A gripe about importing duplicate photos from iPhone to Mac

TimRichards

Well-Known Member
Periodically I'll go out on a work assignment and take maybe 100 or 200 photos with my iphone in an hour or two. When I get home (or to the hotel) I have been connecting the phone to my MacBook Pro with a wire to quickly transfer the photos to my laptop. Today I finally realized the Mac is importing tons of duplicate photos each time I import over the wire, in addition to the photos taken on that day. A superficial look on the internet found one commenter saying effectively 'only use iCloud' to import your photos. Not really a solution to a bug. When I plug in the phone I get a dialogue box that specifically says' 'Import all new photos?", which leads me, forgive me, to assume that is is both possible and not harmful. So I am going with the thought that this is a handicap or bug or whatever and I'm wondering if anyone has a similar problem, or a solution. I prefer to quickly transfer the photos over the wire to my laptop, for various reasons, e.g. avoid burning cell data uploading the photos, not having a good wifi signal, being in a rush to get a report done using the photos...
So: 1.Why does Mac import duplicates in a seemingly random way? and
2. Does anyone have a resolution? and
3. Does anyone have a tested and true method of detecting and deleting the dupicates?

Many thanks for any helpful leads!
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
You didn't say, but it sounds like when you hook up your iPhone to your MB Pro with a "wire", that Image Capture is what pops up and prompts you to "Import all new photos?" Image Capture has always behaved for me. Is it possible you have some secondary method of syncing the iPhone to the MB Pro also set up and that is producing the duplicates? What macOS and what iOS are you on?
 

TimRichards

Well-Known Member
When I plug in my Iphone XS (iOS 15.1), to my Macbook Pro (late 2015, OS 10.15.7), I then run photos. Photos already shows me a dialogue that says, "please unlock Tim's Iphone". I do that. There at the top of Photos App are two buttons, one says "Import Selected" and the other says, "Import all New items". Just now I did an "edit-select all" and it selected over 7500 photos on my phone. I didn't proceed, to import them, I just wanted to see what it would say. I have now read another help article where the helper was saying that the "import selected" process does not work because of interference from the Icloud system when using iCloud photos. It just seems strange that these two processes, if they are conflicting, have not yet resulted in a more specific and safe adjustment to the import process or simply saying 'this cannot be done" sort of thing. ( also I periodically plug in my phone to synch my music.)
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
Could I suggest you try Image Capture to do this? When you plug your iPhone into your MB Pro, launch Image Capture (in the Applications folder.) In the sidebar you will see your iPhone listed so click on that to select it. It should then show all the photos on your iPhone. At the bottom Import To: and use the pulldown to select Photos.app. Then click on the first photo you want, scroll down to the last photo you want and shift click on that one so that the whole group is highlighted. Then click on the Download button - NOT the Download All button. In Photos you will probably need to click on "Import All New Photos" to move them from the imported folder to the Library.

I tried to follow you method of using the Photos app to do this directly, but found the order I do things (connecting the cable, unlocking the phone, launching the Photos app on either the Mac or the iPhone) all affected the result I was getting.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
One detail I forgot to mention: You will want to toggle the little arrow thingy at top right so that the most recent photos are shown at the top. If you have thousands of photos and only want to grab the most recent 100 you won't want to be scrolling down past the other thousands to get to them.

Screen Shot 2022-01-20 at 9.45.01 AM.png
 

Cougurr

Well-Known Member
Just a thought but perhaps you have turned on "Photo Stream" in iCloud and the photos are therefore all automatically transferring from your iPhone to your iMac that way. Then when you are plugging in the iPhone it is allowing you to manually do the same download again?
I use Photo Stream to do all my transfers this automatic way from iPhone to iMac. Not to be confused with storing all your photos in iCloud and then having access to those iCloud photos from any of all of your Mac devices.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
Yes I also use Photo Stream to get the photos I take on my iPhone to end up in Photos on my iMac. But I find it not totally reliable. Some times they transfer and sometimes they don't or if I take a batch of photos in a session some of those do but not all of them. I certainly wouldn't recommend this method for someone who is taking a 100 or so photos at a time. Trying to make sure they all transferred would be a real pain. But I agree it is worth making sure that isn't turned on my accident, in this situation.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
I think Colin is on to it. If you have Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library turned on, then the photos are already “there” (or will be soon) and manually importing them before the iCloud ones are synced will produce duplicates.

As for cleaning up duplicates, I have used Gemini Photos in the past and it works well, but I see it has gone to the subscription model (sigh), though it does offer a $35 “lifetime” one-time fee option. MacPaw, the maker, is a reputable company.
 

TimRichards

Well-Known Member
Thanks all, I believe that must be the problem, using photo stream and iCloud. I'm not willing to turn off photo stream as it works fine 99% of the time, across the iPad, iphone and MBP... But I shall switch to Image Capture next time have large batch situation and try that for a quick import of photos to work on. And I think I shall pursue a 'duplicate shredder' of some kind, will look at Gemini. Cheers!
 

TimRichards

Well-Known Member
Update on this issue. I used the free two day version of Gemini to find and delete several hundred dupes. Very effective! Then I cancelled my subscription as it is like two days free, then full price. The next day I would have been charged 70 bucks or some such. It was tantalizing to pay up after the free period and keep using that program to root around finding and deleting 'near' duplicates, but then I realized I could do that anytime with the existing Photos software, just delve into a batch from a few years ago and start deleting the crap and chaff. From personal experience I'd say it gets easier the more you do it. Remember it is unlikely anyone on the planet will ever sift through your treasures after you're gone; and it's much more gratifying to sift through some old birthday party from years ago and find only five pretty decent 'memories' photos and not to have to weed through it all again...
But the reason for my post here:
I tried using the Mac Image Capture to import my late July-and-August photos. I had several hundred pics and movies that were not backed via the cloud up as I don't want to burn off that much cell data while up coast at my remote cabin. So I joined the phone (10S) to the old (mid 2015) Macbook pro with a cable and used Image Capture to import about 500 images to the 'Pictures' folder which seems to be the default. (I hadn't reread DaveWT's post for some time, so I failed to pull down the menu and spot the Photos app. Next time I shall maybe get it...

Anyway what is interesting for me, very valuable in some cases, is that into the Pictures folder went both a jpg (maybe a Heic, can't recall) and a little .Mov instead of a 'Live photo. I shoot live photos by default and often capture wildlife doing interesting things in the motion clip.
Anyway, being able to extract the .mov clip from the Live photo in this way could be very useful in putting together a little vignette\slideshow of the dolphins or whales or animals in the yard...on the beach...
 
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