The New iPad will not sync all photo's

Unfortunately it does not always work with a clean restore and no apps. I did just that. Clean restore to factory defaults, then immediately attempted to synch after having blown away any existing cache folders. No dice. It did sync more photos than before, about 300 out of 5200, but that's about it.

Same here... I had those phone calls several times, including these system diagnostic files (which I did not want to send) and different kind of ways to sync and so on and on and on... much hours of "work". As I said, the problem JUST occours with the iPad 3. Its sad, that there is no official thread about it or in magazines and so on... would threat apple to find the solution faster, I guess... but well :-) Some day all will work fine again. Hopefully.

A quick update. Installed 10.6.1 and synced. No luck, as expected based on what most everyone else has experienced.

One note of appreciation, though. The Apple service rep called me back this evening, ironically just as I had finished installing 10.6.1, just as he promised he would four days ago. I was very impressed. He worked through a couple of options with me. None of them worked, but he promised to go back to the engineers to report the results and see what to do next. As a result, I'm encouraged that Apple will keep working the issue until we have a solution.

While i was successful syncing, there's still some hairy things going on. I'm going to start over fresh and see what happens. The photo cache is still kind of screwed up, i think.

The reason iTunes 'forgets' about the synced photos is because you have deleted the 'iPod Photo Cache'; it obviously looks for and doesn't find it, so turns off the option (you will note it does remember which directory was selected, but unchecks the box).

I had the most success by removing the thumbnail databases on the iPad itself. It's pretty clear that they shouldn't be there after the photos have been removed, so that looks like a bug.

Also, I was having this problem with my 4S before I got the iPad. But I had solved it by reducing the original files sizes (There I found an 8000 pixel limit to work). The problem appears to be in the generation or transfer of the ithmb version of the file (as can be seen by the zero size ithmbs that appear in the iPod Photo Cache), and seeing as the new iPad has a larger screen, its ithmb dimensions will be larger (i.e., different) than iPad 1 & 2 or iPhone/Touch; it's not surprising that behaviour is different. My personal suspicion is some kind of buffer over-run in reading in the source file, or generating the output file, which has not been properly handled.

To reiterate, I have managed to get 15066 photos to sync onto both my iPhone 4S and (new)iPad by first resizing them all to a maximum 3000 pixels in any dimension, removing all existing photos on the devices, deleting the thumbnail caches on the iPad itself, deleting the iPod Photo Cache from the folder to be synced and restarting (not restoring or wiping devices) everything.

FYI, all my images were originally from Canon 20D or Canon 7D, more recent ones have been tagged with geosetter. Additionally, there are a bunch on non-standard dimensioned ones (not 4:3, 3:2) generated as panoramas (it was these last images that orignally caused problems with iPhone 4S photo syncing, some of them being as much as 30000 pixels accross).

Yup, instead of deleting the Photo Cache folder it's better to organize the files inside by size and then just delete all the 0KB one's.

William.

Basically I can confirm what many others have already posted. Reducing the size of the image to under 3000 pixels on the longest side seems to solve the problem. To me, this points directly at the caching algorithm used by iTunes to sync photos with the new iPad. So it may be a combination of iTunes and iOS, since other devices sync properly.

The good side, for me, is that I can use Photoshope Elements to easily export photos to another directory and scale them down in the process. Doing that, the sync now works perfectly with all my devices, since I sync each from different directories.

Of course, as I made clear in my conversation with Apple last night, this is NOT a solution. It is a workaround, and not one everyone can use. So we will continue to wait for a final solution. I mean, if it's just a caching algorithm, (and I don't know that it is), how hard can it be to fix?

The step with the 3000 px for the long side of a picture was the first step I made by my own and told it to apple. It helped in some way, but did NOT solve the problem. Still photos got in the completly wrong folder on the iPad or the thumbnails were linked to completly wrong pictures on the iPad... the 3000px thing definitivly does not solve the problem at all. It is a bug within a) iOS, b) the iPad or c) iTunes... or combinations of it.

All my pictures have at most 3000px length or height... the problem is still present. It does not help. Apple has to fix the problem, WE are not their beta-testers or people to find solutions. We paid 499 - 799 Euros and do not have to find solutions for their bugs. These are our hours of work and so on... unpaid. So we got to wait until Apple delivers a 100% solution without being "beta-testers" again.

