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Grey Lines Through Photos

Hello,


I recently uploaded photos from my iphone, and upon previewing them in the Photos app, they showed with grey lines down the center with a mini-preview of the photo. This only happened to the first 100 or so, and the rest of the photos are normal.


Has anyone else encountered this or know how to fix this?

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2)

Posted on Jan 1, 2016 9:57 AM

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53 replies

Feb 18, 2018 10:03 AM in response to whollyhannah

Same problem when imported from iPhone 7 Plus / iOS 11.1.2 to MacBook Pro (2009) / OS X El Capitan 1011.6 (latest version possible for this Mac) / Photos 1.5 (370.42.0). Problem did not occur when imported to new iMac / OS X High Sierra 10.13.2 / Photos 3.0 (3251.12.190).


When I deleted the grey-line photos from my MacBook Pro / Photos and imported again, the photos imported without the grey line. Also, not all of the photos that transferred the first time had this problem. Not even all photos from the same series, week, or whatever. I would guess it was a transient transfer error.


I never use the auto-delete feature for just this possibility. I want to be sure my photos have transferred properly and that all of them have transferred before I delete them. It's a good idea to back up photos before deleting them, too.


My sister had years of photos of her young daughter on her computer (Windows PC) and never backed them up. One day, her hard drive crashed. Lost everything permanently. (Well, professional service said it might be able to recover the data for $7,000.) Better safe than sorry. Don't take the easy way out. Put in the marginal extra work and manually delete photos.


Note that as a software engineer (30 years, mostly systems programming, e.g., OS and/or embedded) I can say with great confidence that diagnosing a transient issue like this is a nightmare, because it typically is very difficult to reproduce. In this case, it could be a cable problem, either defective cable or just loose connection. It could be an OS problem, e.g., timing of asynchronous multitasking, on either end. It could be an applications problem on either end. It could be a memory problem on either end. And then there's the infinite list of possibilities that no one would think of until they're discovered.


I think the only solution here is to be diligent in managing your images. Even if everyone had this issue for the same reason and Apple fixed it, there's sure to be more issues in the future that diligence will help protect you against.

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Jan 1, 2017 11:32 PM in response to Culpab

Even more frustrating to have to read threads that say this is not a common problem ir not an Apple problem.

There have been some similar reports about similar JPEG corruptions after downloading from the iPhone during the last half year. And when the download could be repeated once the problem had been discovered, the second download has been fine. So it is very likely that the transfer is the problem - the cable not safely plugged in, unplugging the iPhone to early or similar.

The "delete after import" option is dangerous, because it is leading us into deleting photos, before we have checked, if the download succeeded.It can also cause problems, if Photos or iPhoto is crashing during the import.

It is good practice to never delete photos from a card or a device, before we have checked, if the transfer went well by enlarging each photo after the transfer and making the first backup of the new photos. I create a backup copy of all new photos on a separate drive and delete photos from the card or camera only after I've checked them. Image Capture can reused to delete photos from iPhones and other devices.

Mar 6, 2017 9:52 PM in response to jldrafta

Bad things happen which is why if you care about your photos you would never delete them prior to being positive they are safe and backed up on your Mac - if you find every random failure of any device "horrible" you are doomed to a life of total disappointment as things will fail


In many if not most cases this issue is caused by a failing Lighting cable


LN

Mar 6, 2017 10:28 PM in response to jldrafta

An iCloud backup of your iPhone or an iTunes backup may have saved the photos and videos in thecamera roll.

Otherwise your only option is to find recovery software, tht cn extract deleted photos from the iPhone. But if you want to go that way, stop using the iPhone immediately, so no more data will be overwritten, that could have been restored.

Mar 7, 2017 8:58 AM in response to jldrafta

I agree losing precious memories that are irreplaceable is not a fun thing. Not sure what triggers this error, but certainly isn't random device failure, it appears to be a bug in the jpeg image processing library on import when the thumbnails are added. It doesn't appear to be the import rather the post import processing.


