iPhoto won't see all my photos on iPhone

Question

iPhoto won't see all my photos on iPhone

Over the years I've had numerous iPhones and I've somehow ended up with about 3000 photos now which were all in iPhone and on my iPhone 4s - some of them are original iPhone photos, some date back to 2007 and were digitcal camera photos / Blackberry pictures. I forget what I did to even get them onto my iPone but hey, they're all there now and I can see them on the iPhone

I need to get my new iMac to see these photos in iPhoto somehow. They're on my phone, so why won't it see them? It's only seeing stuff up to about 12 months ago (250 pictures or so), nothing prior to this.

I'm using an iMac 27" with the latest iPhoto, and an iPhone 5S with the latest iOS8...

Anyone got an idea how to retrieve them? ****, even if I can just get them off the iPhone and onto my iMac without iPhoto I'll be happy!

iPhone 5s, iOS 8.2

Posted on Mar 13, 2015 9:59 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,761 points

Mar 13, 2015 10:08 AM in response to richard the infamous

I need to get my new iMac to see these photos in iPhoto somehow. They're on my phone, so why won't it see them? It's only seeing stuff up to about 12 months ago (250 pictures or so), nothing prior to this.

Do you mean, iPhoto is not seeing these photos in the Import panel, when you connect your iPhone to USB? iPhoto can only import photos, that are in the Camera Roll, not photos that have been synced to to the iPhone using iTunes. How did you import the the photos to your iPhone from your previous devices?

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Answer 2

Mar 13, 2015 10:19 AM in response to léonie

iPhone only sees the latest 250 photos, which are what's in my "Camera Roll". It can't see, import or do anything with the other 3000 odd photos.

I'm not sure how I got them on my phone if I'm honest. I probably had them all in iPhoto* as general images, then somehow synced the whole lot back to my phone.

What's happened is I forgot to backup my iPhoto library on my iMac and did a fresh install. I mean, I've not lost anything at this stage as they're all on my iPhone and accessible on the phone itself, but accessing them any other way is proving impossible.

I just want to get them off my phone and onto another means of drive or backup..

edit> Link to another similar thread:

How can I export pictures NOT on camera roll from my ipad to my iMac?

^ ^ That thread there above seems to be a similar issue, although unsolved still

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

194,761 points

Mar 13, 2015 10:34 AM in response to richard the infamous

I probably had them all in iPhoto* as general images, then somehow synced the whole lot back to my phone.

That is the problem. Syncing with iTunes is only one-way. You can sync them to your iPhone, but not back.

See this link: 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.

Apple recommends to send the photos back to the mac by mailing them at the original size, but that will be a lot of work.

You could also try to share them to your Dropbox or a Shared Album.

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Answer 4

Mar 13, 2015 11:09 AM in response to léonie

Well, just tried Dropbox but it'll only detect the same images from the Camera Roll 😟

They're on the iPhone's hard drive so there has to be a way of getting them off.. I suspect it's not an authorised way though

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Answer 5

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,314 points

Mar 13, 2015 11:32 AM in response to richard the infamous

You cause a 3rd party app like iExplorer, but there are others. Search on MacUpdate

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Answer 6

Mar 13, 2015 11:48 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks, iExplorer did the trick. Thanks all for your help both of you!

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