Ghost images in Preview while editing AirDrop iPhone photos

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Level 1

8 points

Ghost images in Preview while editing AirDrop iPhone photos

For the last 3 or 4 years I have had trouble with Ghost images in Preview. I airdrop iPhone pictures into my mac mini. I drop them into a folder. I drag that group into Preview for editing. After editing the first image I move on to the second. A ghost image of the first image is on the screen along with the second picture. Until I do some kind of edit to the second picture, that ghost image is there. It makes it impossible to make a judgment about the exposure or color of the second picture until some edit is performed. Once you perform an operation like crop or adjust levels, the ghost image disappears. If you "Reset All" in Adjust Colors then the ghost image returns. This is software issue in Preview and I am tired of doing extra edits, hundreds of times a day to work around this bug. Any suggestions? Sequoia 15.5 and iOS 18.5.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Ghost Images in Preview

Mac mini, macOS 15.5

Posted on Aug 5, 2025 11:06 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 5, 2025 11:36 AM in response to donald mc

This has been happening for years! How frustrating! I've never noticed this. And, while I don't do much editing with Preview, I just dragged a folder to Preview and quickly edited some pictures, and I didn't see any ghost images. I was just messing around-- I adjusted saturation, contrast, shadows-- pretty much all the sliders. I didn't save my pictures. Do you have to save for the ghost images to show? Can you think of anything that we're doing differently? How can I re-create the problem?

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Answer 2

donald mc Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 5, 2025 02:51 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

When you save a picture, the double image is not there... but here is a screen shot with the reflection of a light from the first picture showing in another picture, phone moved slightly to create the second picture. Repeatable, constant and annoying.

thanks for the reply.

[Edited by Moderator]

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Answer 3

donald mc Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 5, 2025 02:53 PM in response to donald mc

I actually think this is an HEIC issue. If I drag older .jpg into preview I don't have that issue. With fresh iPhone pictures, It always happens. This next picture is just of the first picture I started editing. All that I did was crop the picture, haven't even saved it yet and that's what I see. The original framing is showing through the crop.

[Edited by Moderator]

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Answer 4

Aug 5, 2025 01:06 PM in response to donald mc

I get nothing like that. I used HEIC, jpg, and tiff files. Of course, the file type doesn't matter once it's interpreted by Preview and on the screen.

You wouldn't have a transparency set funny in Accessibility, would you? If not, try "Reduce Transparency."

I'm running out of ideas. But it must be fixable since I don't see it.

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Answer 5

donald mc Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 5, 2025 02:31 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

Nothing unusual in Accessibility. If I choose "Reduce Transparency" it does just that. It reduces the transparency of the second image... but it's still there. I use the open all pictures in the "same window" option. If I switch to individual windows for each picture it doesn't happen... but I don't want to deal with 26 windows at once. I need to quickly go back and forth between pictures to judge lighting, color, etc.. I need them in vertical column view when they are all in the same window.

Appreciate all the suggestions so far... sigh.

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Answer 6

Aug 6, 2025 06:27 AM in response to donald mc

OK, so they these things to narrow things down, maybe:

Restart the computer (of course)
Re-start in Safe Mode. This bypasses certain potentially disruptive processes, and it often helps. Safe Mode is different for different computers, so see this:

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

Make a new user and see if the same problem recurs with it.

The idea is to find out if the problem is with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.

Let us know what happens…

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Answer 7

donald mc Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 6, 2025 02:01 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

Ok. Signed in with Safe Mode. Tried the usual airdrop and edits in Preview. No change, still ghosted images.

I created a new user. I could not find a way to airdrop or send pictures to this user, who really has no identity, no email, just a user of the same machine. Advice?

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Answer 8

Aug 6, 2025 10:40 PM in response to donald mc

donald mc wrote:

I created a new user. I could not find a way to airdrop or send pictures to this user, who really has no identity, no email, just a user of the same machine. Advice?

The easiest way is to copy some images to a thumb drive and use that "sneakernet".

