Taking photos with i-phone

[LizzieL]

I normally use a digital SLR camera for taking photos, but a few days ago I was at a place where I didn't want to take it because of its size and weight, so I used my i-phone (a hand-me-down i-phone 6 SE from other half). My knowledge of this phone is limited - phone calls, texts, checking emails when not at home and a few apps (when OH is available to show me what to do)  - so all I did was press camera icon, and pressed the round white button when what I wanted to photograph was on the screen. Today (after a bit of a struggle) I downloaded the photos to my laptop. For every picture there were two jpg files, one labelled IMG_xxxx.jpg and the other labelled IMG_Exxxx.jpg. They look very slightly different. Also a each picture had an AAE file IMG_xxxx.AAE (no AAE files for the IMG_Exxxx.jpg files).
Can anyone explain why all the extra files. Which of each pair of jpg's is the one to keep?

[AlanBoyd]

The .AAE file is a file that stores info about edits that you make to the image on the phone (so that they can be reverted). Two jpegs: it’s possible that you had HDR selected– just a guess.

[Spelk]

If your laptop is an Apple then Airdrop is the easy way to share file.
If you hold your finger on the white spot then you will take a string of photos. To take just one tap the white spot.
If you have Live selected then rather than just one image you will get a short video. From that you can select which image you prefer. Or you can play the video, once or get it to loop.
And as suggested you may have the HDR selected.

[LizzieL]

My laptop is a Lenovo not Apple.
I only press the white button once and it gives two identical images with the same number but one has an E added t the number. I've looked back at  my old photos, it was all right from 2016 to Sept 2020, just taking one photo and no AAE file. I only took 6 photos during that period. Then in November 2020 it started taking a photo and a video with the same number but the video had .MOV on the end instead of JPG. That happened for two years until I realized there were all these extra files.  I was shown how to stop the videos but then these duplicate pictures started  happening. If I look through the photos on my phone there is only one set of pictures, it's when I connect to the laptop the extra set of pictures appear. They are all slightly bigger than the version without the E in the file name.
I've now managed to get a line through HDR which I presume means its off, but it's still happening

modified
I switched the phone completely off then on again and the line is still though HDR but it's only taking one picture now.
Problem solved, thank you both for your help

[Biggles50]

The AEE file is where any changes that are made to the JPG file are stored.

In practice, if you edit a JPG and then save it you have destroyed the original file, this is where the AEE file come into play as the Apple operating system reads the AEE file and allows the edits to be removed thus restoring the JPG to its original state.

Adobe’s Lightroom uses a similar system to record the changes that is made to the original JPG file.

As for transferring your images, I connect up a USB memory stick to my iPad, for my iPhone I connect up an SD card that is plugged into a genuine Apple Camera Adaptor that is connected to the iPhone.

In Photos I select all the Images that I want to copy, then I click on the upload icon (square with up facing arrow) and from the options I select Save To Files.

The Files App opens and in there I see either the USB memory stick or the SD card, then it is a case of navigating to the storage device and finishing the copy process.