Photos imported and deleted from iPhone are messed up - can I fix them?

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Level 3

778 points

Photos imported and deleted from iPhone are messed up - can I fix them?

I imported photos taken with the Photos app on my iPhone 5, with "Delete items after import" turned on. But in Photos the pictures aren't right: the photo has been cropped in half, if that makes sense, with that half duplicated and appearing twice, and a thin grey line between the two narrow duplicates. And a tiny tiny version of the photo as it should be appears at the top of that thin grey line. So for example if a photo should be "XO", instead it's "XX", with a tiny version of XO appearing at the top of the grey line in the middle of XX.

This didn't happen for all of the photos I just imported, only around half of them; and then the system told me some photos could not be imported due to an error. I then tried to import those remaining photos again, and they're fine.

The originals have been deleted from the iPhone - can I somehow repair these images? Has anyone else had this issue?

And I guess this is a warning against "Delete items after import". I've never had an issue with that before.

Thanks in advance!

iPhone 5, iOS 9.2

Posted on Jan 1, 2016 1:38 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,639 points

Jan 1, 2016 5:56 AM in response to Lost in Asia

Are only the thumbnails in the browser corrupted, or does the photo also appear split in half, if you click it to enlarge it?

If the enlarged photo is fine, try to recreate the thumbnails by rotating the photo back and forth. You can select several photos at once and click ⌘R, the ⌥⌘R .

Try to open the photo in edit mode and try "Revert to original", if it is available.

Do you have a recent iTunes backup of your iPhone? The photos in the camera roll should be included in the backup, if you are not using iCloud.

If you cannot repair the imported photos by rotating, try to restore your iPhone from the most recent backup to restore the camera roll.

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Answer 2

Lost in Asia Author

Level 3

778 points

Jan 1, 2016 5:55 AM in response to léonie

Thanks léonie - unfortunately the most recent iTunes backup is a few days old, and the photos that were affected are more recent than that. It's not a huge deal - do I really need another seven or eight pictures of my cats? - but it's worrying to me; I haven't seen this kind of issue before, where photos are corrupted when moving from the iPhone to the computer. I took a few other pictures just now and imported those without issues, so at least it's not a permanent problem.

When I click to enlarge, the photo is still corrupted, with no change if I rotate. "Revert to original" is greyed out.

Another oddity: I'd sent one of the photos in Messages, so I still had the picture in that app. When I dragged that into Photos, it warned me against importing a duplicate - and showed me two identical thumbnails, both without the corruption. After import, the "new" photo from Messages is fine, whereas the corrupted one remains corrupted in other contexts. (If I export the corrupted/split photo, it remains split.) But at some level Photos "knows" what that picture looks like, even if it refuses to display it that way.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,639 points

Jan 1, 2016 6:11 AM in response to Lost in Asia

This may be a library corruption.

I'd make a backup copy of the Photos Library and and repair it. See this Help Page: Repair your library - Photos Help

If you are using iCloud Photo Library the library will upload again to iCloud after the repair, and that may take as long as the original upload.

And I guess this is a warning against "Delete items after import". I've never had an issue with that before.

Indeed, it is much safer to wait with deleting the originals from the card or the phone until we had time to check the import, if it went well. And until after the first backup has been made.

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Answer 4

Apr 8, 2016 9:09 PM in response to Lost in Asia

It took me a while to find this posting, but I have exactly the same problem. Some photos are as you describe, others aren't.

Running repair doesn't have any effect, and the originals also export the way described above.

I tried the import onto another machine (also running Photos) and saw no corruption of the photos. I hope this helps someone in future.

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Answer 5

Lost in Asia Author

Level 3

778 points

Apr 9, 2016 3:26 AM in response to RogerDennis

Thanks RogerDennis. I never really found a solution in my case, since the photos were gone from my iPhone (except for a couple of them that I'd sent out as messages, so I retrieved them from the messages app). I guess you hadn't set the photos to delete after import?

I've since repaired the library, as per léonie's suggestion, and the problem hasn't recurred. I don't use iCloud Photo Library, so that approach wasn't an option for me.

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Answer 6

Dec 3, 2016 5:34 PM in response to Lost in Asia

I had the exact same problem and was able to solve it by:

1. Logged out of the username and logged back in

2. Turned off Time Machine backup

3. Unplugged my iPhone from my iMac

4. Since I still have the photos on my phone, I deleted all the photos with gray lines from Photos. Then went to "Recently Deleted" and deleted the photos from there as well (this is how you "trick Photos into thinking that there are new images to import")

5. Plugged my iPhone back into the iMac. Selected my phone under "Import".

6. Chose smaller batches of 300-500 photos at a time to import.

7. Photos were imported again - This time without the gray lines.

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