Import photos & videos from iPhone to Windows PC using XnView MP

[Aidar]

Windows 10 has three built-in ways to directly import (copy) photos from iPhone to Windows PC via USB cable:

1) New Metro-style Photos app

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 946a5ebc99

2) Classic “Import pictures and videos” wizard

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 1195d7b6c5

3) Simply copy files in Windows/File Explorer

https://cleanerone.trendmicro.com/blog/ ... dows-10-pc

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Apple Support is very insistent on using Microsoft Photos app, not Windows Explorer, to copy pictures and videos to PC: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302

One of the reasons is that during import Microsoft Photos app updates file creation date to match the EXIF date/time when the picture was taken.

Windows Explorer does not bother, file creation date would be the date the picture/video was copied to PC.

This is meaningful for iPhones, because files are named 1000-9999.HEIC, not as datetime on Androids.

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The disadvantage of both Metro-style Photos app and classic “Import pictures and videos” wizard is that they both seem to proactively open, generate preview for each imported file.

Unlike XnView MP, for some reason both these Windows built-in applications cannot leverage thumbnail that iPhone had already generated & written into each HEIC photo.

This leads to excessive CPU usage during import (essentially, simple file copy operation), because EACH imported file has to be opened in full quality, then computationally intensive operation to generate preview takes place. When CPU does not have hardware support (ASIC) for HEIC, it leads to prolonged 100% CPU usage, heating, commensurate loudest fan noise that accompanies import operation, entirely unnecessary.

Microsoft may not necessarily help with this: given the inability of new Metro-style Photos app to even sort imported files into folders based on date that classic “Import pictures and videos” wizard could do a decade ago, it looks like Photos app is not really used even by its own product team (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee).

It would be so much easier for end-user if XnVIew MP “Import and sort” could import files directly from iPhone connected via USB cable and recognized in Windows Explorer, sort them into folders based on EXIF date.

XnView.png

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This question was asked before regarding Mac: viewtopic.php?f=82&t=42217

The idea is that adding a feature to handle very regular import task would bring value, compared to clumsy and inefficient way Photos app does import, throwing all files into single directory by the thousands with no structure.

Thanks!

[estatistics]

I had written a bash script to rename photos from camera that the creation date was not on image filename.
You may do the same? This works for linux. I think, it can exists on windows with some tweaking. Ask in stackoverflow


try it first to some example photos before apply it to all over

Code: Select all

#Save either the date of File Creation or Modification on filename
for pic in *.* ; do
   exiftool "-FileName<CreateDate" -d  "${pic//.*}_%Y %m %d_%H %M %S.jpg" "$pic"   &&   exiftool "-FileName<FileModifyDate" -d  "${pic//.*}_%Y %m %d_%H %M %S.jpg" "$pic" ; done;