Still .struggling with iCloud Photo Library photo counts!

[donawalt]

I decided to post this to iOS as I think the problems, or unexplained phenomena, are on my iPad/iPhone.

I can never get my count of photos to agree across devices. They are not off by a lot, which leads me to believe there is something I am missing. All devices are on iCloud Photo Library. I have no Hidden photos. Videos count matches everywhere but is small (23)

Here are my counts of photos:

MBP/Sierra 10.12.5 - 9,990
iCloud thru a browser - 9,990
iPad/iOS 10.3.2 - 10,038
iPhone/iOS 10.3.2 - 9,999

Pictures are taken with iPhone (probably 98% of them) and iPad - none of course thru MBP. The fact MBP and iCloud agree makes sense. It almost seems as if there are some pictures on the iPad/iPhone that have not uploaded, or have been duplicated somehow. It is also odd the iPad has the most pictures, yet I do. All the albums matches except selfies, has 43 more photos than iPhone, yet I can't recall ever taking a selfie with the iPad so that is odd!

Any advice for reconciling all this? It makes my head hurt Thanks!

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

I'm having similar problems as you, along with higher battery drain when using it. Everytime I turn it off and back on, it always has to upload however many pictures and videos are already on my iCloud. It'll literally say "Uploading 400 items" that have already been uploaded to iCloud....

 

[Tartarus]

I decided to post this to iOS as I think the problems, or unexplained phenomena, are on my iPad/iPhone.

I can never get my count of photos to agree across devices. They are not off by a lot, which leads me to believe there is something I am missing. All devices are on iCloud Photo Library. I have no Hidden photos. Videos count matches everywhere but is small (23)

Here are my counts of photos:

MBP/Sierra 10.12.5 - 9,990
iCloud thru a browser - 9,990
iPad/iOS 10.3.2 - 10,038
iPhone/iOS 10.3.2 - 9,999

Pictures are taken with iPhone (probably 98% of them) and iPad - none of course thru MBP. The fact MBP and iCloud agree makes sense. It almost seems as if there are some pictures on the iPad/iPhone that have not uploaded, or have been duplicated somehow. It is also odd the iPad has the most pictures, yet I do. All the albums matches except selfies, has 43 more photos than iPhone, yet I can't recall ever taking a selfie with the iPad so that is odd!

Any advice for reconciling all this? It makes my head hurt Thanks!

Apparently, back in the day, you have shot photos with your iPad and somehow those photos haven't synced / uploaded to iCloud Photo Library.

If it's not that much of an inconvenience just leave it like that.
If it is an inconvenience, disable iCloud Photo Library on your iPad, let it delete all photos from your device and see which 53 photos are still on it.
Then it's up to you what you do with them.
Either delete them or send them via iMessage to yourself and save them back to iCloud Photo Library thru your iPhone.

After sending and saving them you can delete them from your iPad and the 'Deleted' section within Photos.

After doing this it's safe for you to enable iCloud Photo Library back on the iPad and you will see after the syncing and downloading of the photos is done, that the count of the photos are the same on all your iDevices.

 

[donawalt]

I do think it's duplicate photo related. I download the app Remo Photo Duplicates Remover which is free and seemed to get good ratings, and it found a lot of duplicates first on my iPad, then on my iPhone. It found "similar" ones too, most of which upon examination were dupes too. I deleted those, now I am at (after everything sync'd up:

iPad - 9,620
iPhone - 9,620
iCloud/browser - 9,601
Photos/MBP - 9,601

So it's closer. I bet there are 19 dupes on my iPad/iPhone that Remo didn't find that iCloud rejects (anyone know if iCloud rejects duplicate photos? I bet it does now). Or, iCloud has a different algorithm for defining a duplicate that Remo does not.....Notice the iPhone and iPad are the same now. So it's closer. There should be a way to deal with this (for example iCloud puts 'rejected' photos in an album like it does Hidden, so you can see what they are and correct the issue).

 

[Tartarus]

I do think it's duplicate photo related. I download the app Remo Photo Duplicates Remover which is free and seemed to get good ratings, and it found a lot of duplicates first on my iPad, then on my iPhone. It found "similar" ones too, most of which upon examination were dupes too. I deleted those, now I am at (after everything sync'd up:

iPad - 9,620
iPhone - 9,620
iCloud/browser - 9,601
Photos/MBP - 9,601

So it's closer. I bet there are 19 dupes on my iPad/iPhone that Remo didn't find that iCloud rejects (anyone know if iCloud rejects duplicate photos? I bet it does now). Or, iCloud has a different algorithm for defining a duplicate that Remo does not.....Notice the iPhone and iPad are the same now. So it's closer. There should be a way to deal with this (for example iCloud puts 'rejected' photos in an album like it does Hidden, so you can see what they are and correct the issue).

Don't forget that deleting a photo on one device, deletes the photo from all other devices that have iCloud Photo Library enabled.
There is no use in running a duplicates checker app on all the devices. This is simply redundant.

You just had to check for dupes on the device with a different counter than the others.

The simplest and easiest way now is to move all photos and videos to a computer by going to www.icloud.com/#photos.

After the moving is completed, delete all photos in there. This will delete all photos and videos from all your devices. After the deletion is complete, you will see which photos weren't synced to iCloud Photo Library. Do whatever you wish to do with them and upload the previously moved photos from your computer back to iCloud Photo Library using the iCloud website.

 

[donawalt]

Apparently, back in the day, you have shot photos with your iPad and somehow those photos haven't synced / uploaded to iCloud Photo Library.

If it's not that much of an inconvenience just leave it like that.
If it is an inconvenience, disable iCloud Photo Library on your iPad, let it delete all photos from your device and see which 53 photos are still on it.
Then it's up to you what you do with them.
Either delete them or send them via iMessage to yourself and save them back to iCloud Photo Library thru your iPhone.

