iPhone Photos – Reasons for Edited Images reverting to Originals

icloudiosiphonephotos

I edited about 20 photos on my phone yesterday — cropped, altered saturation and contrast etc. This morning, on my phone, those edits have all reverted to the original photos.

I use iCloud library. The photos had not completed uploading to iCloud library before I edited them. My phone uses ios 11.3

Can these edits be recovered now that iCloud sync up is complete and those edits are reverted to the original photos?

EDIT: given that there is no solution, and that others report the same problem (and that it happened again), I have filed a bug report at Apple:

https://bugreport.apple.com/web/?problemID=40326889

Best Answer

In general, no. Assuming you don't get any of the "long shots" below to work, you'll have to re-crop and re-edit the photos from the originals.

Photos keeps only two versions of an image by design - the original photo and the current edited version. Other apps like Aperture save undo and redo actions and perform non-destructive edits, but not Photos or the iCloud photo library.

Unless your phone still has those images cached and would upload them, you likely lost the edits.

Here are the "long shots" for looking:

  1. Look in the Recently Deleted Album (online and on your device and optionally on another synced device if you should have them)
  2. Look for upload paused on the iPhone (scroll to the bottom of the content on the All Photos Album
  3. Check for iOS backups after you made the edits - you might be able to restore that backup and interrupt the iCloud download of the non-edited versions.
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