I just upgraded my G5 mac to the latest Leopard software and am leery about syncing my iPhone with my computer because I’m afraid I’ll lose data. However, I really need to get the photos off the phone and don’t want to email them to myself, one by one. Your suggestion?
I’m really glad you’re running Leopard, aka Mac OS X 10.5, actually, because there’s one simple change that Apple’s made to the way the phone interacts with the Mac that’s a huge boon for those of us that actually take pics with the iPhone!
Plug in your phone, and even if you don’t want to sync it with your iTunes software you’ll find that if there are photos on the phone that Image Capture can now see ’em and grab them for you:
What I’ve done is set up a new ‘iPhone Pictures” folder in my Pictures directory (instead of the default “Pictures, Movies and Music folders”, choose “Other…” then navigate to your Pictures directory and click “New Folder” on the lower left).
Click on “Download All” and you’ve just accomplished the world’s easiest cellphone photo sync on your new Macintosh!
If you are running an earlier version of Mac OS X, then I suggest that you let iPhoto do the work: start that up before you plug in your phone and it should see the phone and offer you the opportunity to download your pictures into an iPhoto “roll”.
I was given an apple iPhone(specification not known)
My PC cannot just see it ever since.Just thinking its because the software is not on the PC or..Please help me out as I need to pass some stuff from the PC to phone.
Help me.
nice one!
You nailed it. ImageCapture worked. Cleaned my phone up quickly. Don’t know why the pics and videos seemed stuck on there.
Thanks.
Hi, I’ve done a silly thing! I’ve synced my iphone 4 when all I meant to do was download my photos and now they’re not there! Is there any way I can recover them?
Huge help! Thank you so much!
Before I was able to upload pictures from my 3GS to my Mac using Image Capture. It would automatically open when I synced my iPhone.
Lately, it hasn’t worked. (In the past 6 months.) I have been trying to find a free way to retrieve all my pictures (at least the new ones) to my computer.
So far I have only been given the names of numerous apps that I would have to pay for. I don’t have iPhoto already installed on my computer. The only other free way I can think of is to e-mail each photo one by one.
I guess the $2.99 app is my only way to go?
Any suggestions? Thank you.
For all those that are asking how to transfer photos from iPhone sync folder to PC (not from camera roll!! folder in iPhone): IT CANNOT BE DONE. Here is an answer from apple support:
QUOTE
Pictures that have been synced from your computer to your device cannot be reimported back to your computer. Only pictures in the Camera Roll or Saved Photos can be imported from your device to your computer. If you need to retrieve synced photos from your device, email them directly from the device to yourself and then copy them from the emails to your computer.
Holy SMOKES, thank you! This is exactly what I needed!!!
Thanks! Worked like a charm! This was exactly what I needed.
How do I download photos from my PC onto my Apple 3 GS iPhone?
my iphone 3g takes pictures but nothing shows in camera roll! neither do the pictures appear in the “dcim” folder in “my computer” when plugged into pc. help PLEASE!
Thank you Dave! REALLY good advice
A1+++
JN
Anyone solve this problem yet? Need to get photo album from my iphone to mypc?
hey guys. i have a broken iphone. the lcd is broke and i want to be able to view the text and pics in the text on my computer.. is there any way i can do this?
Download “Photo Transfer App” to your phone or any app of this kind…problem solve
hi dave, i have an iphone 3gs and i cannot download my pictures into my laptop. i using a HP tablet running windows vista. i also have itunes but it does not allow me see my pictures when i hook up the phone to it. what do i do? Thank you
What if windows xp gives an error message of “device in use” and won’t retrieve your photos when you try to open it through my computer?
I have Windows 7 and was having problems syncing photos to print them. After 3 hours, I did it.
Then I found this app – http://postalpix.com or just search “postalpix” that prints them for you and mails it to your house.
Sweet, why did nobody tell me about this!
Hey there, I unfortunately don’t have a mac, my HP had to be factory restored due to it having a nervous breakdown and I now have the problem of not wanting to lose all my data on my iPhone. Do you have any ideas? I’ve got a major headache trying to figure this out!
In Posted by: Steve at March 14, 2010 9:13 PM, Steve mentions that an XP ‘bug’ prevents your computer from recognizing photos on your iPhone if there are pics in the camera roll not taken by YOUR phone. He was absolutely right! I’ve tried for two months to get my iPhone pics to copy onto my PC after the “What do you want to do” dialog box just stopped showing up suddenly. It turns out that my son had taken photos with his 3G and sent them to me and I saved them in my camera roll of my 3GS, but as soon as I deleted the pics and did a sync the dialog box reappeared and my photos are now on my computer. Thanks to Steve for his comment and to Dave for providing the forum it was posted on!
Amy, all the phone numbers in your phone’s address book should be in the Mac Address Book app once you’ve sync’d. Not sure where it shows up on a PC, however…
i broke my screenon my iphone4 and i got it hooked up to my computer and i need to know now an if i even can to get my numbers from my phone to my computer
DUUUDES!!!!
Just got the answer, and its really simple.
THIS IS JUST FOR THE WINDOWS USERS:
To transfer pics from the Iphone or Ipod to the pc, just conect the Iphone and let the pc ‘think’… in a lil’ wile it will pop up a little window asking what do you want to do (you know what Im talking about, the one that pops out everytime you plug a new hardware, or a camera or a sd card), one of the options is ”OPEN FOLDER”… open it, and the only thing you’ll see is gonna be your pic roll… Just copy the damn photos to where you want and that’s it!
