Sending photos without losing resolution

[smokey982]

What’s the best method to send photos from an iPhone to a Mac? I create a photo calendar every Christmas for my parents. And I want to use some photos that my wife took on her iPhone. I’m afraid if she text me the pics then I’ll lose some resolution. I need to keep the best resolution possible. Would air drop be a better option?

 

[osu1991]

AirDrop or any cloud service like Dropbox should work.

 

[TheForce]

Why not just plug your iphone into your computer with the Lightning cable? It's how I do it with my PC.

 

[harshness]

Of course direct file transfers presume that you've switched to JPEG as the default format or all recipients are able to handle Apples not-entirely-broadly-supported HEIC picture format.

 

[Foxbat]

If the Mac is new enough, use AirDrop if you don't want to plug in a cable and use the Photos App on the Mac. Unfortunately, Apple shut down their photo publishing services which was a shame. I used to send photo calendars out to a few friends and I sent one to my Uncle and Aunt after his 90th birthday with photos from that event. They were extremely high quality paper and the photos looked awesome. Of course, it had an Apple price tag, too, but it was all through your Apple ID account.

Now, there are enough competing services that Apple stopped offering their service.

Of course direct file transfers presume that you've switched to JPEG as the default format or all recipients are able to handle Apples not-entirely-broadly-supported HEIC picture format.

Which if you're using Photos, it does. Photos will also export to JPEG (and TIFF and PNG and GIF and...) if you need to send the images to an outside publisher.

 

[harshness]

Now, there are enough competing services that Apple stopped offering their service.Which if you're using Photos, it does. Photos will also export to JPEG (and TIFF and PNG and GIF and...) if you need to send the images to an outside publisher.

I think what the TS was looking for a "lossless" way of transferring pictures and transcoding to some other format typically doesn't meet that need. PNG (lossless) is probably the best format but it is just a little better supported than HEIC.

Unlike real cameras, the iOS camera app doesn't offer a raw format or the ability to declare the storage resolution.

On the other hand, unless you're offset printing wall-sized prints, it probably doesn't matter.

 

[smokey982]

Every year I create the calendar through the Walmart website. Most of the pictures I use are off loaded from my Nikon camera to my Mac. But I’ve occasionally had a pic on my wife’s phone that she wants to use. So she normally text me the photo which I receive on my Mac. And then save from iMessage to iPhoto. But every year those particular photos have a much lower resolution on the calendar than the other photos. And I know her iPhone X takes better photos than that.

 

[harshness]

Texting is perhaps the worst way of transmitting things (typically including what you want to convey verbally).

A USB data cable, as TheForce suggests, is likely the most straightforward solution. If you don't already have one for charging the phone, Monoprice and Amazon offer them for less than $8 (versus the $19 that Apple demands). If you happen to have only Macs, it could get more expensive but you don't have to register or subscribe to any services.

 

[Foxbat]

If shooting Raw is that important, there are Apps, like Halide, that gives manual control of the iPhone's camera to the user. (I know, users shouldn't have to pay for something that should come standard, but it's only $6)

 

[harshness]

If shooting Raw is that important, there are Apps, like Halide, that gives manual control of the iPhone's camera to the user. (I(including being able to activate it from the login screen) know, users shouldn't have to pay for something that should come standard, but it's only $6)

It would be cool if you could completely replace the Apple app with a third party app (such that it runs from the lock screen) but I'm lead to believe that you can't.

Declaring lossy compression quality and storage resolution parameters is a fundamental feature that should not have been removed. They don't need to be front-and-center but they're entirely practical for daily use. Falling back on file sharing services or e-mailing pictures is just another example of Apple forcing their users to employ goofy "adapters" to do straightforward things.

 

[nelson61]

Why not just use the Google photos app and choose storage at full resolution?

Choose the upload size of your photos and videos - Computer - Google Photos Help

 

[harshness]

Why not just use the Google photos app and choose storage at full resolution?

Because you need a Google account to use it and "Original" mode isn't the default?

Cables are cheap and it isn't as hard to download files as it used to be when you had to use iTunes.

 

[smokey982]

Well I moved the photos I needed on her phone to a shared folder and shared it with my Mac. I assume it does it through the cloud?? I don’t know if it changes the resolution or not. But it was easy and Christmas is coming on fast. But I appreciate all the input.


Sent from my iPad using SatelliteGuys

 

[Foxbat]

I experienced the HEIC issue firsthand Sunday when I used my iPhone 8 to image the "Foxtrot" comic in the paper, Airdropped it to my iMac, and my Affinity Photo app couldn't use it. I had to use Preview to open the HEIC file and make a copy which I could then work on in Affinity Photo.

 

[TheForce]

I have great success with wired USB connection to my computer to pull video clips shot in UHD from my iphone XS Max. The quality is equal to my 4K video camcorder and better than my GoPro Hero 7. I can pull high res JPEG's too. I don't need any higher quality than that. What I would like to do is transfer an edited video from my PC back to the iphone. I've rendered in HEVC, h264, mov and mp4 nothing will transfer. None of these files could be transferred from PC to iphone using the USB/Lightning cable.
Then I discovered an app that specifically is designed to do this. I uploaded a 4K video with high bitrate (50Mbs) h265 encoded using VLC mobile app and wifi network. The video plays flawlessly with better quality video and audio than from You Tube. You can install this app from the app store for free.

The sound of my test video had very deep and powerful bass. The playback from the iphone XS Max was not able to reproduce the bass. But using the airpods made all the difference. So the limitation was in the iphone speakers.

 

[harshness]

I had to use Preview to open the HEIC file and make a copy which I could then work on in Affinity Photo.

On Serif's forum as of late September, the desktop version of Affinity Photo doesn't do HEIC and there was no ETA. Not very professional for a professional photo editing package.

If only Serif's products were some large fraction as awesome as their advertising...