Previously synced photos got deleted, how do I recover them?

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Previously synced photos got deleted, how do I recover them?

I had about 6g worth of photos synced to my iPhone, which were unable to be deleted on the device itself. I was trying to import them to my computer, so I selected sync photos from iTunes, and in doing so, all of the previously synced photos disappeared. The strange part is, my unsynced photos, just the pictures I've taken within the last few months on the camera roll, didn't get deleted in the process, yet the synced photos did? I tried to do the backup restore, it took about 15 minutes so I assumed the photos were being restored, however it didn't work. I see a lot of people trying to completely delete synced photos, but I'm trying to do the opposite. Any ideas what happened?

iPhone 4S, iOS 8.3, null

Posted on Jul 6, 2015 11:23 PM

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Answer 1

FoxFifth

Level 10

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Jul 7, 2015 9:31 AM in response to luckybandit

iTunes won't import synced photos back to a computer. There is at least one 3rd party app that will but that won't help at this point.

Unfortunately, it sounds like what you did is to accidentally use the method that is used to delete the synced photos from an iPhone. It is described in Sync photos to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch in iTunes - Apple Support Each time you sync, iTunes sets the non-Camera Roll photos on the phone to match the current settings on the Photo tab of iTunes (adding or deleting photos as necessary to match the current settings), so if you have the settings on that tab set to something other than those photos, they are deleted.

Also, the design of synced photos is based on the plan that the originals are to remain on the device they are synced from. A backup of the phone does not include those photos because they are presumably already on a second device -- the computer where they originated. The only possibility I can think of for you to recover those photos would be from the computer where they originated or a backup of that computer.

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