-video-editor-error-can-t-view-this-file-type-173ae0be-2b7d-d413-589e-84ccca0de02e

Upload to onedrive then re-download may also work with google drive and icloud apple gives 5GB of icloud storage log into icloud.com access photos then download what you want, or try and upload photos directly from the phone while logged into icloud.com on safari browser upload the photo to icloud drive then go to

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/upload-heif-and-hevc-photos-and-videos-to-onedrive-96d137f5-369b-4d99-9db8-523c736da425

change default photo app

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-default-programs-in-windows-10-e5d82cad-17d1-c53b-3505-f10a32e1894d

Apple did provide software that you can use for photos if its set up automatically sync check it from time to time sometimes it may lose the connection to apple servers or you may leave your computer off for long periods of time which since the computers off do data is being transmitted, so whatever you do what show on the computer until you connect back to the internet, so it can send the info to your computer from the server that had the info the phone had on it....see apple llooking out for yall and microsoft is the problem

Set up and use iCloud for Windows - Apple Support

The video goes over associating the file type with the apps, also changing the default apps

I think, this issue may have been solved now..?

1. I typically use my iPhone 12 camera 'zoomed', so that images fill the 16x9 frame
2. When synced two images appear on my PC - one 'natural / native' and one 'zoomed in'
3. The zoomed images are ALWAYS the ones distorted with the grey crop, as show in this pic of both
4. Yesterday I downloaded 6 MONTHS worth of images from my iPhone, each with a 'natural' aspect radio file and a 'zoom to 16x9' one.
5. EVERY 'zoom' image had the grey corruption above UP TO 4th January 2022. After that date, the same zoom ones do not have the corruption.

So - it appears to that me this "images corrupted by grey blocks" fault HAS BEEN FIXED, unless anyone knows otherwise? I regularly update IOS software

As is obvious above, I suspect it ONLY applies to image taken in '16x9' mode, which isn't a real zoom at all - it just crops the top and bottom.

Hi Walter,

Sadly, You are not getting my point.

It is correct that HEIC/HEVC was introduced with iOS 11.

But whenever you use a portrait mode, then iOS generates 2 images: IMG_XXXX and IMG_EXXX.

Since iOS 11 until iOS 14 (not included) the IMG_XXXX was in HEIC while IMG_EXXXX was in JPG format whenever we choose the "Keep Original"

Starting from iOS 14 both images started to be in HEIC file extension and the issue of the corrupted image started to show up:

• The IMG_XXXX.HEIC is totally OK (but doesn't include the portrait effect)
• The IMG_EXXXX.HEIC is not OK (which include the portrait effect)

If we choose "Automatic" in iOS 14+ then both will be JPG and everything seems to be OK but that's not what we want to achieve.

There are 2 possible solutions for Apple:

1. Rollback the change where in "Keep Original" will produce HEIC file for the IMG_XXXX and JPG for the IMG_EXXXX
2. Fix the issue where IMG_EXXXX will be HEIC and picture won't be corrupted as shown in previous feedbacks.

I assume that Apple will choose option #2 to fix as they probably want to fully migrate to HEIC format..