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Haynzee

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 13, 2012
101
45
Hi guys,

I'm hoping you can help me with this. Basically syncing Photos on the iPhone is driving me mad as it seems to be duplicating things.

Right so I've tried the following options:

iPhoto - iPhoto works well but I don't like how it locks all the photos in a library as I use Windows too I like to store photos so it can see them too.

So I thought I'd pick it to just sync a with a folder (stored on an exfat drive so Windows can see it). So I created a folder called iPhone Photos and set up the sync in iTunes with it. Problem is now on the iPhone its adding Camera Roll, iPhone Photos and another 1 called Photo Library.

Now I get the idea of Camera Roll is like a temporary folder of photos until I move ones I want to keep in iPhone Photos but what is this "Photo Library" its duplicating all my photos.

Any help you can give would be great. Not ever synced my photos on my old iPhone 3GS never wanted to but on the new iPhone 5 I want to, as I love the camera on it.

Edit: Also what photos get sent to photostream and what is it's benefit as that duplicates photos too plus it has photos I dont want to keep in there.

Thanks.
 

aDRock1154

macrumors 65816
Nov 15, 2011
1,396
9
Ohio
Hi guys,

I'm hoping you can help me with this. Basically syncing Photos on the iPhone is driving me mad as it seems to be duplicating things.

Right so I've tried the following options:

iPhoto - iPhoto works well but I don't like how it locks all the photos in a library as I use Windows too I like to store photos so it can see them too.

So I thought I'd pick it to just sync a with a folder (stored on an exfat drive so Windows can see it). So I created a folder called iPhone Photos and set up the sync in iTunes with it. Problem is now on the iPhone its adding Camera Roll, iPhone Photos and another 1 called Photo Library.

Now I get the idea of Camera Roll is like a temporary folder of photos until I move ones I want to keep in iPhone Photos but what is this "Photo Library" its duplicating all my photos.

Any help you can give would be great. Not ever synced my photos on my old iPhone 3GS never wanted to but on the new iPhone 5 I want to, as I love the camera on it.

Edit: Also what photos get sent to photostream and what is it's benefit as that duplicates photos too plus it has photos I dont want to keep in there.

Thanks.


I'm not positive, but I think photo library is all of the photos (whether they reside in albums or not) in one spot. It's like a catch all for every photo synced to your phone (someone please correct me if i'm wrong).

I do however use photostream and I LOVE it. It stores 1,000 photos and can automatically upload them to iPhoto (which is my favorite part). It's very simple to use.. Once enabled just take some pictures and they will all show up in photostream.

The idea of only keeping 1,000 photos (that's the limit for photostream) is because it's not necessarily storage, but a temporary holding area until you have time to manage the photos.
 

pbrooks

macrumors regular
Jul 15, 2008
168
11
iPhoto is an app that is available for purchase at the MAS and is completely unnecessary for managing photos on an iPhone. The only thing it offers that can't be handled by the default Photos app that came with your phone is advanced image editing options. I think it was a bad decision to give these two apps such similar names. Unless you do any advanced image editing on your phone, you can do all of your photo syncing through Photos and ignore/delete iPhoto.
 

Small White Car

macrumors G4
Aug 29, 2006
10,966
1,463
Washington DC
Imagine an iTunes music library.

Now imagine you take all the music in the library and dump it in one playlist. The library and the playlist will be the same. The idea is that you can make multiple playlists that have different sub-sets, but if you just make one and put everything in it then it does seem kind of redundant. But that's only because you've made a playlists that matches the library.

Ok, now change 'music library' into 'photo folder' and that's basically what you've got going on.
 
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