Sharepoint user profile photos added by admin disappear after user visits Delve

[SophieSue]

I'm using the Sharepoint Admin Profile Manager to upload headshots on behalf of our employees. All is well until a user visits their own Delve profile page, which causes their picture to revert back to the default "blank" avatar.  This also changes the ProfMngr settings for Picture Placeholder State and Picture Exchange Sync State back to "1".  (They had been 0 previously).

Any suggestions for making pictures uploaded through the ProfMngr stick?  I've read through Microsoft's documentation on image syncing, but short of having every employee upload their own photo, I don't see how to fix this.

Why give admins the ability to upload photos at all, if it doesn't technically do anything? Am I missing something?

[#2]

@SophieSue The best way to have users' profile pictures is by syncing them to AAD (through AADConnect). I have had conversations with several experts on user profile photo sync and what I understood from them is that when a user goes to their Delve pages, it triggers a sync process on the back end. 

Recommendation: talk to your network team and see if you can get these profile pictures on AD to get them synced directly to AAD.

[#3 · Accepted solution]

My suggestion, upload them to both Azure and SharePoint, this ensures the photos show on SharePoint people web parts etc. and everywhere else in 365. Then if they happen to visit delve or the random sync process decides to run, it will just sync with the proper photo you have in the Azure / Exchange Location.

I use the Code Two photo tool to quickly upload photos to Office 365. It's free.