what is the .AAE extension?

OK, there are several topics here. To get this one out of the way, when you create folders on your phone and "move" pictures to them you are not actually moving the picture; you are creating a link to the moved pictures in the camera roll. They are not duplicated; just providing more than one way to organize them. You could put the same photo in multiple folders, and it would still only exist once.

By far the easiest way to manage photos is to turn on Photos in the iCloud settings on your phone. This will duplicate them in iCloud Photos as soon as they are taken, and will keep the associated .aae files and their edits. To do this go to Settings and tap on your name at the top, then iCloud, then tap on Photos and turn on iCloud Photo Library.

Then download the iCloud for Windows app: Download iCloud for Windows - Apple Support. You can keep the photos in the app, or export them to a Windows folder. When you export you are given the choice of saving the original or the edited version. You can also view them by logging into iCloud.com using your Apple ID, so you can view or show them on any computer.

The only downside to this is that all photos are duplicated on the phone, in iCloud, and on your computer. If you delete them from any of these locations they will be removed from all. If your goal is to keep them only on your PC after exporting them from iCloud Photos this isn't a problem, of course.

There are also 3rd party solutions. Google Photos is a good one. If you install the Google Photos app on your phone it will copy all photos that you take to Google Photos, and you can delete them from your phone if you want to and still view them on your phone. Google Photos has a lot of neat features for managing and editing photos. Another is upthere.com, a service created by some former Apple engineers but not associated with Apple. It will also copy images to their cloud, where you can organize them, share them and view them. It also uploads your music and videos.

I can see why you would not be able to open them, as, if you check the number of each image file they will match either a .jpg or a .mov file. They are information files for each numerically matched image/movie.

Unfortunately, I have no information about how important they are, especially since most of the .jpg files do not have one.

My best guess, since only a few of the .jpg files have one, is that they only appear if the image is an HD one? But I cannot confirm that.

As has already been posted in this thread, an .aae file contains edits to the associated image that you have made on the phone, using either the image editing capabilities or by enabling filters. .aae files do not hold the image, only the edit instructions. The post immediately above yours, posted 6 months ago, explains it.

Lawrence, You clearly are the expert in this area. I am a super beginner trying to move photos off my 6S iphone

( version 10.3.2.) to my PC. I would like to categorize them as I move them or at least import them by the dates they were taken. I have over 10,000 photos currently on my iphone. I also currently have i cloud storage of 200 GB of which I have 156.76 available to me. I do not know HOW to move them and every time I call into Apple support they tell me something different. I tunes is the route I am told mostly. I want to move them into some software to edit, sort and store them when I move them. I am lost as to where to begin. I have previously moved pictures BEFORE the AAE problem but now when I import pictures half of them come up like that. I do edit pictures on my phone (so I now assume that after reading the many pages of questions and replies here that I should NOT edit pictures on my phone. But what if one is too dark and it needs lightening before I send to someone? Apple has made this all very confusing with this new " upgrade". How is the best way to move my pictures and WHERE do I move them to?

I also figured out another problem with their " upgrade" in the new operating system. You used to be able to put pictures into folders on your i phone and it then removed them from the general group of pictures. Now you can put it in a folder but it STILL REMAINS in the original group of photos so there is no way to tell which pictures you have placed in folders and which you have not. You used to be to move the pictures all into folders and be able to see when ALL the pictures had been sorted. There is NO WAY to do that now. Just another " improvement" which was NOT an improvement at all.

Could you just tell me:

Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 etc to get my photos from my iphone to my PC? Thank you in advance for your help.

I dont even have that .JPG files as well. I didnt edit any of the pics. While taking pictures i took them in chrome mode. May be that is the reason it got stored and connected with that .AAE supporting file

FYI since some readers here may not be aware: There is a new "problem" in iOS 11 in that Apple now defaults to new formats HEIF for photos and HEVC for videos (not JPEG) if you have iPhone 7 or 8. This means no more "sidecar" .AAE files as well. In Settings, Camera, the format can be changed back to JPEG if you prefer. Right now, HEIF compatibility is very limited on computers - basically just Photos app and Finder in macOS High Sierra. The iPhone will automatically convert to JPEG when you use any of the typical Sharing methods from the device (email, SMS, etc). Photo syncing apps need to be updated to support automatically converting to JPEG before uploading to cloud services (like Google, etc.)

I recently got an iPhone 6, and so I'm running iOS 8. I just got back from vacation where I sync'd my photos with Aperture. During the sync, I got an error saying Aperture didn't support a file. I was offered the option to download that file onto the Mac. The resulting file matched the filename of a jpeg that was also copied into Aperture at the same time, except this unsupported file's extension was ".aae". A quick search brought this to light:

http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/AAE_sidecar_format

So it looks like this is a new fuel to support photo edits in the iOS8/Yosemite ecosystem. Since Aperture hasn't been updated, at least so far it appears that on-phone photo edits are gonna get lost at least until Yosemite drops...and maybe not at all for Aperture.

