Recover Photos

[n3acal]

Hi everyone

I've had a quite bad experience with the iCloud Photo Library. So apparently, if one activates the iCloud Photo Library, all the photos in the My Photo Stream will be deleted. This happened to me. I still have the missing photos (maybe about 200?) in the Photos App on my Mac, but they are missing from the Camera Roll on my iPhone.

Now: Is there any way I could get the photos back to the iPhone (even manually)? I've already tried sending them by AirDrop. Works well, they're even Live Photos, but there's one big drawback: the photos appear at the bottom of the camera roll, although they show the date taken. Maybe there is a way to fix the order? If so, this would be a perfect workaround for my actual problem.

It's quite important for me to get the photos back, because they mean a lot to me.

Do you have any other ideas?

Best,
n3acal

 

[andy9l]

When you activate iCloud Photo Library, all your photos from all devices will be uploaded to iCloud. There, the service runs a de-duplication algorithm and will consolidate all your photos into a single master collection - your iCloud Photo Library.

Your devices will then sync with this master collection and you'll be able to access every photo/video on every device. Camera Roll won't exist - it'll just be 'Photos'. Photostream won't exist - everything is in 'Photos'. Imagine a single "Camera Roll" across every device.

If you have the storage space on your iCloud account, I suggest you re-enable iCloud Photo Library right now and let your devices upload all photos. Once the process is complete, you should see the photos in question on every device - including your phone - in the correct chronological order. Future photos will be uploaded and appear in the same way.

Alternatively, connect your iPhone to iTunes and use the 'Photos' tab to sync photos from Photos on your Mac back to your iPhone. This will retain their correct creation/modification dates. I don't believe this will put them back in your Camera Roll, though - I don't think this is possible.

It goes without saying that you should backup your Mac (or at the very least your local Photo Library) and your iPhone before doing anything.

 

[simon lefisch]

If you don't want to use iCloud Photo Library, and you've already moved those photos to you're Mac, just open the Photos app, right-click the photo and select "get info". You can then modify the date it was taken. Take in mind that if you sync your photos thru iTunes, it will create a folder on your phone like "from Mac" or similar. If you want them to show up in your camera roll album, you should be able to AirDrop them fro the Photos app and they should show up in the Camera Roll folder on your iPhone while retaining the date.

 

[n3acal]

@andy9l Thanks for your help. The problem is, that the photos (they were stored in the photo stream) are not stored on my iPhone anymore. I have them in the Photos app on my Mac, but not on the iPhone anymore. I thought about syncing all my Photos (the ones from the Mac, the "master" collection) to the iCloud Photo Library and then to my devices (other Macs, iPad, iPhone), but the thing is that I have some photos in my library that I like but that I don't want to have on my iPhone. If I sync the photos via iTunes to my iPhone, an album for each date will be created but the photos will not appear in the Camera Roll.



@simon lefisch Thank you. I managed to AirDrop them from the Photos app on my Mac (where they are stored with the correct date at the correct "position" within the App) to my iPhone. There, they are stored in the Camera Roll with the correct date, at the wrong position. That's the problem.