Photostream... serious improvements needed.

Consensus seems to be that Photostream is a pretty big fail as it's implemented now. It'll probably change for the better... can't get much worse, honestly.

Here's what I do at the moment (only using ing it since iOS became available this week):

iPhoto automatically created a new event "Oct 2011 Photo Stream". All new pictures in the photo stream are automatically copied into this event and I am able to delete pictures in that event. So I use this as my base and have set up my iDevices to sync that event ("Photos" setting in iTunes). Since wireless (Wifi) syncing is finally possible with iOS5, I then just sync that event manually to the iDevices whenever I want an update of all new photos taken with the various iDevices (they all copy to the iPhoto event automatically, which is then a kind of a master folder).

IMHO Photostream itself is not (yet) intended to serve as a sharing/presentation platform (such as flickr or Instagram). Its intention is just to provide a single place that collects all the pictures that you made with your various iDevices (iPhone, iPod, iPad). You then need to select manually what to keep and what not by copying the pictures into a separate event (or use the automatically created event in iPhoto as a master and delete the pictures that you don't want).

Since I have 4 iDevices that I all use to make photos occasionally, I found Photostream to be quite useful already. But I agree that it would tremendously increase in value if I could manage my pictures in theta stream already.

Could it be that Apple did not include that to reduce syncing efforts/load on their servers (if you have millions of people constantly not only adding but also deleting pictures from the stream)?

The inability to delete photos anywhere in the stream makes it useless to me.
Stream was one of the features i was looking forward to the most but I've turned it off.
Big fail IMO.

Speak up folks!

http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

spades1412 said:

Speak up folks!

http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. Submitted my .02cents

I think of photostream as more of a transportation for the photos, not storage. It's used to get all the photos to every device, but if you want to keep certain photos, then you move them from the photostream to an album on iPhoto or an album on your iDevice. After all, after you hit 1000 photos, they will start deleting one every time you take a photo, so it shouldn't be the permanent storage place for your photos.

I agree that it was not meant to be permentant storage. But when my granddaughter takes 30 pics of her feet that she just "decorated" with her washable markers I like to just delete them off.

Nevertheless, my big question is this: is the PhotoStream folder on my pc going to be an exact mirror of iCloud or will it just be allowed to grow as time goes by and be my archive? If I can delete from there, allow my pics to be stored there permentantly without my having to go organize them on a schedule then I'm ok with it. But if I have to remember/know that I must move some out of
PhotoStream on my pc because they are due for deletion then I'm now getting the benefit I really want.

donnaw said:

Nevertheless, my big question is this: is the PhotoStream folder on my pc going to be an exact mirror of iCloud or will it just be allowed to grow as time goes by and be my archive? If I can delete from there, allow my pics to be stored there permentantly without my having to go organize them on a schedule then I'm ok with it. But if I have to remember/know that I must move some out of
PhotoStream on my pc because they are due for deletion then I'm now getting the benefit I really want.

Click to expand...

From what I read they only stay in the photo stream for 30 days, but I could be wrong. If it's only temporary, then you just move/copy out the photos you want to keep and forget about the rest. They'll disappear in 30 days.

mgmusicman94 said:

I think of photostream as more of a transportation for the photos, not storage. It's used to get all the photos to every device, but if you want to keep certain photos, then you move them from the photostream to an album on iPhoto or an album on your iDevice. After all, after you hit 1000 photos, they will start deleting one every time you take a photo, so it shouldn't be the permanent storage place for your photos.

Click to expand...

It was my understanding that you could have as many photos (up to your size limit) in your photostream as you want, but that the devices will only show the 1000 most recent photos, even though you may have 3000 photos in your photostream.

If it actually deletes anything beyond 1000 it is a worthless feature for me since I only have a single device.

donnaw said:

I agree that it was not meant to be permentant storage. But when my granddaughter takes 30 pics of her feet that she just "decorated" with her washable markers I like to just delete them off.

Nevertheless, my big question is this: is the PhotoStream folder on my pc going to be an exact mirror of iCloud or will it just be allowed to grow as time goes by and be my archive? If I can delete from there, allow my pics to be stored there permentantly without my having to go organize them on a schedule then I'm ok with it. But if I have to remember/know that I must move some out of
PhotoStream on my pc because they are due for deletion then I'm now getting the benefit I really want.

Click to expand...

I think I remember from the original iCloud announcement that 1,000 photos would be saved on the iOS devices, but the Aperture or iPhoto version would just accumulate indefinitely, ensuring nothing is lost.

Think of that stream as just 'the latest 1,000 photos', even if they are crap. Then, when you get to your computer (iPhoto or Aperture) you pick and choose the ones you want to save into different events.

That was my take?

akm3 said:

I think I remember from the original iCloud announcement that 1,000 photos would be saved on the iOS devices, but the Aperture or iPhoto version would just accumulate indefinitely, ensuring nothing is lost.

Think of that stream as just 'the latest 1,000 photos', even if they are crap. Then, when you get to your computer (iPhoto or Aperture) you pick and choose the ones you want to save into different events.

That was my take?

Click to expand...

