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J
JABetzler
Participant
June 1, 2015
Answered

lightroom import from iphone 6 no longer

  • June 1, 2015
  • 24 replies
  • 41148 views

I have the latest version of Lightroom CC and when I got my iPhone 6 in March the importing of photos and videos has been seamless. I do all the imports manually and other than waiting for my computer to recognize my phone it worked well until May 18, 2015.

- - -

I have Windows 7 64-bit

I do not have any major changes to my set-up since the import for the phone was working. Importing from a card reader and memory card from a camera still works just fine. I have worked to get my photos from my phone using some workarounds into LR; but this is not acceptable for the long run.

my iPhone is running iOS 8.3 and I have rebooted it several times since these issues

- - -

Procedure that I used in the past:

I plug my phone into the USB cable attached to my computer, approve the 'trust' box that pops up on my iPhone 6. Then wait for the phone folder icon to appear in the explorer window.

Then I select the import button and select the phone to import from - after awhile I get a window that indicates that photoshop lightroom has stopped responding.

Any reference to a current thread that addresses this problem would be appreciated -

Thanks,

Joseph

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer MikeDiakuw

    LR was telling me that there were no photos to import from my iPhone SE (when it had previously worked without a hitch).

    1. Opened Photos on my MacBook Air and tried to import.
    2. A dialogue told me that my computer had not been granted access to my iPhone. Must have been on iOS 10 upgrade?!?
    3. Unlocking my phone (while plugged in to USB), photos began to appear in the import screen for Photos.
    4. Closed Photos and tried importing into LR again and it worked.

    24 replies

    EPICDirector
    EPICDirector
    Known Participant
    November 27, 2016

    Solved it!
    In my case, (WIN10, LR CC (2015.7) 6.7, Apple iPhone 6+) unlocking the phone did nothing. I could unlock the phone>Photos and all photos, videos (.mov files) and "Live Photos" could be viewed. But the minute I would connect the USB cord from iPhone to USB 3.0 of the computer and started the Import, it would import empty folders.

    I tried both Lightroom and Bridge imports. Bridge seemed to get more images imported than LR before "emptying"  which got me thinking about TVCrider and PaulWieczorek's suggestions. Especially since I could only get about 1 minute of imports.

    Turns out:

    There is an autolock in the Display settings that in my phone was defaulted to Autolock after 1 min. Changing this to "NEVER" in the following iPhone 6+  by:

    Settings>Display and Brightness>Autolock and selecting "NEVER" instead of the default "1Min" did it. Bridge CC (2017) can now download all 31,000 image files.tvcrider​

    Why would Apple hide an Autolock not under "security" but under "Display and Brightness".  Really? Brightness? Anyways, problem solved.

    P
    PaulE911
    Participating Frequently
    December 8, 2016

    Make sure you are unlocking your phone before, and it is still unlocked while connecting it with the Lightning cable to your computer.  That worked for me!

    B
    BBrandyx
    Participant
    November 25, 2016

    How I fixed it: just unlocked my iPhone and pictures and videos have been displayed again!!

    N
    neech2000
    Inspiring
    October 13, 2016

    I had this problem and when i unlocked my iphone 6s, LR found the images. You might try that. when I first had the issue, the iphone was locked. When I went to Image Capture, it said, unlock.. so I did.. and then checked LR again and all my images showed up...

    EPICDirector
    EPICDirector
    Known Participant
    October 4, 2016

    Regarding William Ames and Larsenjm suggestion to "unlock phone"...
    I believe it is already unlocked if I can see my photos on the iPhone6+, correct? Unless I am missing what you are referring to an "unlocked phone". You are not talking carrier here, you are talking about unlocking with the 6 character password, correct?
    See my [previously described] step two:
    "2. Power up and access iPhone 6+ images on the phone; Connect with Lightning/USB3.0 to USB 3.0 port on computer."
    The thing is, I'm trying to access a thousand or so photos out of the 10s of thousands on the phone. Will the phone power down before it has a chance to complete the download?

    Also thank you Zoomlady for your suggestion:

    "anyone reading this - to avoid getting a lot of empty thumbnails in the import dialog you need to temporarily turn off the wireless on your phone. This may have already been fixed but I thought worth mentioning...

      

    That helps a lot. Does anyone know why this problem happens? I don't have Wi-Fi on my WIN 10 workstation. I wouldn't even think of checking WiFi as a source of this problem. Thanks Zoomlady.

    Also, So many videos come over as empty or 3 second videos. Is that the useless "moving still" photo that Apple has added to the iPhone 6? If I want videos I'll shoot videos. If I shoot stills I intend to have stills. I suspect this might be causing a unsurmountable challenge to the people at Adobe.

    W
    William Ames
    Participant
    October 3, 2016

    Not sure if this is helpful, but I found this page in an effort to solve the same issue on my Mac...

    The solution is SO SIMPLE it makes me wonder.

    Unlock your iPhone.

    Yep. I tried Image Capture, and it asked me to unlock the phone before importing, and that made me think that was the issue in Lightroom, and it was. Unlock your phone before trying to import. See how that works.

      L
      larsenjm
      Participant
      October 2, 2016

      Unlock iPhone 6:

      iPhone 6 on Mac Pro -> Swapped out Apple iPhone cable -> no improvement -> tried import via Bridge -> Bridge said iPhone 6 was locked -> unlocked iPhone 6 -> Lightroom import started working.  All software up to date as of 2 Oct 2016.

