Selphy CP1500 not recognizing photos on SD card

[LethbridgeHS]

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?

[photopulse]

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!

[RK040]

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?

[Vanilla8]

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 ??

[camue]

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.

[Vanilla8]

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

[averagejoe]

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'

[Zaentzpantz]

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

[louisserfontein]

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

[Zaentzpantz]

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

Try the previous posting which describes the cure in detail.

[LethbridgeHS]

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.