It would be very easy, trivial even, for Photos to send back the checksums of the image after import so that the phone never ever deleted a photo what wasn't confirmed properly imported, and stored the originals pre-thumbnail (as it is supposed to in its originals package subfolder), that minimum check seems like a no brainier for anyone developing this type of solution and a simple way to prevent any issue such as this from ever resulting in loss.


Yes, I left these suggestions with the photos development team. Hopefully they incorporate some basic checks to prevent this type of loss in the future.

May 10, 2017 1:34 AM in response to redesigned

I have this exact issue. Just opened my photos and found this. My photos were fine last week.

The only thing I have done that I think might have affected my photos is run 'cleanmymac 3' to give me more space and speed up my computer. One thing it does is replace photos with high res JPEGs that were in their RAW original state.

I am wondering if this process could have corrupted the photos? Any thoughts?

Had anyone else recently done a clean only to find that some things had changed?

Fortunately I have all my photos backed up on an external drive!

K

May 10, 2017 1:50 AM in response to adamson5

I think might have affected my photos is run 'cleanmymac 3' to give me more space and speed up my computer. One thing it does is replace photos with high res JPEGs that were in their RAW original state.

CleanMyMac is creating wrong links, not only trashing your precious original RAW files and replacing them with the edited versions. if you have multiple versions of the same photo, they will now be linked to the wrong originals, and read them incorrectly.

May 10, 2017 9:46 AM in response to adamson5

To add to léonie's reply, remove CMM3 according to the developer's instructions: How to uninstall CleanMyMac 3. Knowledge Base - MacPaw.


Once you've assured yourself that you've removed all of CMM3's files (see Note below) restore your library from a backup made prior to running CMM3.


If you have problems with the system or other apps you have have to boot into the Recovery volume and reinstall the system.


NOTE: You can check to see if you've removed all of the files by downloading and running Find Any File to search for any files with the application's name and the developer's name in the file name. For example for CleanMyMac you'd do two searches:


1 - Name contains cleanmymac

2 - Name contains macpaw


Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop for deletion.


FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.

May 10, 2017 10:58 AM in response to adamson5

Had anyone else recently done a clean only to find that some things had changed?


Yes - hundreds of people which is why CleanMyMac is considered Malwear here and should never be installed or used - it is nearly as bad as MacKeeper


CMM had damaged and destroyed thousands of people libraries and lost millions of photos - DO NOT USE CleanMyMac EVER!


It i snot needed, preforms no useful function and does not do what it promises - it is Malwear



LN

May 18, 2017 9:32 PM in response to whollyhannah

This drove me crazy til today. I'm an avid photographer. No way to get my pics onto my iPad except via email. most of pics have black lines on the right side ruining my future posts. I found a couple of "sometimes works" fixes and then I discovered this today.

Download Photoshop Express. It's free from Adobe. Simple pull your bad pics in, resave them, and viola, lines magically disappear. As a matter of fact, when you're selecting the pics from your gallery, they don't even appear!!


I Have no idea what's up with the iPad. Looks like the files are actually undamaged, but for some reason the iPad is showing and posting them damaged. Strange.


I Hope this helps all of you frustrated photographers like me. Purely coincidental that I stumbled on this today.


Follow me on Instagram if you want. Dkeithhowell

Jun 5, 2017 2:39 PM in response to whollyhannah

Looks like a lot of people are still having this issue. I found a work around that allows me to import iPhone photos without getting massive corruption: use ImageCapture! I was able to dump my photos into a folder using ImageCapture and then copy them to Photos without any issues. Hope this helps someone.

Jul 5, 2017 9:38 AM in response to whollyhannah

I used the photos app from apple to copy from my iphone 7 to Mac and it ruined my photos and all videos, half of the photo is gray, and half is photo. Does anyone know how to recover, i talked with apple customers service for 2 hours and werent able to solve it. The say that there might be a third party software that repair this issue. I hope anyone can help woth this... those photos are very important for me.

Grey Lines Through Photos

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