Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

How do I get pictures off my Apple iPhone?

I found "Image Capture" (you didn't mention it was an application, so I searched and found it) and tried what you suggested. When I click on download, however, nothing happens. Tried this with just one photo selected, as well as "Select All." Any suggestions?


Dave's Answer:

I've written about this before (see how to download photos off your Apple iPhone to your Mac) but I want to address it again because I want to highlight the pitfalls and point out what's probably happening in your case.

I'm also going to write about using the simple Apple-included Mac application "Image Capture", though if you're an iPhoto user that'll also grab images off your iPhone (as will Graphic Converter, a wonderful shareware app).

The thing is, for many Mac users, they plug in their iPhone and either nothing happens or iTunes automatically launches, which isn't too helpful because iTunes is pretty much a one-way tool designed to put information, data, music, and applications onto your phone, rather than get anything from it onto your computer.

I'll assume nothing happens when you plug in your iPhone to your USB port You can confirm that it's plugged in by looking on your phone: does it show a battery icon rather than your usual wakeup screen? If so, you're good and your computer and Apple iPhone are happily wired together.

Launch "Image Capture" by finding it in your "Applications" folder and it will see your attached iPhone and show you:

image capture iphone

What you need to pay attention to here is where images are going to be downloaded, as specified in the "Download to:" section. Notice that I have mine configured to drop images onto the Desktop, which makes it hard for them to vanish! I'm guessing, in fact, that you either have Image Capture configured to download to a non-existent folder (which can cause it to silently refuse to download anything) or to a folder that you're not checking (like "Pictures").

Once you've set the download folder as desired, click on "Download Some..." and you'll see:

image capture iphone photos

On the top left you can change the view from the highly detailed list view to a more familiar icon view too:

image capture iphone pictures

Now that you can see all your images, simply click to select one or more images...

image capture iphone select picture

Before you proceed, you might want to click on "Options..." to see what you can tweak:

image capture iphone options

You can see my default settings here: your's might be different.

Finally, click on "Download"...

image capture iphone photo downloading

And in anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or two, depending on how many images you want to download, it'll finish up and you'll have a bunch of new photographs on your computer.

Finally, here's the same image I downloaded, as shown in Preview:

apple iphone photo displayed preview

At this point I've connected my iPhone to my computer, previewed the images in "Image Capture", set a specific download directory and clicked "Download" to copy the selected images onto the computer itself. Done!

Now you can just unplug your phone from the system and you're ready to take some additional pictures. Or, if you're so inclined, you can also manage what pictures you retain on your iPhone with Image Capture: select those you want to delete and click on the "delete" icon.

Hope this helps you solve the mystery of the non-deleting Apple iPhone photographs!



Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon    

Ringaza Free Bonus Ringtones and Wallpapers!


Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

Great tip. Here I've been using Adobe Lightroom or Bridge all this time, but that Image Capture app is a nice quick utility for pulling images off the iPhone.

Thanks!

Posted by: A.J. at November 11, 2008 9:49 AM

Thank You or making this site: 1. Easy to locate via Google
2. Easy to understand with graphics
3. Being a MAC enthusiast; they rule. Ex-Pc user for 25 years converted to the salvation of MAC 5 years ago.

Posted by: Dan B. Graves at December 15, 2008 5:36 PM

Hi , I hope you can help with this problem since its a near and dear problem I have with getting my pictures form my iPhone off of it.

Here we go;

I have 4 albums on my iPhone. 1 album are photos take from my iphone camera and 3 albums are from photos that we uploaded onto my iPhone from my iPhoto on my MacBook Pro.

My iPhoto on my Mac became corrupt so that I only have 1 of every 4 pictures. I still have all of these photos stored on my iPhone. I've taken my MacBook Pro into the Mac shop and they couldn't fix it. I don't think thry put the time in and I think you know more about iPhones than they do.

Is there an App to take ALL photos off of my iPhone and store them somewhere? Right now, if my iPhone is lost or it dies, the pictures are gone for life. Yikes! Email me your answers.

Help please!


Posted by: Steve Winchester at December 18, 2008 3:40 PM


I have a lot to say, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!









Remember personal info?


Please note that I will never send you any unsolicited commercial email. Ever.

While I'm at it, please note that by submitting a question or comment you're agreeing to my terms of service, which are: you relinquish any subsequent rights of ownership to your material by submitting it on this site.









Uniblue: Free Virus Scan

Search
Find just the answers you seek from among our 1700+ free tech support articles by using our Lijit search engine.


Member of the B5Media Network

Help!





Subscribe to
Ask Dave Taylor!

Add to Google Reader
Add to My Yahoo!
Subscribe in NewsGator Online

RDF   XML

Free Updates!
Sign up and get free weekly updates and special offers on books, seminars, workshops and more.


Recent Entries
Join the List!
Join my author info mailing list, where you'll learn about my upcoming books, speaking gigs, and more!


Book Links
© 2002 - 2009 by Dave Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

Note: This web site is for the purpose of disseminating information for educational purposes, free of charge, for the benefit of all visitors. We take great care to provide quality information. However, we do not guarantee, and accept no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site.

[whiteboard marker tray]