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?
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:
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:
On the top left you can change the view from the highly detailed list view to a more familiar icon view too:
Now that you can see all your images, simply click to select one or more images…
Before you proceed, you might want to click on “Options…” to see what you can tweak:
You can see my default settings here: your’s might be different.
Finally, click on “Download”…
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:
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!
You’ve been a great help! Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for this information!
this is so h elpful! the only thing that worked! you rock thank you so much!
This was very helpful! Thank you so much 🙂
thankyou (:
Thank you for your help!!!
You are awesome. This worked like a charm for both my new iPhone 4s and my iPad 2. It seems odd that this isn’t a built in feature of iTunes or the MacBook but I’m happy something works. Thx!
Easy, “RuBlind”. The issue is that there really isn’t a way that I know of to grab pictures off the “Photo Album” because for them to be on the iPhone in the first place, the theory is that they’d be in iTunes and have shown up through a sync operation. So there are no tools I know of that let you do this, even the third party iPhone utilities. If someone knows of one, however, please do post it here!
Why do u refuse to answer the repeated questions about photos that r not on the camera roll. Your “advice” is just wasting people’s time.
Rick, what does “in two pieces” mean? Is it broken? If not, just plug it into a Mac and run “Image Capture”. If it is broken, I don’t know how you can disassemble it to get to a memory card…
Need some help. Have an IPHONE3 that is in two pieces. I need a picture off it as i am going through a nasty divorce. Is there a way…economic way to retrieve a picture?
I truly appreciate it.
YOU ARE A GENIUS!!!
Thanks for sharing this, it helps me immensely right now!!
Hi Guys
I have the same problem as many above – how do I get the photos from the ‘Photo Library’ (not ‘Camera Roll’) to a PC?!
Are there any free methods at all? All of these posts only answer this for a Mac 🙁
Thanks in advance.
Dear Dave,
Tks for a very detailed explanation. However, my situation is kinda different. It’s not captured photos that I want to transfer but rather pictures saved in my iphone (from another comp). I tried iPhoto, Image capture, plucking to a normal PC instead of my Macbook but none is working.
Pls help me with this. I’m just desperate to have my pics back!
Tks a million!
This is not working… I have a 3g and mac osx 10.4.11 Is there is a way for me to get my pictures off my iphone onto my laptop with these systems?
One simple way to tranfer you pictures from your iphone,is to plug in to you computer,go to start menu click on my computer and yor phone will show up click on phone icon and your pictures will come up! The rest is self explanitory.
Thank you Dave! You always help me with my iPhone!
Help – I have an Iphone and use a Windows Vista laptop. The instructions you’ve given don’t tell me how to download photos from my Iphone to my computer? Any simple instructions would be appreciated.
thanks, Pia
Jennifer, check out the discussion here: http://archive.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/475127 I surmise one of the suggestions will fix your problem!
What do you do if image capture doesn’t see the iphone, either? itunes sync is working. I deleted the photos that were taken through my third party ap (gorillacam) but I still can’t get the iphone recognized.
I recently upgraded to a macbook air, and used the migration tool to transfer my itunes and iphotos libraries and settings.
Thanks!!!!
My iphone is happily wired with battery icon showing with my macbook. However I can’t see the my iPhone in the Image Capture. It showed nothing is connected. Help!
Hi and thanks for the post!
I can see all of the images that are in my Camera Roll, but how do I get to the images that are just in the Photo Library’s other folders? As in, images that were uploaded, but not taken with the actual iPhone camera?
Thanks Dave!
Thank You Thank You Thank You
I can’t get my iphone to upload pictures using windows 7. my computer isn’t recognizing my iphone as a camera but it does recognize my wives iphone as a camera – Really frustated. I looked all through the internet can’t find the answer why my phone won’t work and hers does.
Not an iPhone junky or good knowledgable user – just returned from KS, have some very valuable pics in phone, PC, connected to iTunes to get photos and locked up in Recov Mode – desp need to get my pics HELP !
thank you thank you thank you … have been feeling like a right wally for not working out how to do this 🙂
Dave,
Good advice re Image Capture.app, thank you.
For those of us that are blessed with a French-speaking Mac, the app is called Applications/Transfert d’images.app. Et ça marche!
I just got my iPhone two weeks ago and I have the same problem as Doug Rosene 2 comments above mine. Still haven’t found any solution, i’ve tried everything suggested. 🙁
Google’s Picassa works great for uploading the Iphone- now if I can only upload my motorola kazr
I have a new iPhone G3 running latest software (V2.2.1) and cannot upload any photos. On my G5 running OS X 10.5.6 Image Capture reports (No Image Capture Device Detected) and the Device Browser shows nothing. iPhone shows battery connect AND will appear in iTunes if I start that. iPhoto also shows no peripheral device. Yet both Image Capture (v4.0) and iPhoto (v6.0.6) work fine with my Fuji digital camera. Software update says I’m up to date with Apple and iTunes says my iPhone is up to date. So what is going on here?
Doug
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!
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.
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!