After sending and saving them you can delete them from your iPad and the 'Deleted' section within Photos.

After doing this it's safe for you to enable iCloud Photo Library back on the iPad and you will see after the syncing and downloading of the photos is done, that the count of the photos are the same on all your iDevices.

Thanks, but not I think probably not so - since iPad and iPhone are now in sync but 19 less than iCloud. somehow the photos got to the other but not to iCloud. Is there a file format that iCloud will sync (RAW etc.) but not store? That seems odd, and I don't do anything strange with formats unless it was a photo someone sent me or I downloaded from the Internet...

 

[donawalt]

Don't forget that deleting a photo on one device, deletes the photo from all other devices that have iCloud Photo Library enabled.
There is no use in running a duplicates checker app on all the devices. This is simply redundant.

You just had to check for dupes on the device with a different counter than the others.

The simplest and easiest way now is to move all photos and videos to a computer by going to www.icloud.com/#photos.

After the moving is completed, delete all photos in there. This will delete all photos and videos from all your devices. After the deletion is complete, you will see which photos weren't synced to iCloud Photo Library. Do whatever you wish to do with them and upload the previously moved photos from your computer back to iCloud Photo Library using the iCloud website.

Thanks Tartarus, I think I already have them since they are in a folder . on my MBP - the 9,601. So I could do what you suggest. Do I lose all my albums I have set up on my iPad/iPhone when I delete all the photos in iCloud?

 

[Tartarus]

Thanks Tartarus, I think I already have them since they are in a folder . on my MBP - the 9,601. So I could do what you suggest. Do I lose all my albums I have set up on my iPad/iPhone when I delete all the photos in iCloud?

The albums themselves will still reside on iCloud, without any photos in them.

 

[donawalt]

The albums themselves will still reside on iCloud, without any photos in them.

So when I re-upload the photos, they won't go back into the albums I selected some photos for originally, right? I am referring to albums I created to categorize/save some special pictures, not the pre-set albums like "Videos"...

 

[Tartarus]

So when I re-upload the photos, they won't go back into the albums I selected some photos for originally, right? I am referring to albums I created to categorize/save some special pictures, not the pre-set albums like "Videos"...

Your assumption is correct. You will have to add those photos manually back to the albums.
I understand this is not the easiest workaround, but it sure is the safest.

 

[donawalt]

Ok, thanks so much for the help!!!

 

[Tartarus]

You're very welcome!

 

[donawalt]

Thanks to what I learned from Tartarus I GOT IT WORKING! I now show 9,540 pictures and 27 videos on iCloud via browser, Photos on my MBP, iPad, and iPhone!

So here is what worked for me. First, being OCD is a burden, you may not want to go thru this to get all your devices sync'd.

But I will say, the problems were from at least 3-4 years ago or earlier - maybe bugs in iOS, iCloud, maybe due to transition of photo management over the years with Camera Roll, Photo Stream, iCloud Photo Library, etc. So it may stay sync'd once you go thru the effort.

Also, per the above thread, I decided it was more important to me to preserve my albums in iCloud than worry about losing a handful of photos over the years, especially given that it seemed the extras were duplicates so I may not lose anything at all. The photos in my albums were hand selected over the years, and I really couldn't re-create them.

Given that, here is what I did, first on my iPad, then on my iPhone (needed to do both, as it appears both devices had photos that would not upload to iCloud and/or, possibly, they were preventing a download from iCloud, since devices sometimes had less photos than iCloud:

1. Review the photos in your "Recently Deleted: album. The goal is to delete everything in that album as we will need to use the recovery feature later, so if there is anything you might want, recover it now, save it somewhere else, whatever. Make sure your "Recently Deleted" album is empty.
2. Turn off iCloud library - let it delete all iCloud photos on your device.
3. This is the painful part - you will see there are still photos on your phone. I think these are the photos that originated on this device. You have to go thru and delete them manually. From the Photo/Moments screen, tap select at the top right, then a bunch of 'select' tags will appear down the right side. Tap every select, periodically tap the trash can to delete. It took me about 30 minutes to manually delete 7,000 photos. (Note - I tried using iTunes to "Sync and Delete", but that didn't seem to work as well as this.)
4. After step 3, give it an extra 10 minutes or so for all activity to stop (you can check at the bottom of the screen under the count of photos to see if it's doing anything, after it is not wait 10 minutes) - you will see you count of photos in iCloud just dropped a whole lot! That's because of all the photos you deleted, which caused photos to delete on iCloud. So now go into "Recently Deleted", tap Select, and you get the option at the bottom to "Recover All". Tap it. It will re-add these photos back into your local photos, and send them to iCloud and your other devices! Any pictures that were in albums you created are re-added there!
5. Next I used the free Remo Duplicate Photos Remover to remove exact duplicates. In my case I had some near matches and I deleted those too. The app works well and is easy to use.
6. After I did this on my iPad, the iPad/iCloud/Mac Photos all agreed. iPhone did not. So I did steps 1-5 on the iPhone, after that it was still high by 6 photos. At this point, I could turn my iPhone 7 in landscape orientation, and then it and my iPad both showed 7 photos across - from the Moments screen, it was very easy to scroll through and see for each group if the set of photos ended at the same position 1-7 across the screen, if not I knew the phone had an extra. This step took me about 45 minutes to go through 10,000 photos. I found the extras, I deleted them, and then everything sync'd up! 2 of the photos I wanted, so per Tartarus' suggestion I messaged them to myself, Saved the images, and voila - back in my Photos (albeit with today's date), and properly sync'd across all devices!