Resolved SOLVED: Photos app: "Cannot start editing" error with random photos

[Ubele]

I have the latest version of Monterey on both my 2019 iMac and my 2015 MacBook Pro. Yesterday, I tried to edit some photos in Photos, and I got an error: "Cannot Start Editing -- Photos cannot edit this image because it uses an unsupported format." It seems to be random, because it doesn't happen with all photos taken during a given session. These are JPEG images that I've edited before in Photos. The error doesn't occur when I use Photos with iOS 15 on my 2021 iPad Pro or my iPhone XR. I did a search, and I couldn't find any other instances of the same problem. Any ideas? I'd think that, if my Photos library became corrupted, the problem would occur in iOS, as well.

 

[Ubele]

I found a solution, if not the cause: If I edit a problematic photo in iOS Photos, make a tiny edit, and then save it, I'm able to edit the photo in macOS Photos.

 

[Ruggy]

Great piece of detective work.
So presumably the earlier saves are not being read by Monterey but can be read by iOS, and when you resave in iOS it is then in a format that can be read by Monterey.

 

[Ubele]

Thanks, Ruggy! I’m surprised that i haven’t seen another mention of this — but then, probably not many people have gone back to edit old photos in their Photos library since installing Monterey.

 

[Bootlebarth]

Lots of my Catalina photos 'Cannot Start Editing' with Monterey. If there is a connection between them, I have yet to see it. Is there no way to identify them as a batch and bring them back in line all at the same time?

A way of making these photos normal, is to export them – either individually or in batches. I send the exports to the desktop, then import them to Photos. The existing 'Cannot Start Editing' photos can then be deleted.

If you export a previously edited photo (e.g. a crop), the original can't be recovered from the exported JPEG. You can use the 'Export Unmodified Original' option to retrieve an editable version, but this loses any previous edits.

Doing this for individual photos or batches is cumbersome. Why has it to be done at all? As far as I can see the only way of identifying 'Cannot Start Editing' photos in the library is to try an edit and finding the frustrating 'Cannot Start Editing' message.

Eternal thanks to anyone who finds a better answer. I suppose it would be asking too much of Apple to arrange that photos which could be edited under previous macOS can also be edited under Monterey.

 

[Ubele]

I've yet to definitively determine a distinguishing factor between photos I can edit on my Mac and photos I can't edit, but I have a guess. I have photos going back to 2001, which I took on my first digital camera, a Nikon E995. In 2007, I got a Canon Powershot A710. I first discovered the problem when I decided to edit a large number of photos I took with the Nikon on a trip to Italy in 2004. Most of them gave me the "Cannot start editing" error. The same was true with other Nikon and Canon photos I checked at random. Some I could edit, and some I couldn't -- even when it was a group of photos I took during the same shoot. The only possible difference I can think of is that I might have previously edited some and not others from a given shoot (I've had Aperture, iPhoto, and Photos). With the Italy photos, I made duplicates of all of them a decade or so ago and applied heavy effects with ON1. Now, those versions struck me as tacky, so I went back to edit the originals, most of which I hadn't touched before.

I've randomly checked photos from 2012 onward that I shot with an iPhone 4, 5, 6S+, and XR, and a Sony NEX 6 and a6000, and I haven't gotten a "Cannot start editing" error with any of them. So my guess is that Photos under Monterey has trouble recognizing photos taken with two old cameras I used to have, and only when I hadn't made previous edits to those photos. I don't know how I'd check for that, though. When I want to use Photos on my Mac to edit a group of old photos taken with the Nikon or Canon, my solution, since I have an iPad Pro with iOS 15, as well as an iCloud account, is to quickly go through them with Photos on my iPad, make a tiny edit, and save them. Then I can edit them on my Mac.

 

[aznav]

FINALLY, I found a solution but only for one at a time.
1. Go to "IMAGE" in upper menu.
2. Select, "REVERT TO ORIGINAL".
3. Problem solved!

 

[aznav]

I'm a "Newbie". I'm deeply offended, I think. I'll get back to you on that.

 

[Ubele]

Thanks, Aznav! I'll give it a try if I encounter any other photos with this issue. I haven't checked in a while. My Mac is on Ventura now, with the latest version of Photos. I don't know whether the bug still occurs.

 

[jlauve]

With >23K images, finding images one-at-a-time that had been edited and reverting them to original was not an option. And Select All and Export crapped out after 455 photos. However, I tried this - yet, it did NOT work :

• I opened the Photos library I want to Import into my main System Library by holding down Option key while opening Photos and selecting that source Library).
• I scrolled through all photos and deleted any suspect dead items; you know, those black thumbnails for which you know not the source (admittedly, some folks practice better photo housekeeping than doing I; pls don't judge).
• While in Photos app and "View Library > All Photos," I hit Command-A (Select All), and from Menu bar I selected "Image > Revert to Original." That cooked for a few minutes.
• I quit Photos and opened it again while holding down the Option and Command keys, resulting in the dialogue box asking if I wanted to repair my Library - which I did.
• After Repair and Restore, I quit Photos.
• Holding down Option key, I opened Photos and selected the System Library (main library) and tried to import the other library I had just manipulated and repaired.
• No dice.

Any thoughts?

 

[reggoboy]

I found a solution, if not the cause: If I edit a problematic photo in iOS Photos, make a tiny edit, and then save it, I'm able to edit the photo in macOS Photos.

Thanks for this. This PARTIALLY works for me. In my case, if I edit a problematic photo in iOS Photos, make a tiny edit, and then save it, I'm able to SEE the photo in macOS Photos. Before that, I didn't even have a thumbnail. But I still get the "Cannot Start Editing" message when I attempt to edit on the Mac.

Noting that this problem only exists for me now that I started shooting RAW on my new Canon R7. Pix shot on iPhone are not a problem. And the R7 is supposed to work:

Digital camera RAW formats supported by iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey - Apple Support

These operating systems include system-level support for RAW images taken by many third-party cameras.

support.apple.com