Can't edit photo imported from iphone 4S

Sorry that just covers the symptoms. Before I go digging... has anyone uncovered what exactly is up with the files?

The issue is the folder and photo properties.

Check this on a Win 7, not sure about Mac.

1. Right click the folder your photo is located in, then scroll down to bottom of the pop up options box, select "Properties" and click it.

2. On the General Tab , at very bottom there is a "Read Only" or "Hidden" option.

If folder is set to "Read Only" you need to untick or remove that option by clicking in the box, a pop up menu apears asking to confirm "subfolders and contents, click yes to change all contents from read only.

This should work and has worked for me, however I still hjave issue with some photos.

Solution 2.

Buy a 3rd party photo editor, I use photoshop. Open the picture in photoshop then rotate it or edit. Then when you go to save, select "Save As" option and change the name, this way you will have the original photo and the back up one you just made.

Try a freeware program called Paint, here is website: http://www.getpaint.net/

If I can find another way of fixing this issue I will reply.

I've done some digging...

The issue is whitespace at the end of the XMP section of the image files.

I have extracted the XMP section of the image files which include trailing data (not allowable by most XML parsers)

As Randyaa stated, the problem is with the EXIF data

Here is a windows based work around.....

The EXIFdata can be "cleaned up" from the file properties dialog accessible from the Windows File Manager,

Select File->Properties

At the bottom of the Details tab you will see the following "Remove Properties and Personal Information"

From the Dialog that pops up select the "Create a copy with all possible properties removed" <OK>

This operation creates a "FileName- Copy" of the original in the local directory with scrubbed Exif data. The file copy seems to retain much of the original camera settings information. This new file can then be opened and rotated to your hearts content without error.

I've tried this on both Vista and Win7.

I have experienced this and found a good solution.

I tried EXIFCleaner first; this does NOT work.

However, with a bit of searching, I found FileMind QuickFix by Metability Software (just google it). It's a free piece of software, and removed EXIF data from whole directories in one go. Also saves original copies untouched.

Works just fine,

Hope that helps!

Great solution...easy download / install...and worked perfectly. Thanks so much, you saved me a huge amount of time.

I had the same problem, even after clearing the "hidden" and "read-only" features, it was still giving me the error. So I had to go under the Security tab and edit the permissions for all possible users. Every single listed user had to have permission to edit or modify the pictures before Windows could even rotate a picture. I hope this helps. I can now edit all the pictures uploaded from my 4s.

Hi Everyone!

Had the same issue and Microsof Harold suggestion of using Paint worked fine. However I didn't want to do that process for every pic with this issue so I tried a few things and I was lucky. I don't know if this will work for everyone but I'll post what I did....maybe it will work with others:

When I was having this issue, I had the grid and the flash OFF so I turned the grid ON and the flash in AUTO. Then I took a few pics to test and the error message was gone. After that, turned the grid and flash OFF as it was before but haven't had the issue since.

Give it a try and post it if it worked....

It is very random how this thing works. I was hoping 5.1 would fix everything but instead it was more of an anti-jailbreak patch.

What you have to do (for a more perm fix) is to download an image stripper to strip the metadata files. There are alot out there just query one on your search engine. Best if you get one that can process batch files at once. And just strip all the pictures. Then your free to rotate, edit it anywhich way you want.

My theory is it pulls GPS position data from where you are when your taking the photo, sometimes the gps gives garbage data and it is included into the file's meta strings anyway. Maybe the value is too long, or contains incorrect keys but when it tries to save it doesnt know what to do with the data thus coming back with an error.

I've had success 100% of the time by simply making a copy of the image file. For me, no property edits or EXIF data changes were necessary. Simply Ctrl+c the file and Ctrl+v and the file works fine. You can rotate, edit and do whatever. It is a little painful if you need to do it for multiple files but it works for the most part.

Doesn't work for me. I've read most of this thread and found, as many others have claimed, that only the META stripping program is the sure-fire fix. http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=30&cmd=download&pid=15

This doesn't fix every problem, though. After I've made edits on my iPhone, importing them or uploading them always results in an unedited photo. It completely negates the feature of being able to edit the photos. Such a simple problem, yet this MAJOR bug has been ignored for months. Even though I know it won't get me anywhere, I'm going to be calling Apple about it just so they have another complaint on the books. Whatever it takes.

All very annoying, but I've realised I can use Microsoft's Picture Editor to sort it. Can rotate and edit all photos just fine from within Picture Editor, and if you use the thumbnail view you can do many photos at one, just like rotating them in the photostream file folder itself.

That'll do as a workaround for me I think. Was using a photo 'stripper' to lose all the associated data, which also makes them editable, but you lose everything you might actually want then as well.

Nicksaalfeld solution worked for me!

nicksaalfeld wrote:

I have experienced this and found a good solution.

I tried EXIFCleaner first; this does NOT work.

However, with a bit of searching, I found FileMind QuickFix by Metability Software (just google it). It's a free piece of software, and removed EXIF data from whole directories in one go. Also saves original copies untouched.

Works just fine,

Hope that helps!

Picture office manager- Use it, you can rotate multiple pictures at once and not lose photo quality- See my solution if intereested- posted it a few months ago.

Hi All, I don’t think you really need to do anything. The metadata attached with the files that you have copied from your iPhone 4S is not corrupt. It will work with any software that can detect those settings automatically. If you want to confirm, try uploading your (sideways) photos to facebook for example and see how your photo gets rotated to normal (exactly as it was taken by iPhone). However for some reason "windows photo viewer" doesn’t show the photos correctly nor does it save them after rotating. I did the rotate using EDIT option and opening photos in paint but when I uploaded them to facebook those photos were rotated one step further (that means facebook website recognises its original metadata).

For general viewing purpose, you can use any software suggested by many people here or there might be software that can detect settings on its own and you don’t really need to do anything with those files.