Photos refuses to import JPEGs

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Level 4

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Photos refuses to import JPEGs

Hello everybody

I'm trying to import into Photos images shot with my iPhones over the years, which are not yet in the Photos library. The images I am trying to copy and the Photos library itself are stored on the same drive (the computer runs Monterey).

All are JPEGs and the vast majority import without issue. However, occasionally I get this error message.

The images that don't import were taken with various versions of Hipstamatic. The ones that give me trouble all have sidecar (AAE) files for the edits that the app makes. Strangely, however, many such Hipstamatic images do import without problem. All troublesome images open in Preview.

I have tried the various things suggested in similar threads:

Importing by drag and drop and by using Photos–File–Import...
Importing only very few images
Moving troublesome images to the user Pictures folder and import from there
Closing and opening Photos
Rebooting the computer
Selecting "Ignore ownership on this volume" (incl. all subfolders) on the drive holding all the images
Importing to a new Photos library

Has anyone got any idea what I could try next?

Thank you in advance

Philip

Posted on Jan 30, 2025 3:19 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,467 points

Jan 30, 2025 7:52 AM in response to pullman

I am getting the same error when trying to import your sample image with the .AAE sidecar present. The image can be imported without error message, when I rename the sidecar file, so it does no longer match the original filename.

This suggests, that the problem is with the sidecar file - the image may have adjustments applied, that the current version of Photos cannot handle.

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Answer 2

Jan 30, 2025 8:52 AM in response to pullman

This looks similar like the very old Photos.app bug when movies silently fail to import if there is a .xmp sidecar in the import folder.

So if the import folder has this pair:

MCSN8042.jpg

MCSN8042.AAE

...then the .jpg fails to import. But if I remove the .AAE file from that folder, then it works (somehow I got MCSN8042b.AAE from your download link and with it the import succeeded but after I removed that b it failed).

I have sent feedback to Apple about that old movie .xmp sidecar bug last October but it is still present in Sequoia 15.3.

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Answer 3

pullman Author

Level 4

1,220 points

Jan 30, 2025 8:45 AM in response to léonie

Thank you very much for testing Léonie. Your reply caused me to try this further. It appears that the AAE file remains linked somehow to the JPEG whether it is dragged with the JPEG or not. Like you discovered that link will be broken if the AAE is renamed. The link also breaks if the AAE is moved out of the folder or deleted before the JPEG is dragged into Photos.

I've emailed Hipstamatic support to see if something could be done to keep the edits in the AAE file. I'll updated the thread when they reply.

cheers

philip

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Answer 4

Jan 31, 2025 3:23 AM in response to pullman

That is a nasty obscure bug.

I did some quick tests and it seems that if there is a "MCSN8042.AAE" and "MCSN8042.JPG" pair inside a folder, then macOS Sequoia 15.3 Photos might fail to import all completely unrelated .jpg and .heic images in that folder (movies seem to be immune).

The .AAE file can be a completely empty zero length file made with a text editor. Sometimes the other files' filenames matters and sometimes it seems to matter if the other files happen to have some Apple metadata inside them, and on the other hand sometimes deleting all metadata in an image also prevented that image to import. I did not yet test what .AAE file names might trigger that bug.

→ But for now it is best to keep all .AAE and .xmp sidecars out of the folder that is imported to Photos.

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Answer 5

pullman Author

Level 4

1,220 points

Feb 1, 2025 12:37 AM in response to Old Toad

Thank you for the suggestion. I created the app on the Desktop. The resulting file will, when dragged from the new location (Desktop), be imported.

But If I first remove the original image file from its original folder, move the Automator-created file into its place and then drag that new file into Photos, it will be rejected with the same error if the AAE file is present in that folder.

If I move the AAE file from that folder first the new file will be accepted by Photos. As I mentioned before this also happens with original image files.

I also moved the Automator app into the original image folder and tried the above, but the results were the same.

So it seems it is the presence of the AAE files which causes the error.

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Answer 6

Old Toad

Level 10

215,136 points

Feb 1, 2025 9:58 AM in response to pullman

The AAE is a sidecar file to go along with an image containing edit information and maybe some metadata when that file is exported to a Windows machine. If you're happy with the image itself delete the AAE files and import just the image files.

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Answer 7

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,780 points

Jan 30, 2025 3:31 AM in response to pullman

Open one of the images in Peview. Save it. (No need to make any changes or anything, just save) Then try to import it.

If the library is on an external, what format is that?

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Answer 8

Jan 31, 2025 9:36 AM in response to Matti Haveri

It seems Photos refuses importing the paired image or even all images in a folder if some .AAE file is not kosher.

For example, editing just one character in the .AAE <data> section results that the paired .jpg does not import. Editing that single character back makes it work again.

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Answer 9

Feb 20, 2025 11:32 PM in response to Matti Haveri

.AAE sample

exiftool v13.20 and later now displays adjustmentData section in .AAE sidecars.

In Apple's .AAE files the adjustmentData section is base64 encoded and zlib compressed JSON (sample output attached).

