The New iPad will not sync all photo's

I haven't been following this thread since I first posted one workaround and am surprised how much effort is being put in to finding a solution.

I can say with almost 100% certainty that there is nothing us users can do to fix this, there isn't going to be some magical combination of buttons to push to suddenly make it work. The problem is with iTunes and the way it creates the "optimized" photo's for the new iPad. It does this differently for each device based on the screen resolution. If you delete the iPod Photo Cache folder and try to sync to just the new iPad, you'll notice that many of the optimized images it creates are 0K due to some internal error.

The workaround that worked for me was to resize the photos to a max of 3072 on the long side. While this works flawlessly for me, it may not work for everyone. The only real solution, will have to come from Apple in a new version of iTunes.

William.

UPDATE

Have gotten closer to getting a full photo sync but still not there. All of Apple's tier 2 suggestions have failed. The only things they've asked me to do that I did not already try was to do a complete Apple software uninstall (iTunes, Quicktime and 3 other elements) then a reinstall and resync. That failed. Another poster (either here or on another thread on this topic) suggested just doing a constant series of syncing the desired folders, then unsynching by deselecting the folder and then a resync. Rinse and repeat until it's finish. This essential builds the photo cache 20-30 photos at a time. A rain pain in the rear but after literally 30+ cycles, I've managed to sync about 95% of my pictures. The other 5% still won't sync. I've confirmed that none of the photos are corrupted. Additionally, while some people seem to think this is tied to iPhoto, I, like others who have reported the issue, do not have iPhoto.

I wish Apple would get their act together and at least acknowledge the problem.

Here is what fixed it for me:

Win7, 64bit, latest iTunes, new iPad 64GB 4G at&t

• Disconnect iPad from the PC
• Delete content of the iPod Photo Cache folder on the PC
• Remove iPhoto from the iPad
• Reboot PC and iPad
• Connect iPad to the PC and sync all photos

This worked for all of my 7,000 photos, including some very large ones

I have the same problem and got very excited at the solution from Vmax8, I deleted my Ipod photo cache folder (I had 3 versions on Windows 7 PC) and was suprised to see 69 GB taken up by these! I then did a sync and found that there was no difference in that the sync failed.

There is still no photos on the Ipad 3 but the status bar shows 24.5GB taken up for Photos which would be about right for the 18K that I have. I restored the Ipad last night and this is the same as I had before so perhaps this is not a Ipad 3 fault?

This is really annoying as I had a perfectly good Ipad 2 64GB that had all my pictures, I gave this to a family member when I got the Ipad 3 and stupidly deleted all music and photos before I had synced them to my new shiny one!

I spent the better part of 2 hours on the phone this morning with AppleCare techs. I started with a tech who specializes on the iPad. He transferred me to a tech that specializes on iPhoto to ensure my iPhoto album structure was sound. It was. I was then elevated to a supervisory tech who went back through my iPad and iTunes setup using the online Apple remote session where he could view my computer screen. I have a 27" iMac and the 64 GB 4G iPad.

We ended up deselecting all photos in iTunes and syncing the iPad. This removed all photos from the iPad. We also restored the iPad as a new iPad, not using my recent backup. After the iPad was restored we tried syncing one of my folders with just 57 pics. It only synced 31, same as before. We then deleted the iPod photo cache folder and restarted the computer. After that all photos (778) synced.

I was doubtful this was going to work after reading some other people's unsuccessful efforts in this thread. However it appears to be working fine now. I did however have a little issue with some pics appearing a different folder on my iPad. I deleted all photos one more time by deselecting the albums in iTunes and syncing and then re-selecting the albums one more time and all photos were in the correct albums. Not sure why that happened but all is well now.

Maybe the issue lies in not only deleting the iPod photo cache but more importantly the sequence it is done in?

I forgot to mention that I did restore my iPad to my latest backup file after all troubleshooting was completed. It synced up the photos correctly and my iPad is back to normal. The Apple tech was nice enough to stay on the phone through the entire process to insure the photos synced after I restored to my backup.

Glad you added that additional comment.

Interesting approach, and one worth trying given the relative ease of doing it as well as no loss of any data. By any chance have you done a sync since you completed the restore after adding another photo or two to your library? Just wondering if those sync'd as well. Wouldn't be a good solution obviously if you had to go through that process every time you added photos to your library.

I've been following the thread with the sync issues i've had two ipads with the identical problems.

I can confirm that mine is now working it was done as per Vmax8 bar the iphoto bit as i never had that.

