Distorted pictures after import from Iphone

Question

Level 1

9 points

Distorted pictures after import from Iphone

Yesterday I imported the pictures of our last trip from my iPhone 6 to my iMac. The initial transfer was going well but when reviewing the import today I noted that most of the pictures are distorted... Most of the pictures have a line in the middle and left & right have been swapped. See example screenshot below (view in Foto's).

Both pictures taken with the regular phone as those taken with Hipstamatic are impacted. Both the iMac and the iPhone are fully up to date with all most recent updates.

Who knows how to correct them? The pictures are deleted from the iPhone after import... so have no recovery.

iPhone 6, iOS 10.1.1

Posted on Nov 6, 2016 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

JCorre Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 6, 2016 11:08 AM in response to léonie

Hi Leonie,

Thanks for the Prompt reply.

The pics are also distorted when enlarging. Rotating or editing them does not work.

Tried your second tip as well and exported unmodified original. See result attached (it did not work). What I do see when looking closer is that the picture is actually split by a grey bar that includes a mini-example of the picture.

See attachments. Any ideas?

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,537 points

Nov 7, 2016 1:18 AM in response to JCorre

Due to the permission issues I could not activate a recovery version of my iphone and I could not trace the pictures back on the 'deleted section' on the phone. I appreciate all good ideas.

Jesse, it would help to know, if the photos did not download correctly from your iPhone, or got modified, after you imported them. There might be two possible reasons for the JPEG corruption -

a transmission error when downloading from the iPhone or card, causing corrupted originals to be written to your disk.
Or a problem with your system drive - bad blocks or similar causing the stored images to be modified.

If you have a Time Machine backup going back until directly after importing the photos, try to restore a version of your Photos Library to an external drive and compare the photos. Are the backed up versions o.k. or have they always been corrupted?

I'd run a hardware test to check the drive and your RAM, and make a backup now, if you do not have a current backup, just in case a hardware problem is corrupting your files, to prevent more data loss.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,537 points

Nov 6, 2016 10:53 AM in response to JCorre

Are the photos also distorted, if you double click one of the thumbnails to enlarge it?

If the photos display correctly, if you enlarge them, rotate the photo back and forth by entering ⌘R, then ⌥⌘R.

If you can correct the thumbnail this way, select a larger group of photos, try to rotate them at once.

If rotating does not help, export one of the problematic photos with "File > Export > Export unmodified original". Look at the exported photo with the Preview.app. Is the exported original file o.k., or is it corrupted as well?

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

200,537 points

Nov 6, 2016 2:33 PM in response to JCorre

It looks like a JPEG corruption, like a few bits in the image files have been written incorrectly, when you imported them. Are only the most recently imported photos corrupted or also older photos?

I take it, you already tried to restart the Mac and check, if the problem persists?

If you take a new photo with your camera and import it, will it also be corrupted?

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Answer 5

JCorre Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 6, 2016 2:33 PM in response to léonie

Hi Léonie,

I'm already working a half day to get the pictures back. I also found out that the syncing permissions were not 100% up to date but that should not have caused this issue. I agree that it's more a JPEG corruption. But the pictures initially were well written on my Iphone and were also shared via Whatsapp or Instagram without any issues.

I only faced the problems with pictures of less than one month old. The older pictures don't have this issue. And again, only about 80% of the pictures are affected. There are still about 20% that are completely OK within the collection of the last month...

Due to the permission issues I could not activate a recovery version of my iphone and I could not trace the pictures back on the 'deleted section' on the phone. I appreciate all good ideas.

Greets,

Jesse

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Answer 6

JCorre Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 7, 2016 1:37 AM in response to léonie

Dear Leonie,

To verify your suggestions I was planning to import as well pictures from another Iphone and with another cable. This should help to exclude some potential root causes.

I checked the back-ups (Backblaze) and it shows the same issue. Also ran a hardware test and that's fine but there is clearly a lack of RAM so I'm planning now an upgrade.

But it seems that most of my holiday pictures are lost. But thanks for the help. Very much appreciated.

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Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

200,537 points

Nov 7, 2016 3:43 AM in response to JCorre

I checked the back-ups (Backblaze) and it shows the same issue.

That is no good news.

To verify your suggestions I was planning to import as well pictures from another Iphone and with another cable.

Also try to import from your iPhone and camera to a different computer and compare to what you get on your computer.

And open the photos from your backup drive on a different computer, if you can borrow one.

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Answer 8

Dec 11, 2016 10:41 PM in response to JCorre

This just happened to us. Lost hundreds of photos. We are incredibly frustrated.

This just happened on the most recent import, its the only time it has ever happened (43000 photos in our library), and its on a brand new iPhone 7 and the Mac is running 10.12.1

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