topic Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card in Mobile & Compact Printers

Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

LethbridgeHS — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:40:08 GMT

I have a new CP1500 and trying to get it to recognise photos (jpg) on an SD card. All I get is ? mark. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

Patrick — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 20:05:26 GMT

Hi LethbridgeHS,

The question mark that appears is an indication that the images you are attempting to print are not recognized by your SELPHY CP1500.

This issue would occur if you are attempting to print an image that has been edited or was saved in a format not supported by your printer.

As per the manual:

Images may not be displayed or printed correctly if they have been edited on a computer, or if the long side exceeds 35000 pixels.

Did this answer your question? If so, please click the Accept as Solution button below so that others may find the answer as well.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

PaulGerard — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 11:33:04 GMT

Obviously many photo's are edited, cropped, optimised before printing. But the problem also occures with photo's never edited.
I tried to load photo's from USB flash, from SD, nothing helps. Only question marks appear!
When a "question mark" is selected the Preview is correct. But this is no way to scroll through many pictures.
I consider it a serious 'bug' in the software. Hope it will be repaired with a new software update.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

Stephen — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 14:29:55 GMT

Hi, PaulGerard!

Can you tell us what file type the images you're trying to print are? For example, are they png, jpg/jpeg, pst, heic, etc.?

A screenshot or photo could also help.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

PaulGerard — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 15:00:20 GMT

jpg, jpeg and an occasional png.
All images open perfectly on different PC's and laptops, on mobile. But not on CP1500
When opened, there are only question marks.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

Stephen — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 15:32:38 GMT

Thanks for the updated info.

Your SELPHY can only read JPEG images from external media that meet Exif standards. Editing photos can change Exif information. This is from the online manual:

You may want to print your images using the mobile app instead of your card. Get the Canon Print app HERE.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

PaulGerard — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 16:03:04 GMT

Very strange that laptop's, all kind of imaging programs can open these files without any difficulty but that Canon software can only opens when there is Exif information. Which is lost when a photo is edited.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

Stephen — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 16:15:20 GMT

The SELPHY isn't a computer, so it doesn't have the codecs (instructions) to decipher various image files like an operating system (Windows/macOS/Android/iOS) does. The printer's firmware (built-in software) is designed to accept specifically formatted JPEG images. The mobile app will ensure the images are sent to the printer in a way the printer can understand.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

phanon87 — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 00:11:29 GMT

Hi, I just got the printer as well and ran into the same issue. I edited the image through Photoshop and exported it to jpeg but as mentioned, printer would not read it. I then saved the image over to Lightroom and exported it to jpeg through there, and the printer was able to read it. Hope this helps if you're editing photos on PC.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

photopulse — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 23:03:01 GMT

Dear Stephen, I find it quite disappointing that Canon has yet to provide a solution to an issue that many Selphy users have been facing for years. It’s baffling that a photo printer designed for printing photos is unable to handle images that have been edited on a computer first and saved in standard formats like JPEG/JPG. This is a basic requirement, and yet, Canon has not made any effort to address it. To make matters worse, there are no printer drivers available for download! On my Mac (Sonova), when installing the Selphy 1500, no printer driver is found, and I'm unable to add the printer. Overall, I’m very disappointed that Canon has not taken action to resolve these issues.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

photopulse — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 23:11:00 GMT

Thanks, this worked for me as well. However Canon needs to fix this and come up with a solution! Many customers want to print after having edited their photos and not only straight out of the camera! Can't believe that this has not been taken into account when developing the software or even fixed in a firmware update!

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

RK040 — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 22:25:16 GMT

I have just spent an evening trying to get my cp1500 to recognise images from an SD card. I just wanted to be able to use the print settings on the printer to improve some photos, and read on a forum that the printer only recognised changes to the print setting if photos were being printed from the SD card. For me, the only images recognised on my SD card were ones taken with the camera, not ones downloaded from icloud and saved from my laptop as jpeg. If only the print settings, ie brighten and filter, would work using wi fi it would be simple to make basic adjustments to photos taken on a phone and print them in minutes. As it is, there is a function on this printer that has no use, what good are print settings if they have no effect?

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

Vanilla8 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 23:05:18 GMT

I’ve just bought a CP1500 and have a variant of this issue.
I first saved a selection of pictures from my PHOTOS app on my MacBook to an SD Card I formatted as FAT. All were JPG. When I loaded the SD Card in the printer it didn’t see any pictures at all. I then loaded each picture into Pixelmator and just saved it again as JPG back on to the card, giving them a different name. This time the printer recognised there were pictures on the card, but it showed them as black squares with a yellow question mark. However, if I press OK on any of these black boxes the preview mode does show the actual picture and if I press OK again to print, it does print successfully.
So it seems the printer does recognize there are pictures on the card and does allow printing but it will NOT show thumbnails of the pictures, so searching through a large number of pictures on the card is a nightmare.
Is there anything I can do to resolve the thumbnail issue ??

