Problems importing photos directly from iPhone to Lightroom

[AviatorTim2]

I searched the forums before posting. Ironically, I found my exact question but it was not answered in that thread and no further responses since January so I'm reposting the topic. I'll update the other thread if someone has the answer (Re: Copy and import photos from iPhone 7 freezes )

I have an iPhone 7+ running iOS 11.3.1 and a 2016 MacBook Pro (2.6 Ghz intel core i7, 16 GB, running High Sierra 10.13.4). The MacBook is running Lightroom 6.0. I have the iPhone connected to the MacBook with a lightning cable.

When I try to import photos from the iPhone, Lightroom never progresses. I selected Command>Option>Esc and confirmed the program is not frozen. I noted that it created some temporary folders in the destination folder I selected. But it never imports even one photo.

I've observed the same program other people have noted of the majority of images displaying "Preview for this image could not be loaded" in lieu of a preview. The majority of photos don't show a preview. I have to start at one of the few that shows a preview and count forwards or backwards to determine the starting image for an import.

I have been doing the same work-around others have noted of first importing the photos in MacOS Photos, then copying them from there to the file structure where I prefer to keep them. That import works very well which tells me it's apparently not an equipment problem with the cable, phone or computer. The problem importing is isolated to Lightroom.

Any help is great appreciated. I'd like to avoid this annoying in-between step of using Photos to get them onto my MacBook.

Tim

[Ian Lyons · Accepted solution]

Check that your iPhone camera isn't configured to capture photos as HEIF rather then JPEG. I don't think Lr 6.x can read the HEIF format. You can do this from the Settings>Camera menu.  If this isn't the issue then rather than use macOS Photos as a workaround to import your images I think it would be easier to use 'Image Capture' (Application folder). Using Image Capture you can decide which folder to import them into. You might also want to update your copy of Lr to 6.14

[AviatorTim2]

Thanks Ian. I was capturing in HEIF rather than JPG. Apparently that setting was automatically switched on when I upgraded to iOS 11. That explains why I was able to directly upload from the iPhone to Lightroom previously but it no longer works now. As you correctly pointed out, Lightroom cannot read the HEIF format. I was able to confirm that by using Mac Image Capture and downloading the photos with and without conversion.

For the benefit of anyone else reading this thread in the future, I would suggest that, rather than changing the capture settings under Image>Camera, keep HEIF there and let Mac Image Capture do the conversion (by NOT checking the "Keep Originals" checkbox) when importing. That way the images take up much less space on the camera (roughly half as much) but the necessary conversion to JPG compression needed for Lightroom to read the images is done automatically upon transfer.

Once you pointed me in the right general direction, I found this article helpful in further explaining the details of the problem...

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/09/23/how-to-ios-11-heir-havc/

Unrelated follow-up question: I noticed when Image Capture imported the photos with Keep Originals checked, the vast majority of the photos imported with the LR unreadable .HEIC file extension but just a handful imported as .JPG's that were LR readable. Any idea why?

It's just a curiosity question since you must uncheck "keep originals" and do the conversion to import the images into LR.

[Randy Hufford]

I have been using https://imazing.com/about . It allows you to connect your iphone to computer like a external hard drive.

[Jao vdL]

MacBook is running Lightroom 6.0

Any reason you haven't updated Lightroom to 6.14? Download links here: 6.14 now available – last perpetual update of Lightroom​

That might help with the problem. In general it is much easier and simpler to sync images through the Lightroom mobile app down to Lightroom by the way. But I am not sure if this works well with Lightroom 6. It used to work fine when that was still the main version.