It seems to be an import pipeline bug. Photos does a lot of extra work on import (merging RAW+JPEG pairs, generating previews, database indexing, optional deletion), so my guess is a concurrency bug where a buffer gets reused or a file handle is closed before the copy finishes. Rare, nondeterministic corruption fits the profile.
Apple Photos app corrupts images
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Re: Apple Photos app corrupts images
#82It seems to be an import pipeline bug. Photos does a lot of extra work on import (merging RAW+JPEG pairs, generating previews, database indexing, optional deletion), so my guess is a concurrency bug where a buffer gets reused or a file handle is closed before the copy finishes. Rare, nondeterministic corruption fits the profile.
Interesting that he went from 30% failure to it taking a while to find a single failure after replacing everything. Random is random, and random is clumpy, so maybe swapping parts is irrelevant, but... I wanted more detail how often the corruption happened throughout his replacement journey. edit: also wth i just realized I went to "tenderlovemaking.com" at work. gross. lol.
Re: Apple Photos app corrupts images
#83Re: Apple Photos app corrupts images
#84But good gravy that troubleshooting path got expensive real fast. Replacing the laptop and the camera? Why not start by trying something other than Photos? It doesn’t even need to be a paid product; the Olympus software is free not to mention a good baseline since it - of all the applications - should be able to import photos without corrupting them.
Edit to add: delete on import seems pretty risky. My workflow is to import and only delete from the camera after 1) the imported photos are backed up 2) I’ve done a first pass culling.
Re: Apple Photos app corrupts images
#85Re: Apple Photos app corrupts images
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, based on this and other replies, it sounds like Photos App should have an option to select what to import? i.e. RAW or jpg, but not both. It sounds like Photos App can have issues trying to import both at the same time?
As I said in my blog post, it imports both and combines them in the UI. Also as I said in my blog post, I switched to shooting only in raw, and it still exhibited file corruption.
Re: Apple Photos app corrupts images
#87> Turns out “delete after import” was a huge mistake. That's a mistake no mater what application you're importing to, else we'll be graced with another blog post, "Darktable app Corrupts Photos". What's the purpose of RAW+jpg though? Seems rather redundant?
Processing RAW can be expensive time wise. If you’re sorting through a session of 10,000 photos, you want the speed that comes with the jpeg variant, which allows you to quickly sort out blurry, smeared, severely mis-exposed, and other various defect photos.
The storage cost is negligible (JPEG75@10MP is cheap) and the workflow benefit is immediate. Additionally, cropping and early white balance corrections (as well as a handful of other things) are much faster to preview with a non-RAW version of the image; since you’ll be processing that detail later anyway from scratch in the RAW later, it’s functionally free to do it on the jpeg version before you dig into the raw.
Additionally, there’s a cheap debugging aspect that you saw here: was it Apple Photos mishandling ORF? Was it something else? When working with both, you have a “reference” that can be used to make sure your digital development pipeline is set up correctly; finer details about the imager can sometimes get mangled by some RAW developers like pixel order and sub pixel blending. Not every CCD is a linear grid, not every LCD looks the same, but if you can get your RAW pipeline producing ≈the same as your camera did, it verifies that you have things mostly set up correctly.
Re: Apple Photos app corrupts images
#88> Turns out “delete after import” was a huge mistake. That's a mistake no mater what application you're importing to, else we'll be graced with another blog post, "Darktable app Corrupts Photos". What's the purpose of RAW+jpg though? Seems rather redundant?
I don't know why this is downvoted.
Re: Apple Photos app corrupts images
#89I shoot RAW but I wouldn't want to eat up all my iCloud space with my RAW files. They're 80MB each off of my Fujifilm camera. I store them on a local DAS instead. Curious what the real use case is for storing RAW on iPhoto.
No longer have to bring laptop or external drive along for backups
Re: Apple Photos app corrupts images
#90I shoot RAW but I wouldn't want to eat up all my iCloud space with my RAW files. They're 80MB each off of my Fujifilm camera. I store them on a local DAS instead. Curious what the real use case is for storing RAW on iPhoto.
There's also the excellent osxphotos utility which can export / backup / migrate photos in and out of apple photos: