Copy and import photos from iPhone 7 freezes

[Edgett007]

I have an iPhone 7 running iOS 10.3.1 and a Late 2012, 27-inch iMac (3.4GHz i7, 32GB 1600 MHz DDR3).   The iMac is running a fully patched version of Lightroom CC (2015.10).  I have connected the iPhone to the iMac with a Lightning cable. 

I select File > Import Photos and Video... and then select the recent photos that I want to import.   I click Import, and then I see "Copy and import photos" in the upper left.   ... and it never progresses.

• I have disabled any backup utilities such as Carbonite and Google Photos.
• I have ensured that iTunes is not running.
• I have rebooted my Mac.
• I have rebooted my Phone.
• I have optimized my catalog.
• I have increased my cache size to 4.0 GB
• I have tried multiple Lightning cables.

Nothing is working.  This combination worked around January 29, 2017 which is when I did my last import.  I have been struggling with this for a couple of weeks.   In that time the Mac, the iPhone, and Lightroom have all received patch updates, but none have resolved my issue.

[Kanheiya]

Hi,

Are you importing only images?

If you are importing videos then what is the video file size?

Can you please try to import one image?

-Kanheiya

[Edgett007]

There are a couple of videos but nothing exceeding 2 minutes in length.

Importing one image has the same behavior.

[Edgett007]

I have now also tried uninstalling an reinstalling Lightroom, disabling all the plugins, and increasing the cache size all the way to 32GB.

This is still not working.

[TheDigitalDog]

DO NOT let the phone ‘lock’ itself while importing.

[Edgett007]

The phone is not locking (set lock time to 4 hours, and the display is on). 

Lightroom 'freezes' (i.e. shows no progress) immediately on me clicking the Import button.

[Edgett007]

I was able to use mount the phone in Apple's image capture utility, use that to get the photos to a folder on my desktop, then use Adobe Lightroom to "import" the photos to my normal "Date Shot" photo file structure.   This is a major hiccup in the workflow process.  

[Smit K]

Hi,

Could you confirm which macOS is your iMac on?

Thanks,
Smit Keniya
Adobe Lightroom Team

[Katrinochka]

I have the same issue on both my Retina iMac and Macbook Pro, both running OS X Sierra (fully updated as of time of writing).

I believe it is time Adobe did something about the iPhone import. It has been plagued for years by "Preview for this image could not be loaded" in the Import screen, and now this freeze! Everything is well as long as you have no more than 500-1000 images on your iPhone. I have several thousand, and this is really frustrating. Unable to import at all. Also, previews not showing for thumbnails in the import screen (as has been the case for YEARS now).

[TheDigitalDog]

Got the same OS and a MacBook Pro 2016 Touch-bar, no such crashing.

[Katrinochka]

How many photos and videos do you have on your iPhone, and what iPhone model do you use?

[Smit K]

Katrinochka  wrote

I have the same issue on both my Retina iMac and Macbook Pro, both running OS X Sierra (fully updated as of time of writing).

I believe it is time Adobe did something about the iPhone import. It has been plagued for years by "Preview for this image could not be loaded" in the Import screen, and now this freeze! Everything is well as long as you have no more than 500-1000 images on your iPhone. I have several thousand, and this is really frustrating. Unable to import at all. Also, previews not showing for thumbnails in the import screen (as has been the case for YEARS now).

Hi,

Could you give an approximate number of images do you have on your iPhone? Also, are all of them either JPEGs, Live Photos or MOV files?

Thanks,
Smit Keniya

[Katrinochka]

Hi, I have about 5,000-6,000 images, mostly iphone camera jpegs, and a few videos (4k iphone videos), and a few (really not many) live photos, for which, incidentally there is still no proper support in LR. I have observed the issue of thumbnails in the import pane not showing previews literally for years, in several former LR versions, and with several previous iphone models, and the bug is still here now! Sometimes I could make LR render most of the thumbnail previews by repeated restarts of the app and by starting import afresh several times. This bug is only present if you have over 1,000-2,000 images on iphone.

Now the total freeze of the import is a new "feature" that appeared couple of months ago. Also, I have observed that if my iphone import hangs like this, I cannot exit LR normally, I have to force quit.

[Willy ROMY]

Same issue there. Lightroom CC 2015 with iPhone 7 plus iOS 11. It happened twice, and I noticed that both times I had a very long video file (unwanted mistake recording for 10 minutes or more). It took me a very long time to realize it, as you don't even know that you have such a file in your phone since it is recorded by accident. I dont' know if that is the real reason, but as soon as lightroom met those files, the process became veeeeeeeeeeery long and finally freeze. Even deleting the file on the phone, restarting computer and the phone changed nothing at all. It's as if there was no photos on my phone... The only way that worked for me was to make the upgrade of last iOS 11. Now I'm back to normal situation, but I'm afraid it will occur again... I'm pretty sure it has to deal with video files (I don't take live photos).

[cjcam]

I realize this is an older thread but the problem still remains to-date on the very latest versions of Lightroom Classic, iOS and MacOSX...ridiculous!!!

[Guest]

And this issue is still happening. Only workaround is to use Apple's Photo Import tool to import to Downloads folder then point LightRoom import there - works in seconds.