I took a few screenshots on my iPad just now and then went to trim them down.
I went to the camera roll, opened the photo and tapped on ’edit‘ as I have done hundreds of times before, but this time I got a message in the middle of the screen:
Where is my iPad trying to download this screenshot from?
iPad Air Wi-Fi, iOS 11.0.2
Update: I had a few hours to kill on a Saturday night (not really) so I decided to go for the full wipe & restore. When it came back, I initially set it up as a new iPad and then checked photo editing of a few screenshots - no problems. Then I restored my full backup and I'm back in business, with full ownership and editing rights to my photos. My stuff is mine again.
From here on out I am not trusting iCloud with anything, since I have also had several recent headaches with iCloud neither backing up nor syncing my iWork documents between devices. I Just don't trust iCloud any more. I will manually back up the most important files to the PC from now on.
Now I just have to wait a few more hours for all the apps, old photos and videos to repopulate. (I let some of the neighborhood kids use this iPad so it's full of random photos, silly videos and tons of games. It'll take a while for all of that to load back onto the iPad.)
Goodbye iCloud. It's not me, it's you.
It seems like all my photos need to go to the mothership for approval before I can have them.
That may be true. Apple does not say so in the user guide, but it may be a new behavior on iOS 11.
I remember, on a previous version of iOS, I used to get a warning, when I tried to edit a photo before t has been synced with iCloud.
But to disable editing completely, before the the photos have been synced to iCloud? That cannot work. When traveling abroad, we may not be able to connect to the internet for weeks, and it would be extremely inconvenient, if we could not edit photos until we can connect to Wi-Fi again.
I just tested - I put my iPhone X in flight mode and then took a screenshot. I could immediately edit it, even without any network connection. Which iOS version is running on your iPad? On my iPad I can only test with iO 9.3. and not with a newer version, because the iPad is too old.
It looks like I didn't mention this in the OP, but even when I'm connected to the internet, that 'downloading' notice never goes away. In other words, "downloading" isn't happening. The picture (and many others) simply can't be edited no matter what.
I just tried importing a simple test pattern from my PC using the File Browser app. I copied it from the PC and pasted it directly to the camera roll. Same problem: "downloading". It's very small, only 16 KB. There's no reason for iOS to offload such a tiny file to the cloud for "optimization" reasons. I'm not low on space either. I have 26 GB out of 64 GB available.
I just tried to edit a short (14 second) video. The scrubbing slider at the bottom just doesn't move at all.
This is an iPad Air 1, on iOS 11.0.2. I've got another iPad here (that I use for work) and it's also on 11.0.2 with all the same settings in the photo app, but it does not have these problems. I can edit (even very old) photos and videos with no delay without an internet connection.
Maybe Apple is holding my photos hostage to get me to upgrade to 11.2.5.
I marked this as a potentially helpful answer, however I don't think it applies in my case because I've got that setting disabled:
And, as you can see from the screenshot in the OP, I had all network services disabled. They were disabled when I took the snapshot too, so the image has to be on the camera roll.
Just to make sure, I took a few more pictures and tried to edit them right away - within seconds of taking them and with all network services disabled. I still got the same message about downloading.
It seems like all my photos need to go to the mothership for approval before I can have them.
"Downloading" suggests, that iCloud Photo Library has been enabled on your iPhone, with the "Optimize Storage" option.
If you did not enable iCloud Photo Library intentionally, the iOS 11 upgrade may have enabled it without you being aware of the fact, that the photos will now upload to iCloud Photo Library.
Check "Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Photos & Camera".
The "Optimize Storage" option may be causing photos to be removed from the iPad, directly after taking them.
Whe I try to edit any photo on my camera roll, a pop-up says “downloading”.