I uploaded the photos from my iPhone to dropbox and synced my PC to it.

Hopefully the next IOS update will make the jpeg-files visible again when viewing the files via the Windows Explorer.

hi,

the AEE files are XML files related to the edits you did to your photos while they were in the iphone. This is what you see inside the AEE file if you open it with a text editor.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>adjustmentBaseVersion</key>

<integer>0</integer>

<key>adjustmentData</key>

<data>

YnBsaXN0MDDRAQJac2xvd01vdGlvbtIDBAUWV3JlZ2lvbnNUcmF0ZaEG0QcIWXRpbWVS

YW5nZdIJCgsUVXN0YXJ0WGR1cmF0aW9u1AwNDg8QERITVWZsYWdzVXZhbHVlWXRpbWVz

Y2FsZVVlcG9jaBABEkNSzWASO5rKABAA1AwNDg8QFRITEwAAAAE6LRPAIj4AAAAICxYb

IygqLTc8QktUWmBqcHJ3fH6HkAAAAAAAAAEBAAAAAAAAABcAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACV

</data>

<key>adjustmentEditorBundleID</key>

<string></string>

<key>adjustmentFormatIdentifier</key>

<string>com.apple.video.slomo</string>

<key>adjustmentFormatVersion</key>

<string>1.1</string>

</dict>

</plist>

Unfortunately ( in my case ??) Aperture in Yosemite can not read these files and all edits are gone when importing your photos. Did you notice your iphone edits are gone in all synced photos? When you import and sync photo folders or events via itunes you won't see anymore any changes you did to your photos in your iphone.

An annoying little thing that Apple added without explicitly tell us upfront... I use lightroom on a daily base and suddenly got all those messages that AAE files were not imported from iphone. If they told us I for certain did not hear it...

Lucky enough I had the bright idea to go look on google for AAE and found this thread...

So I know now that the AAE files are not of life importance as they are just side files containing edits made on phone. I can do the edits again if I need them.

Explanation is that it would make the workflow easier... It doesn't... It brings more work. You have to re-edit if you want the exact file as on phone.

These are all minor peeves, my main peeve is that you first have to panic and run into troubles and question marks, without a word upfront from apple... If I did not see it I bet there are many more people out there who did not see it neither...

A work around is to import them in Image Capture, software included in every mac, but that one is adding several steps to a normal workflow. You have to import and then import again from desktop (or wherever you put the folder with the imports via Image Capture) into Lightroom...

A bit of a nuisance. Anyway, I am glad I found this thread and now know what to do...

I have done NO edits on my iPhone but did on my iPad. Are you thinking that is the same difference?

If all my Camera related apps are on my iPad and I edit there is no way I can keep my edited versions?

I read the thread but am unclear as to the solution.

I would think that ipad and iphone have the same difference indeed. If you look at Adobe's workflow where the edits from RAW files are stored in a separate file, -as long as you put the original file and the sidecar as it is called - in the same folder, you would not have to re-edit. As I understand it Lightroom and Aperture and who knows what other apps do not possibly keep the sidecar with the original, so that would mean that you have to re-edit...

I am not a hundred percent sure of all this though as I am not a very good explainer...

I think we might need someone who knows more then we do and can explain it better then I can... For now, I will continue to import phone and ipad to computer via Lightroom and start from the thinking path that I can not do edited photographs that way. If I really need an edited version really bad I will send it to myself in an email... I don't usually need the edited version of phone pics that bad...

I wonder if Lightroom mobile might not be a better solution for me personally as I use that already to sync pics between ipad and computer...

The hardest thing seems to be to keep an established workflow going and having that workflow for all the pics on iphones and ipads no matter what application they come from and/or were taken with... I do find it all very confusing as well.

I also discovered accidentally that there is a new photo application in my applications folder in operating system Yosemite, Prophoto or something, and I don't know if this is the new version of iPhoto and Aperture mixed in one. I am wary of using iphoto because it does not work well with Lightroom workflow wise. You are much better to stick to one workflow and one application. Mixing iphoto and lightroom to send pics to and from phones and pads is not a good idea because you end up with endless doubles and it's very hard to figure out which are the originals that you need to keep and which ones are just doubles...

I experienced the same thing and discovered that I had inadvertently changed the camera format setting from "PHOTO" to "SQUARE" and upon returning it to the "PHOTO" setting, I got .jpg's again. Sad that I lost some important photos in the interim, but glad that it was an easy fix (for me anyway).

I found that not only does my camera need to be on the "PHOTO" setting, the filter (three circles on the lower left) needs to be set on NONE.

I just noticed something. I was transferring all of my pictures from iPhone to computer. As I was finishing up I had several of the .aae files left that would not transfer. So, I deleted everything from my phone except those files. It turned out that those were pictures and/or videos that were in my recently deleted folder of my iphone. I recovered them all, unplugged and then re-plugged my phone into my computer and every one of them were back to their original formats and then I was able to transfer them. Hope this helps someone!!