How do I get photos off the iPhone?

[iPhone2G]

When I try to "Get pictures from camera" in My Computer, the PC tells me the iPhone is busy and to try again later...but it's not busy; it's just laying there connected to the computer...

[OldiPhone2G]

I am also suffering all of the EXACT same symptoms as iPhone2G is and need HELP. Anyone have any ideas? I've tried all the stuff same as iPhone2G with no results. I have over 4-thousand photos in my Camera Roll and desperately need to download them soon. ANY IDEAS at all welcomed. Thanks for reading...

[Jesse Hollington]

Ensure your iPhone isn't locked with a passcode (as noted earlier in this thread), and try shutting down iTunes -- you don't need to have the iTunes application running in order to transfer photos from your iPhone to your computer as this is handled entirely by the Windows Scanner and Camera wizard or whatever other photo application you're using.

[Charly]

Originally Posted by jhollington

The iPhone will appear to any application that supports direct digital camera import as a digital camera device, similar the older digital cameras that were used before they started adopting a USB Disk Mode.

If you start up the Windows XP "Scanner and Camera Wizard" the iPhone should appear as a camera device in there. You will not see it as a disk drive in Windows Explorer, and applications that are simply looking to read a folder from a mass storage device will not work with it. The application has to provide direct digital camera support.

Apple officially supports Adobe Photoshop Album and Elements for photo transfer, but any application that can read a proper digital camera transfer should work fine.

Note as well that your iPhone must not be locked with a password, otherwise photo transfer will not work (this is presumably to prevent somebody from getting at your photos if they were to get their hands on your iPhone). If you're using a password in the locking mode, ensure that you unlock the iPhone before trying to transfer pictures.

This is only for your Camera Roll (e.g. photos taken with your camera), it doesn't work for your Photo Library...any other ideas for PC users + Photo library people?

[Jesse Hollington]

Hi and welcome to iLounge.

There are no built-in methods to recover photos that you've synced onto your iPhone through iTunes, as Apple pretty much expects that you already have those photos somewhere else. After all, you put them on there in the first place

Of course, if you've lost your original photo library, there are third-party tools available to copy these photos off in much the same way as recovering your music. Note that you won't necessarily get the full-resolution versions of these photos back, as iTunes resizes them when it transfers them to your computer into a resolution suitable for the device you're syncing them to. If you're using an iPad the higher-resolution iPhone 4 or fourth-generation iPod touch, you'll get a reasonable quality image back (around 3.5 megapixels), but that still may fall far below the quality of your original image.

See our tutorial on Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer; the photo transfer aspect is discussed on page 4.

[dragonflydei]

I see that I am not alone with this photo issue. My problem is that photos that I put onto my phone using itunes, I cannot get off with my new pc and itunes. My old pc crashed, and since the pictures are not on the camera roll but in albums, when I try to download them etc, they don't show up, only the camera roll does. Does anyone else have this issue, or have any thoughts I can try. I cannot use the original itunes, and the computer was re-ghosted and it is gone. That is what the store keeps suggesting, that is their only "solution" for me.

Any help would be appreciated as I temporarily put a lot of pics on my phone to keep from losing them.

DragonflyDei

[Jesse Hollington]

Hi and welcome to iLounge.

If you check my earlier post right above yours, there is a link to our guide on copying content from your iPod or iPhone back to your computer, which includes a section of photos. As noted there, photos put on via iTunes cannot be transferred back to your computer, as Apple pretty much expects that they came from your computer in the first place.

The third-party tools noted in the above article will recover your photos, but you will not get back the original photos as iTunes resizes them when it syncs them onto your iPhone in order to save space as the photos synced from your library are designed for viewing on the iPhone screen or a TV screen, and therefore don't need to be full-size. The size varies by device model, but on an iPhone 4 they should be around 3.5 megapixels, which is more than adequate if these are the only copies you have left.

[feistycuffs]

Hello, I have read through the threads and tried various things, but my Windows 7 laptop refuses to see any files AT ALL on my iphone 4. OK, it's actually my partner's iphone, but I do all the techie support for him. So I'll proceed as if it's mine.

There are 128 photos in camera roll. The phone is unlocked, and connected via USB to my laptop. I right click on the phone icon and select import pics. Am told there are no pics.


I go in via the file manager window: Internal storage > DCIM > *empty*

How can this be? Where are the files and folders?

I have an android phone for my own use, and when I connect to my PC I see lots of folders. I like seeing lots of folders! I know everything is there! My partner has audiobooks on his iphone, too, but NOTHING is showing in the PC file manager window.

It's very perturbing, and I am loathe to email everything across!

Any help will be much appreciated.

[Jesse Hollington]

The first thing to keep in mind is that the iPhone doesn't appear as a USB Mass Storage device, but rather uses the "Picture Transfer Protocol" (PTP). This means you won't see any folders except for the "DCIM" one, and even that is essentially a "virtual" folder being presented by Windows 7 as a result of the PTP protocol, not the actual "DCIM" folder on the device (prior versions of Windows wouldn't have shown even that).

If the iPhone is not passcode locked and not jailbroken, there's no reason why this shouldn't work (you can't retrieve photos when the device is passcode locked and some jailbreak apps may interfere with the PTP process). The problem could be related to a Windows driver or a USB problem, so standard troubleshooting steps apply here:

- Reboot the iPhone (hold down the HOME + POWER buttons together until you see the Apple logo)
- Reboot the computer
- Try a different USB port
- Try a different USB cable
- Uninstall any drivers that you may have installed recently, particularly for USB devices such as scanners, printers or other cameras. This is especially true if photo transfer was working before and stopped working only recently.
- Uninstall iTunes (you technically don't need iTunes to use PTP from the iPhone, but the iPhone Drivers that are installed by iTunes may be interfering with the PTP -- you won't lose anything in your iTunes library by doing this, and you can reinstall it later).

[feistycuffs]

Thanks so much, I followed your instructions:

rebooted iphone
rebooted my laptop
used a different USB port.

I didn't have itunes on my laptop, haven't recently installed any other drivers, and don't have a spare cable. This was my first attempt to import pics from the phone.

As soon as I connected the phone, the import photos dialogue box opened, and it quickly imported everything. Thanks so much!

[App_blue]

you try omegaspy

[ryanlawrence171]

Just go through Apple forum and I found the instruction to copy photo from iPhone to PC.

[diego sonador]

Instead of e-mailing photos to yourself, plug your iPhone into a USB port, double-click My Computer / Apple iPhone / Internal Storage and click through the listed file folders until you see all of your photos. Drag and drop from there.

[addisonbert]

The easiest way is to just plug the iPhone into your computer with the USB adapter and then If you're on a PC then your iPhone will show up as a device and you can open like it's an external hard drive to copy the file.

[Nick Johnson]

if you are using a mac there is a super easy way to do this. Use spotlight or go to applications and find image capture. It will let you download your iphone pictures straight to your photos folder or wherever you want it to go.....