Will there ever be a fix for the photo-sync problems?

Gulliver wrote:

Thank you, please see my answer to the message from zurarx.

I’m going to make some assumptions here…

Okay, so you are on track for building your own photo storage and organization system, or will want to buy an existing photo storage system tailored (or tailorable) to your particular storage and retrieval requirements.

If building your own, you’ll want to learn about and use EXIF data and particularly not file system dates and file system metadata, and to use a database for finding your photos and not directories, and you’ll want to use generated filenames (UUIDs or such) and not user-selected names (due to collisions). Store the user-specified name in the EXIF and/or in the database. As a starting point, Filemaker Pro can be workable for building this, or potentially finding an existing and photographer-focused (no pun intended) photo storage system.

Why? Because Photos is limited to what Photos is and to what Apple thinks most folks can deal with, and because storing user-specified filenames in user-specified directories and all with file system metadata being entirely fickle, and where these direct-based designs never scale all that well, and seemingly inevitably run into access and sorting and scaling issues.

You could conceivably tie your system into iCloud photos for sharing with other and for accessing from devices, but your own self-contained thing will probably work better for your needs. Or finding a photo storage system that has the apps and clients you need.

Photos does what photos does, and your needs and expectations are seemingly well past the organization and access provided.

I have around 15K with cable sync and no sync issues in recent times, with lots of albums dating back to iPhoto.

Definitely did have issues with iTunes cable sync and Photos that led to a complete reset of the Photos library using a Time Machine restore when the main library was corrupted, and several times with resets of each of the clients’ photo storage when that got corrupted. Performing the reset within each of the clients’ photo storage is mentioned in another reply here, and that was what worked in my cases.

Finder cable sync has been working more reliably than did iTunes, and with rather fewer random freezes for common operations. iTunes routinely lost the plan and needed the Mac rebooted. Finder loses the plan less often.

This working (once reset) with macOS versions starting around 13, and with iOS and iPadOS starting around iOS 17 or so.

I don’t have a NAS in the mix here though, as the photos and videos are all stored on the Mac internal drive. If that NAS is where your photo library is stored, that is.

If your NAS supports a photo gallery feature, that can be another option. NextCloud also has gallery support.

This response probably won't help if you want to keep using Photos.

I think that Apple sort of expects people who want to synch Photos (i.e. images in Photos) between iDevices to use iCloud. I've got a similar number of pics to you but I don't use the Photos app and only very rarely do I edit pics other than to add metadata. I just put pics in folders on the Mac and use an image management app to assign categories (people, places, events, etc.). I synch to a couple of iPhones and iPads via USB cable and it usually works fine - albeit annoyingly slowly because Apple still hasn't worked out a way of not checking every pic every time to see if it's changed or (as is mostly the case) not. If only there were a way - like a button - of not synching photos if you knew there weren't any changes and you just wanted a quick Music synch /sarc.

Occasionally it stops working and the fix I use is to turn off image synching so the photos are removed from the iDevice then turn it back on a few folders at a time until I'm convinced it's synching properly again. I used to have to do this about once a month but now it's a lot less frequent, so maybe things (for my case) are getting fixed.

As I said, this probably isn't useful to you if you want to keep using Photos, but it's something to think about while, hopefully, someone who uses Photos like you do comes along. Best of luck!

Syncing photos with iTunes from a Mac to iOS devices has never been a syncing (are you syncing from a Mac or a different computer model?).

When we only had the iTunes syncing the results kept changing with every system versions and a lot of problems:

• The photos were not synced at the full resolution - iTunes created optimized versions, scaled down to a lesser resolution.
• When we edited these optimized versions on the iPhone they would be downloaded as duplicates on our Mac, when we downloaded the "new" photos.
• It depended on the system version, if the sorting or our albums would be maintained, when we "synced" the albums from our Mac to the iPhone or iPad. It depended in the system version, if smart albums would be synced to the iPhone or iPad.
• The synced photos are not truly a part of the Photos Library. We cannot delete or edit them. It would be futile anyway, as they are only in a reduced resolution and will be overwritten by the next sync.

iCloud Photos has solved most of these problems. With iCloud Photos the syncing is no longer a one-way route. The Photos Libraries are automatically kept identical. We do not have to remember to sync our photos, we can use hand-off between our Apple devices and work with our photos on any device that is just near us. iCloud will update our work automatically on all our devices. It is the finally a true syncing, but still not perfect, as the iOS devices do still not support smart albums and keywords, and the iOS devices cannot sho the titles we assign to the items in our Photos Libraries. A very important part of our Photos Libraries is still not syncing across all devices.

I can't figure out what your question is…

Basically you're complaining like your dial phone doesn't work in this touch-tone world. There's a reason that you don't see dial phones anymore, except in old movies.

Frankly, I think that your memory is skewed-- transferring (not syncing!) pictures using iTunes was never especially satisfactory. Some cameras worked, some didn't. You got "From My Mac" pictures that weren't editable on the phone. You just didn't have much control over what happened. There arose a bunch of 3rd party apps to help, and they didn't much. Happily that has been replaced by a more modern system that works automatically and doesn't have all those problems.

You can let Apple know how you feel here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

That's true, but use-case is important. I do everything I need to do with images on my Mac and consider Mac as the master. I only want images on my iDevices to show to family, friends or to have for my own reference or entertainment or to resolve an argument in the pub. I will never want to edit images or add metadata or titles on iDevices. It's a bit like the old days when you had a flip wallet of favourite pics in your bag or took your holiday pics to home for Christmas. My iDevices are like a flip-wallet of photos - except now I can put all my images in it.

I think the OP has a similar use-case. They do all their processing on Photoshop on Mac, transfer selected images to Photos on Mac to assemble albums and then they synch Photos to have the albums on their phone. Except the synch isn't working, for some reason.

I use this workflow to sync Photos with my iPad Air 3 (26.4.1) with iMac Monterey (12.7.6). Recently this process gets stuck syncing via Finder with the message "Determining tracks to sync". I am NOT syncing Music, only Photos. I have rebuilt the Photos library file without any syncing success. I have also signed out/in of my Apple ID from my iPad in hopes of clearing syncing errors. No success. I initially had Music toggled on when the syncing got stuck. I have since toggled it off but the message still appears. I have successfully sync'd photos to my iPhone 12 during this troubleshooting session.

Any tips appreciated. Not sure if this is attributed to the iPad 26xx update.