Cannot figure out how to manage photos (duplicates everywhere)

[tobefirst ⚽️]

For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to properly manage photos on my iPhone and Mac. Every photo I take ends up appearing my iOS Photos app twice, one of which is deletable, and the other which is not. From what I gather, I can delete only one of them because that is in my Camera Roll. The other one, apparently, I must delete from my computer.

With the 6s now, though, the only one I can delete is the Live Photos version, which would just leave a simple .jpg.

I had My Photo Stream turned on, but turned that off. I don't have the iCloud Photo Library turned on.

What do I have to do to stop getting all of these duplicate photos? What other information can I provide to help you help me?

 

[eyoungren]

Are you using albums, or just the camera roll?

I ask, because in Apple's infinite 'wisdom' they decided that albums would simply be organized pointers to pictures in the camera roll. Or, to use a modern analogy - an album is nothing more than a photo that's been tagged.

So, photos that are in 'albums' exist in two places, the 'album' and the camera roll.

Apple thinks this is the better option than actually allowing photos to move from the camera roll into an album.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

I do have some albums that I had created in iPhoto (and are now in Photos) on my Mac. Though photos that I haven't ever put into albums are duplicated, too. I am seeing the duplicates in what I consider to be the main view of the iOS Photos app: Photos>Years>Collections. That's where all of my photos are, and that's where they are all duplicated.

 

[rugmankc]

Are you clicking on "Import All New Items" in top right corner of Photos Library window on your Mac when you iPhone is plugged in. And you have your iPhone selected. I did that thinking only new would be imported. But, it imported most of my Album photos. had to manually delete them. I am not well versed on this stuff and assume that is the way it was suppose to work. Although, it doesn't make sense to me.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

Are you clicking on "Import All New Items" in top right corner of Photos Library window on your Mac when you iPhone is plugged in. And you have your iPhone selected. I did that thinking only new would be imported. But, it imported most of my Album photos. had to manually delete them. I am not well versed on this stuff and assume that is the way it was suppose to work. Although, it doesn't make sense to me.

I'm not sure that's it, though I can't be sure at the moment. I have used "Import All New Items," but it seems like, even without doing that, I still end up with duplicates. Ugh.

 

[Will22]

Are you using albums, or just the camera roll?

I ask, because in Apple's infinite 'wisdom' they decided that albums would simply be organized pointers to pictures in the camera roll. Or, to use a modern analogy - an album is nothing more than a photo that's been tagged.

So, photos that are in 'albums' exist in two places, the 'album' and the camera roll.

Apple thinks this is the better option than actually allowing photos to move from the camera roll into an album.

It is things like this that make me wonder about their thinking. They must think, 'let's do something really stupid today' to make it harder to use the phone.

 

[eyoungren]

It is things like this that make me wonder about their thinking. They must think, 'let's do something really stupid today' to make it harder to use the phone.

Yeah. It's almost sometimes like they took everything they learned from OS on the Mac and decided to do the opposite on iOS - just because.