Old iphone3 photo albums not showing in iphoto and I want to import them

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Old iphone3 photo albums not showing in iphoto and I want to import them

I found my old iphone3 today and discovered a heap of photos on there that we lost years ago when our hard drive died.

I'm very keen to get these photos onto the computer and of course then back them up onto an external drive!

When I plug the phone into my mac, both iphoto and image capture only show the photos that are in the camera roll to import, not any of the albums that are on the phone. I'm assuming this is because at one point in the phones life the album photos had already been imported, but that doesn't help me now.

Any suggestions?

I've also tried opening the photos in preview, but again it only shows up the camera roll photos.

Thanks in advance

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Mar 3, 2015 7:37 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,761 points

Mar 3, 2015 8:00 PM in response to jazzylee09

I'm assuming this is because at one point in the phones life the album photos had already been imported, but that doesn't help me now.

Have the photos been synced to your iPhone using iTunes? Then you cannot import them directly. iPhoto, Image Capture, Aperture will only import photos, that are in the Camera Roll, not synced photos. On no account sync your iPhone again with iTunes, until you have rescued the photos.

See: iOS: Syncing photos using iTunes

You can't reimport pictures synced from your computer to your device back to your computer. You can only import pictures in the Camera Roll or Saved Photos from your device to your computer. If you need to retrieve synced photos from your device:

Email them from the device to yourself.

Copy them from the emails to your computer.

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