I couldn't replicate the issue. Can you provide exact workflow how to replicate it?

p.s. Preview does have some old bugs --- for example in batch mode it exports some images in the wrong codec so many exported .tif images as .jpeg are, in fact, still TIFF so so other apps have trouble processing them, and of course they are larger.

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Answer 9

donald mc Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 7, 2025 06:43 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Matti, Thank you for the suggestion of using a thumb drive. That worked fine and allowed me to bring in pictures and produce the same double image when using Preview. Here is my process.

• Take two pictures with my iPhone, same image shifted slightly to produce an offset.

• Airdrop those photos to my Mac mini, into my regular account.

• Drag those two images from the Airdrop window in the Finder, directly to the thumb drive window.

• Log out of my regular account.

• Log in as a New User.

• Open the thumb drive and drag those 2 pictures directly into Preview.

• In the first picture drag and select 90% of the picture. Use Command K to Crop.

• Choose the second picture and voila, the first image is ghosted onto the second.

Mac OS 15.6, iPhone 18.5, Preview 11.0

This problem has existed for years and continued through from Mac Pro to Mac Mini, iPhone 13 to iPhone 16.

Thanks for looking at this.

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Answer 10

Aug 7, 2025 07:16 AM in response to donald mc

While a "thumb drive" works well, you don't need in involve an extra device. You can just put some pictures in a folder in the "Users" folder-- that folder is accessible to every user. You can see here that I have a Photos Library or 2 available to all users:

Since this doesn't seem to be connected to the User, then it has to be one of the things that didn't change-- that seems like either Preview, macOS, or the Mac, itself-- even though those are all the same for me. Does this same problem occur when you open those pictures in the Photos app?

In Preview, I understand that the overlap occurs only when you have the pictures in the same window, is that right? Also, it is affected by the "Reduce Transparency" setting. And this doesn't happen for me. It is true, but surely irrelevant, that Reduce Transparency causes weird stuff on iOS and iPadOS, but only in dark setting. In any case-- change your dark/light setting and see if makes any change. Grasping at straws…

It's a puzzle! Maybe Matti has an idea…

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Answer 11

Aug 7, 2025 10:46 AM in response to donald mc

OK, I see the same issue which seems to be a bug how Preview.app displays edits with new .heic shot with iPhone 16 Pro and iOS 18.4.1:

If I crop such image, then all loaded .heic and .jpg images after that display an overlaid ghost of it. If I crop some later such new .heic, then its ghost is overlaid on top of later images. But if I re-open those images, then the ghost image is no longer overlaid on other images so it seems to be a bug how Preview.app caches such cropped image.

On the other hand, I can not replicate that with an older .heic shot with iPhone 12 mini iOS 18.5 so something with the new style .heic triggers that bug. iOS 18 introduced some new flavors to .heic and it seems some mobile devices like iPhone 16 Pro also add their own extra features.

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Answer 12

donald mc Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 7, 2025 12:58 PM in response to Matti Haveri

Matti and Richard, I am certainly glad that one of you has been able to reproduce this. This "feature" has been around for years. It occurred all the time with my old Mac Pro Late 2013 and continues with my M4 Mini. Its lasted and has been unaffected by, at least the last 5 OS versions, different iPhone models and dozens of Mac OS and iPhone OS upgrades. Im not sure about versions of Preview... Ive never checked on it until this discussion.

By the way, I checked with Light and Dark Mode, no difference. That's a relief because I totally prefer dark mode. Also, the 90º rotation of the ghost image now occurs all the time now, so something Ive done recently has affected this bug in some way. Maybe that's another tiny clue.

Thanks for your continued interest. I really prefer using Preview for Quick Editing. Waiting for full blown photo program to load is painful and I like the speed of Preview, lightening fast and simple. It's limited in scope but that's fine with me.

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Answer 13

Aug 11, 2025 12:03 PM in response to donald mc

donald mc wrote:… Chances of Apple fixing this? Probably Zero.

On the contrary, we have seen fixes to things that were brought up here. But the Apple folks don't go plowing through here looking for things to fix. So, to let them know, go to them:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

It won't be fast, of course, and you won't get a response.

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