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

camue — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:11:11 GMT

I have seen this problems with JPGs having the extension JPEG and not JPG. if the extension is jpeg than the printer does not recognise the files as images.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

Vanilla8 — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 22:02:12 GMT

Appreciate the response, but unfortunately your suggestion doesn't work for me. All the images I exported from Pixelmator are .JPG extensions.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

averagejoe — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 20:07:29 GMT

I was facing the same issue with images not appearing at all or showing a question mark for a thumbnail in the SD card browsing menu on CP1500. First issue is that CP1500 expects the file to have .JPG extension, not .jpeg (or anything else) -- with this, you will get the image to show up, but with the question mark thumbnail. Second, when exporting an edited file (in my case from macOS Photos.app), most editors don't embed thumbnails into the EXIF metadata on the exported image. This is why you get a question mark instead when browsing the SD card on the CP1500. I asked copilot to make me a python script jpg_add_thumbnail.py to add the thumbnail to the EXIF metadata and save as .JPG:

import os import sys from PIL import Image import piexif import io # For in-memory buffer def add_thumbnail_to_jpeg(input_folder, output_folder): # Ensure output folder exists os.makedirs(output_folder, exist_ok=True) # Iterate through all files in the input folder for filename in os.listdir(input_folder): input_path = os.path.join(input_folder, filename) # Ensure the output file has a .JPG extension output_filename = os.path.splitext(filename)[0] + ".JPG" output_path = os.path.join(output_folder, output_filename) # Check if the output file already exists if os.path.exists(output_path): print(f"Skipped: {output_filename} already exists") continue # Check if it's a JPEG file if filename.lower().endswith(".jpg") or filename.lower().endswith(".jpeg"): try: with Image.open(input_path) as img: # Extract EXIF data using piexif exif_data = piexif.load(img.info.get("exif", b"")) # Check if a thumbnail exists; if not, create one if not exif_data.get("thumbnail"): thumbnail = img.copy() thumbnail.thumbnail((512, 512)) # Create a 512x512 thumbnail # Save the thumbnail to an in-memory buffer buffer = io.BytesIO() thumbnail.save(buffer, format="JPEG") exif_data["thumbnail"] = buffer.getvalue() # Convert EXIF data back to bytes exif_bytes = piexif.dump(exif_data) # Save the image with the updated EXIF data img.save(output_path, "JPEG", optimize=False, exif=exif_bytes) print(f"Added thumbnail to: {filename}") except Exception as e: print(f"Error processing {filename}: {e}") else: print(f"Skipped non-JPEG file: {filename}") if __name__ == "__main__": if len(sys.argv) != 3: print("Usage: python jpg_thumbnail.py <input_folder> <output_folder>") sys.exit(1) input_folder = sys.argv[1] output_folder = sys.argv[2] add_thumbnail_to_jpeg(input_folder, output_folder)

So my workflow is to export images from Photos.app to ~/Pictures/jpg_no_thumbnail folder and using this script in an alias in my ~/.bashrc I can open a terminal and type jpg to perform the conversion and my images will show up in ~/Pictures/jpg_with_thumbnail
Alias looks like:
alias jpg='python ~/Photography/jpg_add_thumbnail.py ~/Pictures/jpg_no_thumbnail ~/Pictures/jpg_with_thumbnail'

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

Zaentzpantz — Tue, 06 May 2025 13:35:24 GMT

Many Selphy users have this problem, and I have eventually found a solution.

The Selphy printers were designed to accept Exif format files with jpg images direct from digital cameras, however technological progress has overtaken them and nowadays a lot of my jpg photos come from my smartphone and friend's smartphones, or files sent to me via email or whatsapp. These jpg photos work fine on everything else apart from my Canon Selphy, where it just indicates a question mark on a black background.

My model is a Selphy CP720 which prints perfectly but has no Canon PC software for Windows 11.

There are several fixes online, which unfortunately didn't work for me, however there is a free open source photo editing programme which produces Selphy-compatible pictures consistently.

Download and install GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Programme), which is a comprehensive photo-editing application and open a jpg in it.

The only processing I have to do regularly is to crop each picture to 3:2 aspect ratio so it prints correctly on my 6" x 4" photo paper. Once that is done, select "File" then "Export As", then "Choose Location" (I choose my SD card drive), then select "Export".

A large dialogue box will open, and you need to check the boxes for "Save Exif" and "Save Thumbnail" then you can also save all these settings for future use, then select "Export" and you will have a file on the SD card or whatever media you have which will display and print on your Selphy.

GIMP export dialogue box

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

louisserfontein — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 06:12:02 GMT

Good day

I have the Selphy CP1000 and also to big frustrations encounter the same problem, that the printer will not regonize the .jpg, .jpeg or .png to be printer. Just gives the ?

Not sure on how the work around would be on PC, but on Mac the following works
I open the image in Preview on Mac, then export as .jpg
This worked for me

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

Zaentzpantz — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 14:07:13 GMT

"Not sure on how the work around would be on PC..."

Try the previous posting which describes the cure in detail.

Re: Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

LethbridgeHS — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 14:26:13 GMT

It took me a little bit but I figured it out. I was always shooting in RAW and once I figured out the Selphy did not recognise that file extention I now shoot in JPG for all the **bleep** photos I take.