User profile for user: S314-EsPi
S314-EsPi Author
User level: Level 1
33 points

Portrait type photos are corrupted (grey area appear) when transferring from iPhone to PC

When using the bulk transfer from iPhone to PC (Windows 10) with "Keep Originals" settings in Photos, the imported portrait (IMG_Exxxx) photos are corrupted and they are imported as HEIC as well as the originals.

Few months ago with the above settings, the portrait photos were transferred as IMG_Exxxx.JPG instead of HEIC format. There is no any other issue with the normal HEIC photos, only with the portrait type photos.

If I change to the "Automatic" setting when transferring to PC in the Photos application, the portrait images are transferred properly in IMG_E.jpg, but in this scenario all other HEIC photos are not rotated properly and the EXIF data can be lost.


I prefer using the "Keep Originals" settings when transferring from iPhone to PC, but it seems that there is a bug when you are importing the Portrait type of photos that should be copied as JPG and rotated properly regardless of the "Keep Originals" settings.


Thank you,


Peter

iPhone 11, iOS 14

Posted on Nov 1, 2020 1:52 AM

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User profile for user: AussieLyndal
AussieLyndal
User level: Level 1
18 points

Posted on Feb 20, 2022 12:43 PM

@Ryder_del_Fin, Refer my answer on the other post about this issue in Apple Communities: Portrait Mode Photos Corrupted (Gray Bar) - Apple Community


To summarise though:


  • yes, I'm using the Windows iCloud app, not a web browser (although there's a partial workaround to the download size for unedited photos in a web browser, it doesn't help us with the grey bar issue).
  • you can change the name of the folder where iCloud saves photos. I've called mine "Download" in the location you saw in my screenshot.
  • no, using an external drive doesn't help. Not sure why you are seeing a difference?
  • The only workarounds I found were to use a 3rd party cloud backup tool (I tested OneDrive, Dropbox and iDrive and both work to get the full resolution edited photo)


Other important points to note:


  • the issue is not just "Portrait" mode photos. Can't remember what setting I used for the below landscape photo, but clearly the grey bar occurred.



Note: My reason for mentioning the HEIF extension was that I was just adding to @davidg82's post to explain which extension on MS Store to use.   It's not really relevant to the grey bar issue - just friendly advice because someone was saying they didn't know how to display (valid) .heic files on Windows.  FWIW, I have Windows 10 and it certainly didn't recognize .heic files by default. I needed to install the extensions to be able to display the photo in an .heic file.  Based on my Google'ing, WIndows 11 doesn't support .heic out of the box either - you need to install the extension for it too. If you don't have the extension installed, you can still open the file with 3rd party tools that support .heic, or you can open it to examine it at byte level with an editor that supports doing so. As you're adamant photos with a grey bar are just mis-named jpeg files, it sounds like you've probably done that.

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User profile for user: jo3553
jo3553
User level: Level 1
4 points

Nov 27, 2020 12:26 PM in response to waltereleven

Hi Walter

I'm so glad I found this posting, because having exactly the same problem, except I'm not using Windows but a Linux PC for downloading photos and videos from an iPhone 11, for processing / converting HEIC format with open-source tools (libheif, from GitHub). Everything goes well, except with files IMG_EXXXX.HEIC. A graphics program shows an incomplete image, similar to yours, and the heif to jpeg converter gives an error.

Clearly, this is not a problem with Windows.

Did you get that callback?

Jo

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User profile for user: jo3553
jo3553
User level: Level 1
4 points

Nov 28, 2020 2:25 PM in response to waltereleven

Hello Walter

Thanks for replying. (After I read your initial post I have no desire to file a duplicate report of a bug they already know about.) My spouse skipped the updates after iOS 13.6 and on that phone I still see the IMG_EXXXX.JPG files with the portrait background blurred and no gray artifacts. I don't recall noticing any problems in 13.7 either. I'm guessing it's a bug new to iOS release 14. Hopefully they'll recognize this as a problem and fix it soon. The workaround (letting the phone create jpeg files) isn't great, because the files are a lot larger.

Best.

Jo

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Portrait type photos are corrupted (grey area appear) when transferring from iPhone to PC

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