That was my understanding as well

Their choice makes the most sense.

thornguy said:

The inability to delete photos anywhere in the stream makes it useless to me.
Stream was one of the features i was looking forward to the most but I've turned it off.
Big fail IMO.

Click to expand...

It's version one. I'm sure in time one will be able to delete something from their stream. But, if you delete from your stream, it will also get deleted from your home computer. So, I am sure they want people to be able to delete because it saves them bandwidth, storage, backup, and the cost of all of that. So, I think it's a pretty good guess that it will happen in a future version.

But, I don't think they want people thinking they are just deleted something from their phone only to realize later that they deleted it from all devices. So, I think is makes more sense to make people sit down at their computer and make a conscious choice about what to keep and what to delete at first.

I can't delete anything from my photo stream in Aperture.

People had a similar complaint regarding the App Store "Purchased" tab, we all buy apps that end up not being any good and really never plan on re-downloading the app, but the point of the 'Purchased' tab is to ensure that if you ever delete an App from your device by mistake, you have a back-up of that app.



But what if you had also deleted the Back-up of that app? well finally in iOS 5 Apple implanted a 'Hide' button.

I think that if enough people submit feedback for Photo Stream, Apple can implement a 'Hide' photo button.

spades1412 said:

Speak up folks!

http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

Click to expand...

Submitted. Thanks for providing the link!

i can delete photostream photos in iphoto just fine. after a month they are removed from your idevice.

you can choose to keep all on your computer but on your i device you have 1 month to move it over to folder to keep it.

works fine

Even though we can't delete photos individually within photostream, at least we can do a deletion of the entire stream if needed. Just wish we could do it from our idevices, and not just on iCloud.

Thanks for the clarification. I have no problem with a running 30-day/1000 limit to PhotoStream. I just needed to know exactly how it would function on my PC. See, I'm retired and while I have plenty of spare time the best thing about retirement is setting your own schedule and being able to change it on a whim. Having to remember to move/save my photos on a regular basis was a turn-off. If my PC keep they forever then I can address them when I want.

I still would like to be able to delete them if I want but I guess I can live with my granddaughter's "photography experiments" sitting there for 30 days.

Thanks again.

donnaw said:

Thanks for the clarification. I have no problem with a running 30-day/1000 limit to PhotoStream. I just needed to know exactly how it would function on my PC. See, I'm retired and while I have plenty of spare time the best thing about retirement is setting your own schedule and being able to change it on a whim. Having to remember to move/save my photos on a regular basis was a turn-off. If my PC keep they forever then I can address them when I want.

I still would like to be able to delete them if I want but I guess I can live with my granddaughter's "photography experiments" sitting there for 30 days.

Thanks again.

Click to expand...

It's too bad this information isn't clearer and I had the same questions you did. The important part is that pictures are kept forever on your PC no matter what you do in Photo Stream.

You can delete pictures out of Photo Stream but it is convoluted. You reset Photo Stream which removes all pictures. Then you can leave it empty or copy the pics you want back in it from your PC. To me it seems like a lot of bother to get rid of the bad pics. I'll take 10 to get a good one.

PNutts said:

It's too bad this information isn't clearer and I had the same questions you did. The important part is that pictures are kept forever on your PC no matter what you do in Photo Stream.

You can delete pictures out of Photo Stream but it is convoluted. You reset Photo Stream which removes all pictures. Then you can leave it empty or copy the pics you want back in it from your PC. To me it seems like a lot of bother to get rid of the bad pics. I'll take 10 to get a good one.

Click to expand...

I agree. Too convoluted. I can live with my bad pics. I'll just sit down once in a while and cleanup the photostrean album on my pc. I don't use that laptop much but I do have to do some maintenance once in a while. I'll just include the photostream cleanup before I run my backup.

iCloud

spades1412 said:

Speak up folks!

http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

Click to expand...

just did thank you for the link

Photostream

From what I can tell so far Photostream will hold the last 30 days worth of photos or the last 1000 that you take on an iOS device or import into iPhoto. These pictures can be viewed from any iOS device and in the photostream folder in iPhoto.

In addition to this, iPhoto has created a new folder "Oct 2011 Photostream" where all this months photos have been automatically duplicated and hopeful kept forever!?

is this how it works? I'm expecting that the photos in the photostream album to start disappearing when they are 30 days old, even from the iPhoto photostream folder but to be kept in the "Oct 2011 Photostream" folder

Photostream is temporary. Don't even open the panel in iPhoto. Go into the physical photo stream folder on your computer and delete what you don't want. Anything on the stream will be deleted in 30 days.

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eewwhh said:

From what I can tell so far Photostream will hold the last 30 days worth of photos or the last 1000 that you take on an iOS device or import into iPhoto. These pictures can be viewed from any iOS device and in the photostream folder in iPhoto.

In addition to this, iPhoto has created a new folder "Oct 2011 Photostream" where all this months photos have been automatically duplicated and hopeful kept forever!?

is this how it works? I'm expecting that the photos in the photostream album to start disappearing when they are 30 days old, even from the iPhoto photostream folder but to be kept in the "Oct 2011 Photostream" folder

Click to expand...

yes, and you can delete whatever you don't want in the Oct 2011 Photostream folder.