But in at least that 3rd party Hipstamatic .AAE file the adjustmentData section is base64 encoded PLIST with no compression. Maybe the current Photos.app chokes on that and fails to import the relating image.

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Answer 10

Feb 7, 2025 12:00 AM in response to pullman

For fun I made a python script below which should convert .AAE files' adjustmentData base64 section to a more readable .plist format. I hope it comes through intact.

One thing different in the Hipstamatic-generated "MCSN8042.AAE" in the original post [iCloud link to the sample files seems to be deleted by now] above that prevents Photos.app from importing images is that its decoded base64 portion is already .plist format while the base64 in iOS/iPadOS .AAE files needs further zlib decompression.

If an image or movie is edited in iOS/iPadOS, and AirDropped with Options > All Photos Data, then the Mac receives original IMG_0001.HEIC, edited IMG_E0001.heic and IMG_0001.AAE sidecar describing the edits which Photos.app can continue or revert to the original.

I have not yet much compared how the .plist values correspond to the imported Photos.app edits. I have not tried to reverse engineer this and write .AAE from scratch and try what might trigger the Photos import flaw if some type of .AAE is present. I have always deleted .AAE files, if they are present anyway.

macOS Monterey and later no longer has python pre-installed so you must install it by some method (MacPorts, Homebrew, by typing "python3" in the Terminal and then installing Command Line tools when prompted, download from www.python.org, etc).

You can then run the script via the Terminal (or maybe via IDLE.app etc) by putting it in the same folder as .AAE files, cd to that folder and type "python AAE_to_plist.py" without quotes (or depending how you installed python maybe "python3 AAE_to_plist.py"), then type the filename like "IMG_0796.AAE" when prompted to do so.

I am a python newbie so please let me know if the script needs fixes (my two youngest are having python course in high school math so I try to have some knowledge about it).

AAE_to_plist.py script to convert .AAE files to more readable .plist files:

1. Prompts for input .AAE filename.

2. Selects base64 data inside .AAE file's <data></data> and deletes whitespace tabs and linebreaks from it.

3. Decodes base64 to binary (some non-Apple .AAE might have .plist data already in this step making the script to fallback to only this base64 decode).

4. Decompresses binary to .plist.

5. Convert .plist to a more readable xml1 .plist format with the input base name. This step uses macOS /usr/bin/plutil so it does not work in Windows.

AAE_to_plist.py

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Answer 11

pullman Author

Level 4

1,220 points

Jan 31, 2025 10:03 AM in response to Matti Haveri

This is something I've been looking at also. I've been trying to figure out why some AAE files are troublesome whereas others, which also emanate from the Hipstamatic app, are not.

There are a few strings in them which differ, apart from <data>. On an AAE file that does not cause trouble, the end looks like this:

<key>adjustmentEditorBundleID</key>
<string>com.apple.mobileslideshow</string>
<key>adjustmentFormatIdentifier</key>
<string>com.apple.photo</string>
<key>adjustmentFormatVersion</key>
<string>1.2</string>

...whereas on a troublesome AAE file it looks like this:

<key>adjustmentEditorBundleID</key>
<string>com.syntheticcorp.hipstamatic</string>
<key>adjustmentFormatIdentifier</key>
<string>com.hipstamatic.Photo</string>
<key>adjustmentFormatVersion</key>
<string>1.0</string>

But editing the former file to match the latter – either string by string or pasting in the whole bit at the end – still causes the error upon import.

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Answer 12

Jan 30, 2025 4:51 AM in response to pullman

Can you put a sample file in some cloud service?

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Answer 13

Feb 1, 2025 3:21 AM in response to pullman

FWIW the .AAE in your sample files seems to be base64 encoded and can be converted to more readable form with the Terminal (after editing out all but the text inside <data></data> with a text editor like BBEdit):

base64 -d -i MCSN8042.AAE -o MCSN8042.plist

But with my iOS 16.7.10 .AAE sidecar outputs a binary file that might need further decompressing.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61023739/decoding-adjustmentdata-in-aae-files-of-pictures-taken-by-the-iphone

edit: this seems to display also those new iOS .AAE Files in readable form but the adjustmentData is still unreadable:

plutil -p MCSN8042.AAE

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Answer 14

pullman Author

Level 4

1,220 points

Jan 30, 2025 4:05 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thank you for the suggestion. The HDD holding the library is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

I opened one of the troublesome images in Preview and pressed Save and then reimported it but got the same error message.

When I exported it from Preview I was able to import it. Given that I need to import a large amount of images that will unfortunately not work as a solution. But perhaps it indicates something?

Edit: In Get Info both the original and the exported file appear identical.

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Answer 15

pullman Author

Level 4

1,220 points

Jan 30, 2025 6:45 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Sure thing, does this work? I put one of the JPEGs and it's AAE file in a shared iCloud folder.

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/06dtDoMPk4Xveti8w28JcoahA#photosimportproblem

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Photos refuses to import JPEGs

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