z4steve

Q: Lines on imported photos

When I import pictures using the Apple SD card reader into Photos on my iPad, I am getting a series of lines on one edge of every picture.  The lines are not on the original and do not appear if I import the pictures into Photos on my iPhone using the same SD card reader.  Any ideas as to what's going on and how to fix it?

iPad Air Wi-Fi, Cellular, iOS 8.4.1

Posted on Jul 2, 2016 2:14 PM

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Q: Lines on imported photos

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  • Helpful answers

  • by rosa169,Helpful

    rosa169 rosa169 Jul 9, 2016 4:25 AM in response to z4steve
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iPad
    Jul 9, 2016 4:25 AM in response to z4steve

    I'm having the same problem. This happens on iPhone, iPad 2, iPad Mini.

    I've tried from different SD cards, I've tried from different cameras, it's always the same.

  • by Diana.McCall,

    Diana.McCall Diana.McCall Jul 8, 2016 6:53 AM in response to z4steve
    Level 4 (2,895 points)
    Apple TV
    Jul 8, 2016 6:53 AM in response to z4steve

    Are your iPhone and iPad both using the same iOS version?

  • by z4steve,

    z4steve z4steve Jul 9, 2016 4:25 AM in response to Diana.McCall
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 9, 2016 4:25 AM in response to Diana.McCall

    Yes - 9.3.2 on both.

  • by littleroot,

    littleroot littleroot Jul 16, 2016 9:41 PM in response to z4steve
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPad
    Jul 16, 2016 9:41 PM in response to z4steve

    I'm seeing the same thing but not on every photo. Just about half of the 360 images I imported tonight have this issue which I have never seen before. My iPad 4 is on 9.3.1

  • by hmansion,Solvedanswer

    hmansion hmansion Jul 27, 2016 5:30 AM in response to z4steve
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Jul 27, 2016 5:30 AM in response to z4steve

    I had those same artifacts, starting with a recent iOS update, on my iPad (4th gen).  I installed the new update 9.3.3 this morning and it appears the problem has been fixed!

  • by hmansion,

    hmansion hmansion Jul 28, 2016 1:29 AM in response to hmansion
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Jul 28, 2016 1:29 AM in response to hmansion

    It seems I spoke too soon.  After a full day of editing and transferring .jpgs to my iPad, the short horizontal lines on one edge of the photo have returned in two of my images .  All the affected images that had already been on my iPad just prior to my 9.3.3 update display correctly now, but apparently something in the process of transferring photos to the iPad introduces the artifact problem.

  • by Dottore de Funk,

    Dottore de Funk Dottore de Funk Aug 1, 2016 2:18 AM in response to z4steve
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 1, 2016 2:18 AM in response to z4steve

    Same problem here. Not solved with 9.3.3 update. If I was suspicious I'd say Apple has either become incompetent or is deliberately making older iPads like my iPad 3 unusable. Mine also freezes up for 30 seconds or so regularly and restarts occasionally. But I suppose it's just that their quality control is now awful. Too many upgrades and not enough time spent on debugging. Thus one is really annoying and means my iPad is no longer usable to save pictures to.for me every imported picture is affected.

  • by Dottore de Funk,

    Dottore de Funk Dottore de Funk Aug 1, 2016 9:18 AM in response to hmansion
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 1, 2016 9:18 AM in response to hmansion

    Stranger and stranger - imported picture on FB still shows lines. But pictures once synced with iCloud  and in Photo Stream lose the lines! Very weird.

  • by littleroot,

    littleroot littleroot Aug 1, 2016 9:40 AM in response to hmansion
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPad
    Aug 1, 2016 9:40 AM in response to hmansion

    I wonder if it is limited to photos we have edited. I don't have the original source batch to check. I will have to do a test.

     

    Usually I am uploading photos directly from my camera but in this last time they were all JPG converted from RAW using Photoshop, and a number of them were edited, i.e., cropped, and I made overall and local adjustments in ACR. I'm wondering if it was limited to the edited photos.

     

    Will need to do more testing but I am interested to hear from others, too, if the ones affected had been modified or were straight out of camera.

  • by Dottore de Funk,

    Dottore de Funk Dottore de Funk Aug 1, 2016 9:51 AM in response to littleroot
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 1, 2016 9:51 AM in response to littleroot

    MIne were straight from camera

  • by hmansion,

    hmansion hmansion Aug 1, 2016 10:04 AM in response to littleroot
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Aug 1, 2016 10:04 AM in response to littleroot

    I have suspected this, too.  I've only transferred edited photos to my iPad, and with these the artifacts don't consistently appear.  I have had "broken" images suddenly correct themselves (after updating to iOS 9.3.3) but I have since had more images display with the lines after updating.  I use a (home) network file viewing app to move pics from my PC to my iPad (no iCloud).  This morning, I even had an image transfer to my iPad fine and I posted it to Facebook with no issue.  Later, I went in to Photos to view it and the lines suddenly appeared!  The only thing I had done in the interim was to increase the screen brightness on my iPad for easier viewing, though I can't believe that caused the problem to appear.  Lastly, I've seen the lines on images I've posted to Facebook and texted/iMessaged to others but I don't believe I've ever seen one of these images display incorrectly on Instagram!  If I had to guess, I'd say it has something to do with image compression incompatibilies between editing and display software (.jpg algorithms being handled incorrectly).  Lastly, not sure if this has been mentioned but I believe the artifact lines are all various shades of grey - none are in color.  I need to double check on that...

