Ghost Pictures

Question

Ghost Pictures

Just in the last couple of days, on the import page for Photos on my MBP, 4 Grey squares (and maybe some actual pictures) are displayed when I connect my iPhone to my computer via USB cable to sync my photos. Neither these photos - nor any artifact of them - shows up anywhere on either the iPhone or the Mac. I can’t erase them by selecting “import all new photos” nor can they be clicked on and deleted by either the delete key or Command-x. Would restoring the iPhone be a way to get rid of them?

MacBook, OS X 10.11

Posted on May 11, 2022 8:43 PM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

200,663 points

May 11, 2022 9:52 PM in response to Mike Strohmeyer

Which system version os running on your iPhone? Can your iPhone take photos in the space saving High Efficiency format HEIF?

Then a Mac with OS X 10.11 cannot handle the photos taken with the iPhone, if you have set the Settings > Camera > Formats to "High Efficiency". Set the formats to Most Compatible to take new photos as JPEGs, if you want to work with the photo on a Mac with El Capitan or change the Settings > Photos in the "Transfer to Mac and PC" section to Most Compatible to convert the files when transferring them, see: Using HEIF or HEVC media on Apple devices - Apple Support

But if you convert the files, you will have to select the new photos manually, as importing converted files will interfere with the duplicate detection on import.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,663 points

May 12, 2022 8:40 AM in response to Mike Strohmeyer

Hey, the system versions on your Mac and iPhone should not have any problems with the HEIF format.

You could be seeing My Photo Stream in the Import dialog. Is My Photo Stream enabled on your iPhone? Then you may want to turn it off, temporarily. Another possible source of files that cannot be displayed might be files you saved from other applications or that have been shared with you. have you saved any files from WhatsApp or similar ? In that case it might help to uninstall that app, to remove any files it is showing in Photos.

Restoring the iPhone might help, but make at least one current backup, better two, one in iCloud, one on a computer. Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup - Apple Support

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,663 points

May 12, 2022 9:51 AM in response to Mike Strohmeyer

If you are saving images as web pages in your Photos Library, it might explain the blank thumb nails. Photos is meant to be used for images taken with a digital camera and .webp is not on the list of supported formats. When I added some .webp images to my Photos Library, iCloud stopped syncing and many external editors could not work with this format.

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Answer 4

May 12, 2022 8:47 AM in response to léonie

I’m beginning to get a feel for what’s going on. If I pull up

a photo on my phone, click on it and choose “save to photos” it shows up in the Recents album but not in Photostream. If I take a screen shot of the same picture it shows up in both places. So there must be some setting somewhere that’s precluding the “save to” option from working. I want to do some more research when I get a moment. Also want to do some more with the Grey ghost images. Thanks for your help - I’ll be in touch soon.

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Answer 5

May 12, 2022 9:27 AM in response to léonie

As an aside, I read that the Google world is beginning to use a .webp format for some/all downloads. Assuming that that may be causing some of my issue, do you know of a convenient workaround to get .webp photos converted to .jpg? I know I can open the .webp photo in Preview and go from there, but with the number of photos I save from the web it’s a pretty clunky solution.

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Answer 6

May 14, 2022 3:04 PM in response to léonie

So, in the past couple of days, I found the following:

On my MacBook Air, if I right-click on an image that comes up in a Google search in Safari and select “save to Photos,” Photos rejects it as an unrecognizable file format - most likely .webp.
If I click on that same image and open the web site where it resides and then right-click on that same image, chances are Photos will accept it. At that level it appears that some images have been saved as .webp and some are still saved as .jpg.
In any case, a .webp image that’s been imported to Photos on the Mac will not sync to my iPhone.

I haven’t run the same kind of “test” using my phone but I’m reasonably sure the results will be similar.

So, except for the grey images in the phone I feel like I’ve figured out what didn’t seem to be going right in the first place. I can only imagine how many images that were “accepted” into my Photos library and never were synced to my iPhone. Not sure I have the gumption to go looking around.

Thanks a lot for your responses. They got me looking at my problem in a way I might not have envisioned before.

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Answer 7

May 12, 2022 7:12 AM in response to léonie

Thank you. I’ll try to work with the HEIC option you suggest and report back. I’m running MacOS 12.3 on the Mac and iOS 15.4 on the phone so I don’t think that’s an issue.

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Ghost Pictures

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