I have recently noticed I cannot open many of my photos, they have an extension I have never seen before JSON.

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Level 1

4 points

I have recently noticed I cannot open many of my photos, they have an extension I have never seen before JSON.

My photos are a complete mess, I seem to have quadruplicates and many are so out of focus, they are unrecognizable. I used a trial of GEMINI to weed out the duplicates, but it did not go so well. I'm trying to clean them up and remove them from different sites, i.e. Amazon, and Google, several other sites have access too. I plan on keeping Google Photos and iCloud. They are also located on several External Hard Drives I have. Way OverKill!

Suddenly, I noticed I couldn't open many of my photos and I saw they had an extension I had never seen before .JSON

I also noticed my photos are not replicating to all of my devices any longer. If I felt as though I could trust iCloud, I would wipe everything else clean and start from scratch.

It may seem liking I am asking a lot, but I just was wondering what caused this and is there a easy fix? Like a Find and Rename type of situation. Plus any recommendations on a good photo duplicate pgm.

Can someone point me in the right direction on how to fix this, what caused this, and a good photo program to clean up duplicates and blurred photos?

Thank You

Steve

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Nov 4, 2024 11:29 PM

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Answer 1

Stevess579 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 6, 2024 10:31 AM in response to léonie

After digging further, I saw these photos, or extensions, in the Google Cloud library. I'm used to reading mainframe dumps, but this looks like Metadata. Is there anything in my Google settings that should be changed? Also, I was using a program called CANVA for different creative projects I thought I would try to do. However, I'm more of an analytical person, as opposed to a creative person. I just sit here and scream at the developer who wrote the program I'm trying to use.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,147 points

Nov 5, 2024 12:45 AM in response to Stevess579

Steve, where are you seeing the .JSON files? In your Photos Library on your Mac? Or in folders on iCloud Drive?

json files are in a text format, describing the photos and their properties, more like java script. They are mostly configuration files, describing Sample images or similar. You can read them with Text Edit, for example. But Photos for Mac cannot open them.

Some third party apps are storing images and sidecar files in the json format; I am seeing plenty of them in my Luminar catalogue. Have you been using a third-party editor for your photos?

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

197,147 points

Nov 6, 2024 10:53 AM in response to Stevess579

Sorry, I cannot help with Google's cloud service, because I have never used it. I hope, someone will jump in, who has used it.

The sidecar files are usually automatically - we do not open them on their own, but they will be read, when we open an image, that is paired with this sidecar file. The JSON files are slightly different, they can include a URL, pointing to the actual image file. And we will get an error massage, if the image file is no longer there, where it should be. Have the image files in your cloud have been moved to a different location? is there a network problem?

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Answer 4

Nov 6, 2024 12:07 PM in response to Stevess579

Google Photos can export metadata as .json sidecar files when you use Google Takeout (Apple Photos does the same with .xmp sidecars although they are currently quite buggy).

You can join .json metadata to the image or movie with apps like GraphicConverter or exixtool. But you only need to do that if you have edited metadata inside Google Photos -- the metadata that was inside the image when you imported it to Google Photos can be readily imported without .json.

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