Photos - Macbook Air - 'unrecognizable file format or the file may not contain valid data'

MacBook Air -Monterey. I am having difficulty in moving/exporting pdf or jpeg thumbnail photographs (mostly single pictures) from desktop into my Photos albums. Reason - "unrecognizable file format or the file may not contain valid data. Unsupported File Type". Tried changing format in preview into other formats but none work. Can anyone help with a solution please?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Feb 5, 2024 3:55 PM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

204,107 points

Posted on Feb 5, 2024 5:59 PM

It is no longer possible to import PDF files to Photos on the most recent system versions. After the upgrade to macOS 10.15 Catalina or newer the support for some older image and video codecs has been dropped in Photos for Mac.

You will need to convert the image files that are giving this error to a different format.
Open the pdf file in Preview, then try to use the command "File > Export" and select "JPEG" as the file format.
For files with a codec that is no longer supported by the the system at all, not only not in Photos, make the conversion on your old Mac, that still can read the format, or use a third-party app like Graphic Converter.
For some files the embedded color sync profile might no longer be supported. In that case you will need to export the files with a different color sync profile. You can change the color sync profile for an image file in Preview in the Tools menu (assign profile).

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Photos - Macbook Air - 'unrecognizable file format or the file may not contain valid data'

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