  • by Dottore de Funk,

    Dottore de Funk Dottore de Funk Aug 1, 2016 10:04 AM in response to Dottore de Funk
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 1, 2016 10:04 AM in response to Dottore de Funk

    IF I open the affected images in Snapseed then no artifices are visible!

  • by hmansion,

    hmansion hmansion Aug 1, 2016 10:46 AM in response to hmansion
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Aug 1, 2016 10:46 AM in response to hmansion

    From my iPad, I just emailed a corrupted image to myself.  Within the Mail app, it displayed correctly.  When I opened the email attachment on my PC, it displayed correctly there, too.  I think the problem is in the Photos/Camera Roll app on the iPad.  And I suspect other apps (i.e. Facebook) that can pull high-quality or even original-quality images from Photos are just passing the problem along.  Perhaps they're relying on Photos' compression and not compressing further so the lines persist.  I'm not familiar with Snapseed, but I've not seen the problem with Instagram and I'm pretty sure Instagram compresses images a great deal.  Maybe apps that apply their own (high) compression to uploaded images eliminate the artifacts in the process?  After all, these erroneous lines can't be more than 1-pixel wide...

  • by hmansion,

    hmansion hmansion Aug 1, 2016 11:18 AM in response to hmansion
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Aug 1, 2016 11:18 AM in response to hmansion

    Here is a sample corrupted image:

     

    image1.PNG

     

    and here is the same image, but I first further compressed it before transferring to my iPad:

     

    image2.PNG

     

    The first image was > 2.8MB .jpg as transferred to iPad.

    The second image was < 1MB .jpg as transferred to iPad.

     

    All of my edited pics, after .jpg conversion, are typically 2 - 3MB.

     

    That I can transfer the same image to the iPad at 2.8MB (lines appear) or .8MB (no lines appear) with different results seems to point to .jpg compression/display issues with the iPad for file sizes greater than some "x" megabytes...

     

    (posted images are screen prints, not the actual files)

  • by hmansion,

    hmansion hmansion Aug 2, 2016 12:34 PM in response to hmansion
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Aug 2, 2016 12:34 PM in response to hmansion

    I have one (last?) experience to add to this ongoing problem.  I've transferred a number of edited .jpgs to my iPad today.  Within my "transferring app" (a network file viewer) the images displayed correctly.

     

    If I texted/iMessaged an image, or posted one to Facebook, without ever opening it up in the Photos app, it remained ok.  If I used an image after first viewing it in Photos, it became corrupted with the lines.  Images I successfully texted/iMessaged/posted immediately became corrupted the first time I viewed them in Photos.

     

    I'm fairly convinced it's the Photos app that's at the root of the problem.

  • by z4steve,

    z4steve z4steve Aug 2, 2016 1:53 PM in response to hmansion
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Aug 2, 2016 1:53 PM in response to hmansion

    Thanks for all the investigating.  If only Apple would spend as much time on this as you have.  Alas, I think their time has passed.

  • by Dottore de Funk,

    Dottore de Funk Dottore de Funk Aug 2, 2016 2:21 PM in response to z4steve
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 2, 2016 2:21 PM in response to z4steve

    I think you are right - seems to do with Photos

  • by votitov,

    votitov votitov Aug 12, 2016 8:24 AM in response to z4steve
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iCloud
    Aug 12, 2016 8:24 AM in response to z4steve

    Don't know for sure if Apple folks are reading this stuff but based on the details presented in this chain of comments, they should be able to zero in on the problem source.

     

    One other factor I have noticed is that when you "enlarge" a photo with the lines (two-finger spread of the image) the lines disappear! but then reappear when you return the photo to normal display size.....but still no clue as to why some photos have this problem and others don't!

  • by macaplan,

    macaplan macaplan Aug 23, 2016 3:48 PM in response to z4steve
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 23, 2016 3:48 PM in response to z4steve

    I have exactly the same problem. I am on holiday and having imported via the SD Card Camera Reader onto my iPad Air (1st generation of the Air) I was alarmed to observe these lines. I then tried importing onto my iPad Mini (1st generation of the Retina display MinI). Same problem. Thankfully I found your posting and read all the responders. Otherwise I might have reformatted my SD card thinking that was the problem. While if you double tap or enlarge the image in Photos the lines disappear, they reappear if you edit the image in any way. They also appear in other editing apps like Photogene and Lightroom. They do not appear in Snapseed as has been reported by a respondent already. I wonder if this is a problem on more recent iPads like the iPad Pro which I will have to wait and see when I return home. But as things stand this is a pitiful experience rendering the iPad an unsatisfactory mobile device for photography. There must be a lot of disappointed iPad users out there. If I were one of Apple's competitors I would watch for these shortcomings and capitalise on them. I could be tempted for something more reliable. I don't appreciate such negative surprises especially while I am on holiday. Wake up and smell the coffee, Apple!

  • by hmansion,

    hmansion hmansion Aug 23, 2016 4:21 PM in response to macaplan
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Aug 23, 2016 4:21 PM in response to macaplan

    Sorry you're having the problem, too!  Yes, enlarging the image in Photos makes the lines disappear temporarily.  The image is less compressed and the artifacts disappear, which seems to support the .jpg compression-issue theory.  The lines return when you exit the image and view it again.

     

    [sarcasm alert]

    For the record, I may have found a solution - I purchased a new iPad Air 2 a couple of weeks ago and haven't seen the problem at all on the new device.  It's running the latest iOS, 9.3.4.  This "fix" only costs $499...

    [end sarcasm alert]

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