(She has an encrypted online backup and regular clones of her drives, to ensure we don’t lose her Photos library.) The list of failed imports was so long, it didn’t seem worth the time to try to run each of those down, and she lacked the confidence that her originals were imported correctly besides them that would lead her to delete them from the phone.

Image Capture can import images, but also helps you troubleshoot import problems.

(To remove Photos duplicates, the best option appears to be PowerPhotos, which can work with Photos libraries directly for deduplication, merging, and other features.) IDG Image Capture doesn’t have an option like Photos for importing only new images (ones that it’s sure it imported before), but it also didn’t seem like there were rampant duplicates. She tried to import all images, and it would appear to make progress, but then fail with a lengthy error message listing problematic images, and an incomplete state of what was imported. In my wife’s case, however, Image Capture stopped working. You can set Image Capture via a menu at the bottom of its window with a given device or drive selected to import selected or all media to iPhoto or Photos, as well as to other apps, scripts, or folders.

Image capture error 9937