Agree 100%. Spot on.

reduce my resolution (photo file) so I can view them in higher resolution retina display?

no thanks.

I had the issue and resolved it (for my ipad and photos anyway) by resizing to 3000 pixels on the long side. Not what I wanted to do but it was not that big of a deal. As far as resolution, 3000 on the long side is still almost 50% more resolution than the retina display so when viewing the full picture, you are viewing a scaled down image that is not full resolution anyway. I realize the extra resolution would come into play when you zoom in but 3000 on the side is pretty big. My Canon 7D only puts out 5184 on a side so 3000 is not even halfing the resolution. The pictures look great on the iPad and I am happy with it.

I agree that it is a bug that needs to be resolved. I am confident that Apple will resolve it. If this is the biggest problem you are facing in life, consider yourself lucky. Give them a little time to sort it out. The product has only been out two weeks. First they had to determine if it was a real bug (which it probably is) versus issues with individual setups, then they have to figure out why it is happening, then figure out how to correct it, then test it to make sure they are not breaking something else in the process and finally release it. It will not happen overnight.

The new iPad has many nice features, concentrate on those until Apple releases a fix. It will happen.

Don't want to sound like a downer/winer, but I did buy this 3rd gen strictly for the Retina Display (I have (2) iPad 2s already and a 4g hotspot).

I don't want to go to Lightroom 4 and export thousands of photo into the 3000x long side just so I can view them.

Already spend a good part of 2 days, re-exporting the problem/missing picture until my entire library of 4000 pics are all viewable in their proper folders.

Of course in my subsequent sync the next day, it decided to re-arrange everything back to the erroreous way.

Well my 1 successful sync was just lucky, i guess. An attempt on a fresh ipad 3 was a failure. Guess I'll wait for Itunes 10.6.2 or so.

Hi All,

This is somewhat of a (re)introduction as well as its been a LONG time since i have been here, nice to meet you all again 🙂

Today I bought the new iPad after owning the original iPad for 2 years, and this is after some serious deliberation whether to or not. I am a mutual Android and Apple fan, both has their strengths and problems, but after much deliberations I decided to take the plunge again with Apple for my tablet choice. I already have the Samsung Galaxy Note so I thought Apple iPad would continue to compliment my 'tech needs'.

After unboxing my new iPad i proceeded to re-sync it to the back up that i had made from the previous iPad, and to much despair I too hit this sync problem for photos. The best attempt got me 12 photos out of 860, the worst being 3 and the whole experience was beginning to irk me to say the least.

I tried a combination of deleting the iPod Cache Folder, resetting sync history, resetting iPad to factory again and started from scratch but all to no avail and I was beginning to give up.

I gave it one final shot and the below are exactly what I did with this final attempt:

1. Deleted .iTunes Preferences.plist file in the itune folder
2. Turned off Wifi on my iPad
3. Created a brand new folder to house my photo library that i intended on syncing with the iPad
4. Moved all of the photos into the folder created in step 3 and deleted the old folder
5. Reset sync history via edit - preference - device
6. Reselected the folder that i want to sync from within iTunes (at which point it poped up a message to say that all photos will be replaced with photos in this location) or to that effect.
7. It synched all 860 photos that i wanted to sync first time.

After checking the whole environment, I can see that iTunes recreated a new plist file from step 1, also all iPod Cache folders contained 'ithmb' files that has a positive file size (whereas before they were all 0bytes).

I couldn't believe it and I am now a very happy owner of the new iPad.

I cannot guarantee that all 7 steps are necessary in fixing this, but I am fixed of the problem as described in this post. I did not have to resize photos or put things in folder with smaller number of files. Just what i did in those 7 steps.

I wish you all good luck and if you have any questions, then please feel free to ask me. 😉

@thelaud: It is not up to us to "fix" this or to create workarounds. Never the less: Your steps may work. Even as some of the other steps has worked and the next time they did not anymore. If your steps worked: Now take an iPhone and sync the same photos (!). After that sync the photos with the ipad again. Good luck :-) you will see: It will not work.