what is the .AAE extension?

That's the thing, all photos are gone (from the deleted files). I lost edited photos, unedited photos, I have no originals.

Every time I edit a photo using ios editor it never saved the original photo.

Thanks anyway, though.

If you copies the jpg files to your computer they should still be there. Look for them. However, Windows Explorer is not a good way to copy photos.

Also, if you have an iCloud or iTunes backup that was made shortly before you deleted the files you should be able to restore that backup to the phone.

I uploaded the pics directly from my iphone to my laptop and i had most of them in JPG format except for 4 or 5. What i noticed is that the 4 or 5 that were in aae format, had a duplicate in JPG format. Hope this helps

Apple you ****! How annoying and wasteful for the end user to spend time editing photos on their phone using built-in tools and on a third party product such as hipstamatic for all the edits to be removed from the photos when importing to a computer, such as a PC.

This is exactly why I choose PC over a MAC.

<Edited by Host>

OMG, this is such a bad change apple has done. I am using iOS 9.1 on iPhone 5S. I had around 450 photos in my camera roll, I was trying to transfer those to my PC, on my PC I could see so many .AAE files which I was not able to open so I thought these are just side extension or edit backup etc etc so I deleted those from camera role assuming the number of photos will remain same. All sudden I loosed 150 photos & there were also not in the recycle bin because I deleted from camera role directly. So now I have loosed my best 150 pictures. *****!

I wanted to make sure again that deleting .AAE file deletes original image from iPhone, So I did a test. I clicked 3 photos using my iPhone,

1 - Normal light, 2 - Chrome mode, 3 - Fade effect.

Then I connected my iPhone with PC & looked into camera role, Chrome & Fade were reflecting as .AAE & not visible on PC, when I deleted those 2 photos, those were also gone from iPhone & I was only left with one photo which was taken under normal light effect (the default camera effect).

So if you want to copy photos from iPhone to PC then do not use effects, else it would become .AAE which is of no use except iPhone. If you guys found out any solution then please do let me know 🙂

Hi,

Why can there be at least an automated designated album called "Edited"?

Thank you.

That's a great idea. Please submit it to Apple at http://apple.com/feedback.

After reading up a bit on this topic I was sure that the aae file extension could be safely deleted as they are only information files and do not affect the copying process. Boy was I wrong. I deleted all of the aae files from my iPhone direct. Biggest mistake I ever made because it made all of the adjoining jpg files useless and unreadable. I lost a lot of photos because of this mistake. The fix I have now learnt through this horror scenario is to copy all of the jpgs from the camera roll first, then it is ok to delete the aae files, not before.

Mind you, just like in previous ios versions, all of the edits are still lost. My workaround has been to e-mail my edited photos to myself. Long tedious process. If anyone finds any other solutions, I would be most grateful.

techluvver wrote:

If anyone finds any other solutions, I would be most grateful.

Enable iCloud photos. The transfer of both the original and edited photos then becomes near real time and automatic.

Brilliant, thanks very much. I shall give that a go. Is there any way to enable only photo backup on icloud ? The reason I ask is that is because video would take up the 5GB limit in no time.

techluvver wrote:

Brilliant, thanks very much. I shall give that a go. Is there any way to enable only photo backup on icloud ? The reason I ask is that is because video would take up the 5GB limit in no time.

Yes, it includes videos. You can up the 5 GB to 50 GB for 99¢ A month, however.

Try Quicktime

This is ridiculously complicated. Apple creates a newer, cooler, format... great... fine and dandy... But what are the developers thinking, by not putting (1) - a warning com informing users when a jpg is being converted to an aae, and (2) a simple add on to convert the aae back to the more portable jpg?
Pages of thread here... representing hours of wasted user time... why? Because developers couldn't be bothered to create a way to deal with the most likely, and most obvious problem with their newer, cooler thing...
I've got news for Apple - this kind of oversight turns a cool - expensive device (like an i-pad air 2) into an annoying piece of crap. If I encounter one more stupidly complicated problem like this - my first Apple product in 20 years - will be my last - ever.

GMacFromZtown wrote:

This is ridiculously complicated. Apple creates a newer, cooler, format...

Apple did not create a new format. Adobe created it, got it accepted as an international standard. All newer photo management apps are adopting it. Apple was one of the earlier ones, but not the first.

Hi all,

I can see it is a hot topic on AAE files. Could you help me with my case? When I was on vacation I was connecting my iPhone to a Windows PC via USB to back up the phone photos and clean for new photos (no internet to sync to anywhere).

As a result I have multiple folders with both JPG and AAE files (the naming is correct). I got to this thread only now, when I connected my drive to my PC to check and share the photos with my friends. Bingo - no effects. Last batch of fotos that are on iPhone right now I exported accordingly - so no issues 🙂

The question is, how do I get photos back to camera roll? I tried iTunes option "Sync" specifying a folder both with JPG and AAE. Fotos appear in my phone ("From my computer" album), but no effects.

Having no Mac, only Win&Nix PCs.

Thanks in advance.