iTunes stuck on "Reading photos from Pictures"

Tried deleting as you said it deleted photos that were on my iPhone 7 Plus the did the sync as if it was putting my 19000 photos on to phone.

But after it said done. No photos on phone

Yes you were right in collection. But they should be in albums the same as on my pc. Any ideas?

Thank you for your help. All worked fine. And since then apple issued update. And again after this all working as I’d did a month ago

Updated iOS and iTunes. On hour four of syncing. Not working yet for me

Very well said

I have done four syncs now including adding new photos and folders and all gone quickly and smoothly with no further issues.

Yes. Mine is doing the same thing. The update fixed. Nothing

I have been following all this for months I am running iTunes as I downgraded as so many suggested. All is well.

Has the new iTunes 12.8 fixed anything. Is it safe to use?

Mark

Thanks for the info.

Will stay with what works. This is the place for the straight talk about when

to move forward or NOT.

Mark

Well I successfully downgraded iTunes to the previous version and all is well. Here's how to do it. You only need to uninstall iTunes, not the other stuff in the link. Scroll all the way to the bottom to download the installer for a previous version. And then when done you need to replace your itunes Library.itl file with a previous one which is outlined in the second link:

Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates

Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash

I was having exactly the same problem with an almost identical setup: latest iTunes (12.7.4.80) on Windows10 and iPhone just updated iOS (11.3.1). However patience has finally worked. I simply left the PC apparently frozen on Reading photos from pictures in the next to last stage of the Sync. Perhaps patience is the solution (really needs a lot). It has taken 20 minutes short of 7 hours to "read" 5139 photos from the PC directory. Now the iTunes app is copying the 5139 photos. It's up to 3000 copied in the time I take to sign in and write this note.

While this seems to be working for me, 7 hours to read a PC directory with 5000 photos in 122 folders is really ridiculous. Some of the other posts write of 10000 and even 35000 photos. At this rate those people will need days to do the Sync.

Maybe the real problem is that the "read" step is so slow that it appears to have frozen, when in fact the process is ongoing but unacceptably slow and users are stopping the Sync before it has finished.

Now the Sync has finished and all photos have been copied to my iPhone. All the 122 folders are now in my iPhone as albums.

Maybe the reason that Apple have not produced a solution yet is they're looking in the wrong place. Apple should try looking at why the iTunes "Reading from photo_folder" is so slow that it looks as if it has frozen.

Cheers

Ian

There seems to be a bug in IOS 11.3.1 which causes this. I have found that if I delete iPod photo cache from my photos directory, it will then sync properly once. If I try and sync it again, it will erase my albums (the photos are still there) and hang on "reading photos ..." I need to delete the iPod photo cache file again in order to get it to sync again. I've synced and have all my photos (around 7,000) and albums on my device and will not connect it to iTunes again until there's an update (or, if I do, I'll delete the file again ...)

I am also from Barnet spent some time in Apple store in BrentX on Monday got no solution. Going back next week.

The only way I think photos can be saved in folders is by saving them to Facebook without sharing them with the rest of the world.

I definitely comprehend it... as a photographer with over 21000 pics on there... it’s how I kept them organized... since I import most from a DSLR ... they are now scattered every where with in those 21000... no way to find them with out going through all of them since no date is on them when taken.... this is a nightmare for me....

I did however sign up for google drive... I can have them across my devices now... in their respective folders.. it does take a few seconds for it to load , so it’s s tad slower than just having them on my phone .. I pay google 9.99 a month for 1TB of storage.... and I got an email this week , at the end of this month they are upgrading it to 2TB a month for the same 9.99. Honestly I did need another way to back up my work.. and this isn’t a bad deal really.... plus I can add photos to each folder without syncing my devices to iTunes every time, ... I would just need to move them to the physical folders on my laptop any time I do an edit... so all in all... I do like the google drive....

BUT......... THIS WHOLE APPLE LET DOWN IS STILL A PAIN.... FIX IT APLLE!

30 hours of forums, trawling support and bashing my head against itunes and I finally have a fully functioning device. In the end there was nothing for it but to completely restore my device, encountering a 9006 error along the way that added another 20 hours to the nightmare. It just shouldn't be this hard. This has been months just trying to resolve a few folders of photos. It really shouldn't be this hard. Many thanks for advice.