I have now sync'd my 6000+ photos and added some new ones and all has worked ok. I also have large photos from a canon ios 500d.

I just added a few photos to one of my albums in iPhoto and then I synced my iPad. The new pictures were added and the other pictures remained intact. Seems to be working as it should.

Well, I don´t want to disappoint you, but (beside the fact Apple HAS to fix this problem) have you done a sync with your iPhone 4(S) after that? When it works with the iPad 3 (after this workaround and stuff) try to sync photos with your iPhone :-) In all my tryouts iTunes "forgot" that there are photos on the iPhone... so I had to check "Sync photos" again... and after that: Problems, problems, problems... because sync with iPad again did not work (espacially when adding many new photos to albums).

Well you had me concerned so I hooked up my iPhone 4S and let it sync. Everything went fine and all photos are intact. As a sidenote, I sync my iPhone pictues from another folder but using the same computer and same itunes.

Well of course you should sync the same folder as the iPad. Just try it out. Sync a folder with many subfolders for iPad and iPhone. Try out the workaround so everything will work "fine" with the new iPad (and please not just 5 pictures or so). And after that just sync the iphone with the same folder. You will recognize that iTunes forgot the last sync of photos, even if there are pictures on it (if iPad and iPhone folders were the same, lf course). After sync the iPhone (what should work fine) try to sync the iPad again. Here, also, you will recognize that iTunes forgot the last sync of the iPad. The problems came back and picture get into wrong folders, and size of the picture folder will be shown in a wrong way (in my example it was 15,5 GB, even kf my picture folder just got 5 GB).

Apple has to fix it. Not us!

I have found that after unselecting the sync photos option, and applying the sync (which removes all the photos which have managed to sync, from the iPad) that a large amount of space is still indicated as being taken up by photos; in my case I am syncing 15000 photos, and an additional ~6GB is taken up.

This mysterious extra space is being taken by the various thumbnail libraries stored on the iPad (which appear to be retained even after the photos have been removed!). I used a small utility that lets you directly access the file structure of the iPad and deleted the 158x158.ithmb, 240x240.ithumb, 332x332.ithmb and 64x64.ithumb thumbnail databases located in Media\PhotoData\Thumbnails; the largest of these was 3GB in my case (remember, that there are no longer any photos on the iPad at this point).

After doing this, I disconnected the iPad, and reconnected it (thus automatically starting iTunes). Then I reselected the sync photos option, and it went through, syncing everything successfully (15000 photos taking a bit over 30 minutes).

I should also point out that I have manually resized all of my photos (actually I wrote a program to create links [allowing me to place the photo sync folder and redundant cache folder away from a backup location] and also flatten my photo directory structure to suit the single-level supported by iTunes) to be a maximum of 3000 pixels on any side. For my iPhone 4S it was sufficient to limit the size to 8000 pixels (I have a number of large panoramas. up to 30000 pixels wide).

Sigh. I was really hopeful this would work. I tried syncing after taking all of the steps you mentioned, first without doing a restore and then doing one, to no avail. Oh a few more photos did make it over, so I got to a couple of hundred out of 5200. But that's it.

I really think it's great everyone is taking the time and effort, to say nothing of patience, to work through attempts to resolve this. That's one of the real benefits of forums like this. But I am pretty much done with trying. Think of the hours you all have collectively spent trying to get this to work when it should....just....work! Resizing photos, restoring and resyncing, deleting files and folders, hours on phone calls with Apple reps who each have interestingly different takes on the problem. I find it especially ironic, but not surprising, that the "Geniuis Bar" is anything but. Historically I have known more than anyone I have talked to at an Apple Store.

Though of course they have not admitted any problem, Apple should have enough info to isolate the problem. Somewhere between iTunes, iOS 5.1, and the new iPad firmware lies the problem, especially when you consider syncing with all other "iDevices" continues to work fine. Very disappointing that a basic, but hugely significant, issue like this goes ignored and unresolved by Apple.

I told you it was coming, there it is

iTunes 10.6.1 squashes several bugs

Apple has released iTunes 10.6.1, an update that addresses several problems introduced in iTunes 10.6.

According to Apple, the update offers fixes for glitches that may cause iTunes to unexpectedly quit when playing videos, changing artwork size in Grid view, and syncing photos to devices. It also corrects an issue in which some iTunes interface elements are incorrectly described by VoiceOver and WindowEyes, and it fixes a bug that caused iTunes to become unresponsive when syncing the iPod nano or iPod shuffle.

I am downloading and testing as I am writing this...

Hope is in the air 🙂