Photos imported duplicates from iCloud

Question

Photos imported duplicates from iCloud

We have a "Late 2015" 27" iMac running macOS Mojave 10.14.6.

We have three iPhones sending photos to the cloud, which sync to the iMac.

The Photos app has 155,000+ photos; 1.5TB in size.

I confirmed the other day that there were 2,000+ photos in the cloud that had not sync'd to the iMac... i confirmed this by plugging the iPhone into the iMac with the Lightning cord and clicking the iPhone in Photos to see the images.

Question 1) Why did most of our photos download but not others? (all are iPhone created - captured from one of our thee iPhones)

Question 2) Photos has some images that are not yet imported (see Q1) AND photos that are imported - WHY? I have NOT seen this before.

Work-around... so to figure this out, I imported all on iPhone, then in the Import "Media Type," I selected all and rotated clockwise 90 degrees... and now I'm working through the Photos library manually confirming each is or is not a duplicate... if a duplicate, I'll delete.

And as I'm looking, i see that, for those pictures where I now have duplicates in Photos, because one was there through iCloud weeks ago, and the other was imported last light when I plugged in my Phone and clicked "Import" ...

the original photos, from iCloud, are JPGs ~ 2 Meg in size

the imported photos, from last night, are HEIC, ~ 6-10 Meg in size

zooming in suggests both are actually the same quality photo... all zoom in looks identical.

Question 3) WHY are the ones I imported in a different format, with bigger file size?

Question 4) Is it possible that the larger HEIC images are higher quality but my eyes cannot perceive it?

Question 5) Shouldn't I just delete the duplicate HEIC image, and retain the original JPGs?

Thanks,

Michael

Posted on Sep 2, 2021 7:23 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 3, 2021 12:32 AM in response to Michael VanVooren

I can't tell you why some imported and others didn't. It would require a much more detailed analysis of what is going on.

However, regarding your duplicates - I'm pretty certain the HEIC files are the ones synced from iCloud, and the jpg are the ones synced by wire. iCloud always transfers unchanged originals from an iphone. Whereas a cable connection will convert to jpg if the phone setting "transfer to PC" is set to "most compatible"

You can confirm this by looking in the imports folder. The ones imported via cable will be there, the ones synced from iCloud will not.

This is also why duplicates have been imported. The ones transferred via wire are not the same as those via iCloud, so are not recognised as duplicates.

I strongly recommend keeping the HEIC files (which are the originals). HEIC is a more efficient compression format that will store better quality files in the same file size. I'm surprised you are seeing 6-10Meg, My iphone 12 is creating 2meg to a max of 5 to 6meg HEIC. Again are you certain you've not got the jpg/heic files sizes mixed up.

In any case. Though the quality difference might not be immediately apparent - it is likely to show if you edit the photos.

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Answer 2

Sep 4, 2021 12:07 PM in response to TonyCollinet

Tony - Thanks... the photos in the Imports folder, imported by wire are the HEIC versions... and they are the larger file size.

It's interesting that they don't look any different... zooming all the way in shows the same level of detail... so bigger file for same resolution = unnecessary disk space consumption. true?

BUT if I want HEIC, should i delete all JPGs and let the HEICs import for iCloud?

re: why... (venting my frustration...) iCloud's supposed to be smart enough to notice the image # / file name... did for 14,000+ other photos... but that's a comment for Apple's Photo Application team.

Thank you for

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Photos imported duplicates from iCloud

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