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User profile for user: hlritter
hlritter Author
User level: Level 1
57 points

Can't download full resolution photos on iphone

My iPhone 6S Plus (fully up to date) just recently started storing only low-res versions of photos I'd taken with it, and I believe that this is because the phone automatically enabled "Optimize iPhone Storage" and uploaded the full-res versions to iCloud. My understanding is that when a low-res photo is viewed on the phone, the full-res version is automatically downloaded, or at least when the photo is selected for editing, this is supposed to happen.


VIDEOS, on the other hand, which appear very coarsely pixelated until ">" is tapped, download and play immediately in full resolution.


I cannot get the full-res versions to display just by viewing photos. When I select the editing icon, I get this message: "There was an error downloading this photo from your iCloud Photo Library. Please try again later." "Later", of course, I still get the same message. Clicking on "Download and Keep Originals" in Settings checks that option and unchecks the "Optimize iPhone Storage" option, but a note appears telling me that "This iPhone is currently storing originals in iCloud, yada yada" and the full-res versions of photos still won't appear no matter what I do. There is nearly 1.6 GB of free space on my iPhone, which is not enough to contain all of my photos in full res (in low res, they occupy some 800 MB), but it's obviously enough to allow for ONE to be downloaded.


What's happening, and how do I fix it? I want my normal beautiful full-res photos HERE on my iPhone!

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), 500 GB SSD

Posted on May 4, 2017 9:54 PM

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User profile for user: hlritter
hlritter Author
User level: Level 1
57 points

Posted on Sep 26, 2017 6:52 AM

Since my original post, which started this thread, I've discovered and/or realized a few things. My original gripe was that I could no longer view my photos in their original full-resolution form on the camera roll in the Camera app. But they're stored in full-res form in iCloud, and they're viewable through the iPhone's Photos app even if not thru the Camera app.


If I understand correctly, turning on the iCloud Photo Library switch and checking Optimize iPhone Storage will cause the phone to upload all its high-res photos to iCloud (presuming you have enough iCloud storage available), where they will be accessible in full-res form thru the phone's Photos app. Low-res versions will remain available on the phone and viewable thru the Camera app. Have you done the above? You won't have the images in full-res form on the phone, but they'll be accessible through Photos, if your iCloud storage plan has enough capacity. In this case, you needn't fear having the full-res forms deleted from your iPhone.


My experience suggests that full-res images remain on the phone for a period of time before being converted to low-res to free up storage space. This low-res presentation in the Camera app (currently) applies to all the photos on my phone taken 48 days or more ago, but the next photo, taken 38 days ago, and all photos taken after that, are on the phone in full res. Since this only started happening 5 months ago, and the phone is nearly out of storage (I have only the 16-GB version), I'm assuming that at some point where storage shrank below some Apple-established minimum, all photos on the phone were converted to low-res to free up storage, with the originals remaining in iCloud. I also suspect that this conversion is set to take place at some point between 38 and 48 days after each photo was taken, perhaps at 6 weeks. Or maybe it depends on available storage. It will be interesting to see what happens after I upgrade to iPhone X in a few months.

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User profile for user: hlritter
hlritter Author
User level: Level 1
57 points

Sep 26, 2017 6:52 AM in response to amh1977

Since my original post, which started this thread, I've discovered and/or realized a few things. My original gripe was that I could no longer view my photos in their original full-resolution form on the camera roll in the Camera app. But they're stored in full-res form in iCloud, and they're viewable through the iPhone's Photos app even if not thru the Camera app.


If I understand correctly, turning on the iCloud Photo Library switch and checking Optimize iPhone Storage will cause the phone to upload all its high-res photos to iCloud (presuming you have enough iCloud storage available), where they will be accessible in full-res form thru the phone's Photos app. Low-res versions will remain available on the phone and viewable thru the Camera app. Have you done the above? You won't have the images in full-res form on the phone, but they'll be accessible through Photos, if your iCloud storage plan has enough capacity. In this case, you needn't fear having the full-res forms deleted from your iPhone.


My experience suggests that full-res images remain on the phone for a period of time before being converted to low-res to free up storage space. This low-res presentation in the Camera app (currently) applies to all the photos on my phone taken 48 days or more ago, but the next photo, taken 38 days ago, and all photos taken after that, are on the phone in full res. Since this only started happening 5 months ago, and the phone is nearly out of storage (I have only the 16-GB version), I'm assuming that at some point where storage shrank below some Apple-established minimum, all photos on the phone were converted to low-res to free up storage, with the originals remaining in iCloud. I also suspect that this conversion is set to take place at some point between 38 and 48 days after each photo was taken, perhaps at 6 weeks. Or maybe it depends on available storage. It will be interesting to see what happens after I upgrade to iPhone X in a few months.

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User profile for user: peterg4000
peterg4000
User level: Level 1
4 points

Oct 20, 2017 6:03 AM in response to ishandabra

Thanks Ishandabra. Your process did indeed seem to fix my problem of low-res photos not automatically updating from iCloud.

Only one extra step people may run into - iOS doesn't actually delete the photos from the device in the steps you mentioned - They go into Recently Deleted. This meant I couldn't turn on iCloud photo sharing because (it seems) it wanted to backup those 4.89GB of 'Recently Deleted' photos to iCloud, and there wasn't enough space!


How **** is this software!


By Deleting everything in 'Recently Deleted' (Via Select->Delete All), I could then turn on iCloud photos...


***** **** *****

<Edited by Host>


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User profile for user: LuffCace
LuffCace
User level: Level 1
9 points

Nov 19, 2017 8:14 AM in response to hlritter

I was stuck too with “ with iPhone was not able to download 600+ photos and videos, was almost a 1 gb of iCloud space and my 32 gb iPhone had like 5 gb free space but iPhone didn’t seem to recognize this, so I deleted the download on some Spotify playlists and got to free up to 10 gb of space, after I had 10+ gb of space my whole photo library started downloading and finished within an hour including videos and now I have my full llibrary in high original res on my iPhone.

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Can't download full resolution photos on iphone

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