dso371

Q: Photos app keeps importing same photos

Hi all, I hope someone can help with this annoying problem...

 

On my Macbook Air, running El Capitan (and Yosemite before), whenever I connect my iPad Air 2 or my iPhone 6 Plus, the Photos app imports the same photos again and again.

 

I think, from inspecting them, that there isn't much or any overlap between the set of photos it keeps importing on the iPad and the set it keeps importing on the iPhone. But for each device, it's the same set of photos again and again.

 

I import them every time since I'm worried about maybe losing them if I don't, but they never show up as endless duplicates in the photo library. There's just one copy of each.

 

And lately I'm seeing error messages on import along the lines of 'couldn't load assets', with several files with a .peg extension, and 'file may be corrupt' or some such.

 

I've repaired the photo library on the Mac several times, but the problem persists. Not sure what else to do. Is it something with the photo libraries on the iOS devices? I've set them to optimise storage so neither device stores the full original image. Is there a way of clearing them out on the iOS devices and downloading again from iCloud?

 

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you,

David

OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 24, 2015 9:20 AM

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Q: Photos app keeps importing same photos

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  • by LeMeu,

    LeMeu LeMeu Apr 17, 2016 1:15 AM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 17, 2016 1:15 AM in response to dso371

    I have the exact same problem with photos that keep reappearing on my iPhone and iPad.

     

    My configuration is :

     

    - MacBook Pro used as main computer.

    - iMac used a second computer.

    - MacBook as a third.

    - iPhone 6s

    - iPad Air

    - 697 GB Photos.app library on the main computer. (37k photos, 3k videos)
    - Sufficient iCloud storage  (1TB)

    - All other devices configured as "optimize space". Clearly opening a photo on those downloads it from iCloud. (round status circle in the corner)

     

    Everything is up to date as of this posting (still the problem is there for a while).

     

    I Have around 900 'ghost looping" photos on the iPhone and iPad that keep re-appearing no matter what I tried :

     

    - Completely erasing the iPhone ou iPad works for a while but a while after reactivating the iCloud Photo Library : BOOM, the 900-something photos are back when the iPhone is plugged on the mac.

     

    - Erasing all the photos on iCloud via the www.icloud.com web interface fails. (server error)

     

    - Importing the 900-something photos in Photos.app, then deleting then immediately in the "Last Import" section fails, they are back after a while.

     

    This sounds more to me like a iCloud Photos Library problem than something local.

     

    Apple is very quiet on this.... no answer to this thread.

     

    WAKE UP APPLE !!!

  • by oskarmatzerath,

    oskarmatzerath oskarmatzerath Apr 20, 2016 12:55 PM in response to oskarmatzerath
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 20, 2016 12:55 PM in response to oskarmatzerath

    UPDATE 4:

     

    I give up.

     

    After importing photos (now a total of over 20,000 photos) and deleting them, the only solution I have is to not sync Photos between any devices and my Mac. It just isn't worth the hassle.

     

    I don't mean this as a threat for attention grabbing, but seriously Apple, in a few months, when I update my system, I'm looking at Microsoft, as I think it's on a trend toward openness while Apple is on a trend toward monopolizing the industry and forcing everyone to work with them. Sounds a LOT like Microsoft of the 1990s.

  • by bezanson,

    bezanson bezanson May 23, 2016 4:45 PM in response to oskarmatzerath
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 23, 2016 4:45 PM in response to oskarmatzerath

    The "PEG" photos are JPEG as you theorized. If you use Apple's "Image Capture" utility to look at your device and you sort by image type, you should see all of your problem images are marked as JPEG, whereas the picture you took are marked as JPG.

     

    As someone said, what could be the best way to try things would be to go to the problem device, turn off/disconnect from iCloud Photo Sharing. Delete all photos and videos from the device. Re-enable iCloud Photo Sharing. Ideally it would only pull down images from the cloud and you shouldn't have these issues. One option, before turning sync back on, would be to find all of the photos in Apple's Photos app and search for the problem images and change their file extension to jpg instead of jpeg.

  • by wealthychef,

    wealthychef wealthychef May 25, 2016 8:36 AM in response to bezanson
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 25, 2016 8:36 AM in response to bezanson

    If I use Apple's "Image Capture" utility to look at my device the problem image does not show up.  It only shows up in Photos as being available for import.  Image Capture shows many more images but not the problem one. 

  • by oskarmatzerath,

    oskarmatzerath oskarmatzerath May 25, 2016 8:55 AM in response to oskarmatzerath
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 25, 2016 8:55 AM in response to oskarmatzerath

    UPDATE 5:

     

    I've updated all the software on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone. I'm still having the same problem.

     

    Image Capture hasn't helped me.

  • by averyblessedguy,

    averyblessedguy averyblessedguy Jul 6, 2016 1:03 PM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jul 6, 2016 1:03 PM in response to dso371

    I am having the same problem on my iPhone 6splus importing to Photos on my macbook pro running El Capitan 10.11.5.  I've had this problem since updating to El Capitan.  Of the 400 or so photos that keep needing to be imported I have six that give an error message of  - unreadable file, couldn't load an asset. I do have duplicates of the reloaded pics.  It is very frustrating.

  • by oskarmatzerath,

    oskarmatzerath oskarmatzerath Aug 31, 2016 5:42 PM in response to averyblessedguy
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 31, 2016 5:42 PM in response to averyblessedguy

    I've figured out how to delete some of the duplicates. At this point, I have over 10,000 duplicates, and the pile keeps growing. I'm currently using the web interface of iCloud to delete the images, and this works for many of them. I keep running into an error that not all of the photos can be deleted due to a "server error." So although it doesn't solve the problem, deleting them through my browser/iCloud is starting to make a dent in getting my photos back to normal. From here on out, I'm going to avoid using any apps (Mac OS X or iOS) to do the deleting.

  • by oskarmatzerath,

    oskarmatzerath oskarmatzerath Sep 2, 2016 10:11 AM in response to oskarmatzerath
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 2, 2016 10:11 AM in response to oskarmatzerath

    Making all the changes in iCloud directly, through the web interface, has done the trick. It's been 2 days, and the problem seems to be alleviated through all my devices. I still must have some dupes I'm not able to locate, but that's because I'm not seeing them in a haystack of photos.

  • by wealthychef,

    wealthychef wealthychef Sep 2, 2016 12:35 PM in response to oskarmatzerath
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Sep 2, 2016 12:35 PM in response to oskarmatzerath

    I recommend you try an app called PowerPhotos to identify and remove duplicates.  In particular, the "identify" part sounds useful to you...

  • by mhh222,

    mhh222 mhh222 Sep 25, 2016 3:06 PM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 25, 2016 3:06 PM in response to dso371

    I am having the same problem on my iMac 27" (late 2014) running El Capitain 10.11.6. Every time I connect my iPhone (6s Plus, iOS 10.0.1), Photos want to re-import the same 500-600 photos, over and over again. Sometimes I ignore, sometimes I import, but the problem is never resolved and is very annoying! Any assistance, especially from Apple is appreciated!

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