      T
      tvcrider
      Participant
      September 30, 2016

      My setup

      • Windows 10
      • No usb 3.0 ports, all are 2.0.
      • LR 6.7 
      • Iphone 6S+ running OS 10.0.2

      I have tried all of the suggestions here.  LR will recognize our two cameras when attached via usb port to the pc, but it does not recognize my Iphone.

      Bummer.

        T
        tvcrider
        Participant
        October 5, 2016

        Well, I finally had had success.  My Iphone was set to auto-lock after 2 minutes.  For the purposes of trying to download or Import to LR I reset the Iphone to 'Never'.  I have now Imported files from the Iphone to LR twice. 

          paulwieczorek
          paulwieczorek
          Inspiring
          October 10, 2016

          Had the same issue, tried everything and then found this thread. Thanks guys!

          SOLUTION - YOUR PHONE MUST BE UNLOCKED THE WHOLE TIME WHILE IMPORTING THE PHOTOS/.MOV FILES
          EPICDirector
          EPICDirector
          Known Participant
          September 29, 2016

          Same Problem with a WIN10 and iPhone 6+. This is extremely frustrating and yet it worked fine before. Adobe seems to be putting a lot of effort into LR mobile and nothing into fixing this mess. I can import from Android's Samsung Note7, and the Note5 no problem. I can import from thumbdrives and even CDs and ext drives. But on the iPhone 6+? A mess. It doesn't "see" all my images, and those it imports are problematic (e.g. "your imported 100 images have no frames in the video").

          1. Open LR CC (2015.7) 6.7 on my WIN10

          2. Power up and access iPhone 6+ images on the phone; Connect with Lightning/USB3.0 to USB 3.0 port on computer.

          3. Ignore "what do you wish to do" [when iPhone is connected] popup because LR is not an option (Yet Bridge is!?)

          4. In LR, click "Import" and select iPhone 6 at the top left.

          5. Wait considerable cycle time for thumbnails to be populated (why so long? a 128 GB thumb drive is much quicker).

          6. Way too many thumbnails are gray with " Preview unavailable for this file".

          7. Select 400 or so jpgs, MOV and even some grayed out "Preview Unavailable..." files and choose "IMPORT"

          8. Way too long upload to computer resulting with error messages (e.g. "100 videos have no frames" or something like that).

          9. many jpgs are smeary and pixelated as if they are low res files.

          10. many movies, actually most movies are only 3 seconds long!

          Obviously LR no longer plays nice with Apple or is it vice versa? Yet Adobe LR wants me to synch to my phone? I think not!

          MikeDiakuw
          MikeDiakuwCorrect answer
          Participant
          September 20, 2016

          LR was telling me that there were no photos to import from my iPhone SE (when it had previously worked without a hitch).

          1. Opened Photos on my MacBook Air and tried to import.
          2. A dialogue told me that my computer had not been granted access to my iPhone. Must have been on iOS 10 upgrade?!?
          3. Unlocking my phone (while plugged in to USB), photos began to appear in the import screen for Photos.
          4. Closed Photos and tried importing into LR again and it worked.
            R
            ryand87687348
            Participant
            October 16, 2016

            This fixed the problem for me.

            J
            jeffersoncoops
            Participant
            August 20, 2016

            I don't know how to fix the import, but I figured out a workaround for Mac.  Use the Apple Photos app to import all the photos from your phone to your computer.  Then open Lightroom and import them from the Photos Library to your Lightroom Library.  The only problem is that you cannot immediately find the folder where all your photos live.  This can be solved by creating a symlink to the Masters directory within the Photos Library.  You can do this with your Terminal app.  Launch the Terminal app, and type the following at the command line:

            ln -s ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library\ Masters

            This creates a folder within your Pictures directory that links to the master copies folder within your Photos library.  Now you can launch Lightroom, and do a photo import.  On the left panel, choose the Pictures/Photos Library Masters folder.  On the right side, choose the folder you would like to import to, as usual.

            I hope this is helpful.

            jclin10
            jclin10
            Known Participant
            September 2, 2016

            I'm having the same issues

            iPhone 6, latest versions of LR and Yosemite, but lots of errors when importing from iPhone straight into Lightroom - there are files that aren't recognized or left out during import

            I can imagine a few possible workarounds

            1. Import to Photos - then export from Photos to Lightroom. Then delete uploaded photos from Photos.

            2. Import to Mac using Image Capture then import using Lightroom.

            3. Take pictures using Lightroom Mobile in the first place

            One of the things I'd love to do would be to have a foolproof workflow that also tracks what I've already imported, so that I don't have to manually keep track or re-import old duplicate photos

            Does anyone have any thoughts or observations on those options in terms of reliability, etc.?

            barbarasaustin
            barbarasaustin
            Participant
            September 5, 2016

            Last week I had no problem importing from my iphone 6s to LR. Tonight, it refused to recognize my phone, no matter what I did. I have had issues before and had followed some of the previous suggestions with successful results - using a new cable, restarting my computer and/or phone, etc. Tonight, nothing worked. I finally ended up discovering image capture in my applications (I'm on a Mac which I just updated to El Capitan) and was able to download my photos to my pictures folder, then upload them into Lightroom.

            This is crazy! I hope Adobe or Apple or whoever gets these kinks worked out! Something that should take 5 minutes ended up taking me several hours.  I'm so grateful to all of you for your suggestions!

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