EASY, FAST AND EFFICIENT!
ENJOY!!!!! ;}
I synced my photos into itunes last night. Have a PC. Can’t find picutres. Want to know where they are on my hard drive? Can you help?
I recently got a iPhone 4, and I backed up my old phone to my iTunes, then plugged in my new phone into iTunes and started to submit everything to get everything connected, I looked down at my phone and before I could dissconnect Restore was already complete. It deleted all my pictures and videos, is there anyway I could get those back?
Matt, if they’re not in your camera roll, you need to use iTunes, but they’re already sync’d with your computer (or how did you get them there in the first place?)
Pari, is it possible you have a security lock on your iPhone? If so, you do need to unlock the phone by entering your code after you’ve plugged it into the computer. Try that, see how it goes.
Hi Dave,
Thanks to you, I have used Image Capture for the past year to get photos off my iPhone 3.
However, since the latest update, Image Capture just says “no device connected” whenever I try to get photos. Do you have any idea what I can do now to get photos off the iPhone onto my MacBook (OS X 10.5.8)?
Thanks for any info.
Hi I am having the same issues as most people here, trying to get photos off of my iPhone 4 that are not in camera roll and on to my mac (snow leopard installed).. With my old windows computer you plugged the phone in with iTunes booting up and it shows the phone as an external device and you could remove photos.. Does anyone know how to do this on a mac???
Thanks so much for the help – useful post for sure!
Hi Dave,
I have lost all contacts and photos off my wifes phone when it was mistakley synced under my log in with itunes. How can I get them back, I dont think they were backed please help, Regards Greg
Thanks so much. I just got a new iPhone4 and was worried about losing the hundreds of photos on my 3g. Perfect advice.
HI’
My iphone 8gb camra software is not working it is in hang position. what it problem software or hardware kindly suggest me.
second what can download songs from internet in iphone directly without itune
and pls send the precuder for download from pc
hi i want to know it has any way to return delete photos?
i earse some my pic suddenly and now i want to return it , it hast any way???
thanks
melisa
hi Dave. My imac was stolen by some scum bag(s) last week with all the photos i ever took on it. The only back up is the iphoto folder on iphone. how can I get theses photos back onto the new mac. Would image capture do it without compramising image quality?s in advance
Thank
Just one possible gotcha.. on my phone (3GS) I found that I had to enter my passcode on the phone to unlock it when it was plugged in before the mac would find it. May be obvious to most, but may catch others out. Once I got that, a beautifully simple solution with Image Capture. Thanks!
I have a contact in my 3GS Iphone and a picture attached to that contact. I can’t seem to find how to save the picture again in my computer since it is just a picture attached to a contact and is no longer on my phone. I need this picture desperately.
When I plug my iPhone 4 into my G5 Mac 10.5.8, I don’t see an option allowing me to transfer photos from the iPhone to the Mac (iPhoto). The only option I see is to transfer photos from iPhoto on the Mac to the iPhone…
It is a pain to e-mail a photo from my iPhone to me at home, because I have Wildbllue internet and I am penalized if I download too much in a certain timeframe.
i lost my i phone 4 is there a way of getin it back. please help i only just got it ! can i download a tracking device an find it that way even though i dont have the phone or do i need the phone to turn it on ??? please help !!! thanks
I just lost my iPhone 4G in Paris with tons of photos on it. Not sure I am buying a new one ($499, ouch), but I had backed up my phone the day I lost it. I use Windows. Can I extract the photos from the back up of the phone?
Thanks for the free advice. I hadn’t used image capture before – didn’t even know it was there!
Much simpler than using iphoto.
Cheers! 🙂
My daughter has a MAC and I have a PC. Both computers are new this year. How do I download and transfer all of her pictures to my PC? Will it work to simply download to a thumb drive and load that to my PC?
Thanks for getting back to me Dave,
It really seems that I don’t have the app. Double checked in Utilities folder in Applications, but I don’t really have it.
Can I download it somewhere?
Fabricio, I’m sure that you do, actually. Look in Applications and in Applications -> Utilities
Hi Dave,
I’m running the OSX version 10.6.4
It seems that I don’t have that mighty ImageCapture application.. where can I download it from?
Thanks!
Hello,
MY husband and I have the new Iphone. When I connect mine on my desk top it will automatically ask me if I wish to download the new photes from the phone. When my husband connect his to his hp laptop it will not do that. My desktop will use the autoplay program and do this. His however will not. Is there a way to get his laptop to do the same?
try plug your iphone to another computer, it should work.
Try plugging your phone in when it’s unlocked….worked for me. 🙂
OK — I had the same problem as many of you:
I would plug my 3GS into my Windows Vista machine & while the iPhone icon would show up as drive, it was EMPTY — where it used to show all my photos in my Camera Roll.
The solution was remarkably simple. Right before I plugged in my iPhone, I had plugged in my seldom-used USB webcam. Once I unplugged the Web cam & re-plugged in my iphone & restarted and closed iTunes — Voila!
I hope this helps.
Hello Dave,
Our Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Powerpc hard drive crashed … so needless to say we lost everything! Fortunately, I do have pictures of our baby on my Iphone 3G that I need to export off the phone onto the computer/external hard drive but I am having the most trouble because our system is not supported by the programs I’ve purchased so far. Do you have any answers?
Dear “computerssuck”, you already have an app called Image Capture on your computer. It’s in the “Applications” folder. Find it, launch it, then plug in your iPhone…