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Photos (Moterey) crashes when I add pics

soooo i have just spent several months scanning, cropping, color correcting, and organizing thousands and thousands of family photos and was on to the last step, adding them to Photos and adding correct dates to them.


much to my dismay, when i tried to add the first two photos, the application crashed. and again. and again. i restarted the program (obviously), and even restarted my machine. still crashing.


pretty frustrating to go through all this work and get screwed at the last step here. i'm pretty bad at searches, but have done due diligence both through google and the forum search function and am seeing plenty of problems with Photos but not this particular one. any help would be greatly appreciated.


i'm on my iMac, just updated to Monterey within the last week... crash code below



Posted on Dec 3, 2021 7:57 PM

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Posted on Dec 7, 2021 12:50 PM

One thing to check - do the jpg files all have the same embedded colour profile? I'm sure I've read somewhere that Photos is unable to use files with some colour profiles that might be embedded by photoshop.


Also regarding the external drive - is it correctly formatted for a photos library?

It must be formatted APFS or MacOS extended (journaled) (preferred for spinning drives). If you have not formatted it after purchase it will most likely be ExFat - which is not compatible.

It Must not be (or have been) used for time machine. (A time machine drive can be used if re-formatted)

It must have the 'ignore ownership" checkbox ticked.

It must be directly connected (No ethernet or wifi)


See

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517

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8 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 7, 2021 12:50 PM in response to ninthname

One thing to check - do the jpg files all have the same embedded colour profile? I'm sure I've read somewhere that Photos is unable to use files with some colour profiles that might be embedded by photoshop.


Also regarding the external drive - is it correctly formatted for a photos library?

It must be formatted APFS or MacOS extended (journaled) (preferred for spinning drives). If you have not formatted it after purchase it will most likely be ExFat - which is not compatible.

It Must not be (or have been) used for time machine. (A time machine drive can be used if re-formatted)

It must have the 'ignore ownership" checkbox ticked.

It must be directly connected (No ethernet or wifi)


See

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201517

Dec 3, 2021 8:37 PM in response to ninthname

i tried retitling it in the info panel, and now when i try to add it Photos does not crash, but gives me the message "Cannot Import Item This item cannot be added to your Photo library because it may be an unrecognizable file format or the file may not contain valid data."


it is a .jpg that both photoshop and preview open without issue, so...

Dec 7, 2021 7:16 AM in response to TonyCollinet

hi Tony-


thank you so much for taking time to reply.


the library is not new, it has been in place since Apple first changed over from iPhoto.


it is store on an external hard drive, where it has always been.


since posting, i have discovered that some of the photos will add to Photos and some will not - odd again, since they were all altered / generated in Photoshop and as the same file format, jpeg. i cannot remember Photos or iPhoto refusing to accept a jpeg before, especially since, as i said, the photos that crash Photos open in Preview...


i'll try the safe mode method when i get home from work tonight.


thanks again,

matthew

Dec 7, 2021 2:14 PM in response to TonyCollinet

formatting is correct; not a previous time machine disk (though i always reformat anyway); hardwired.


your note about color profiles may be the ticket here - i have never heard that and haven't run across that issue during my searching for solutions here. several of the photos are black and white, so i will re-save them as RBG and see if that solves the issue.


thank god for you and your willingness to take time to reply, you're the best!

Dec 7, 2021 7:24 PM in response to TonyCollinet

well while it wasn't necessarily the color profile, it was something about the file format. some older scans i did in photoshop list as jpegs in finder, but appear in folders without the file extension. these were the ones that wouldn't add.


i reopened them in photoshop and re-exported as jpegs and now they can be added.


not sure what the precise technical problem was, but i have a solution and o\your suggestions got me there, so thank you again. posting this for any others with a similar issue who come a-lookin'


with graittude,

matthew

Photos (Moterey) crashes when I add pics

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