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Other How to Move (Not Just Copy) Photos from Camera Roll to an Album?

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MacPerforma

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 6, 2008
33
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When I create a photo album on my iPhone (5s / iOS 7), the photos are copied from the Camera Roll to the album yet still remain in the Camera Roll. Along the same lines, if I delete a photo from the Camera Roll, it will also be deleted from its assigned album.

Is there some sort of third party app that I can use either on my iPhone or my Mac to sort my Camera Roll photos into albums and actually have the photos moved to the album (without having to keep a copy in the Camera Roll)? In other words, I'd like to be able to create multiple albums, move the pictures from the Camera Roll into the albums, and have an empty Camera Roll when I'm done.

Thanks for any advice!
 
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Unless you jailbreak there is no way to do this.

Apple sees it this way. Albums are simply shortcuts to your photos that are in the camera roll.

PhotoAlbum+ will do what you want (and there is one other), but these are jailbreak tweaks. If you aren't on iOS6.x then you're stuck until the iOS 7 jailbreak.
 
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So if I make an album and it saves both photos in the camera roll and the album, will it eat space twice? Or is it not a duplicate?
 
It's actually stored in your camera roll. Again, albums are just direct pointers to the pictures in the roll.

Think of it like an alias (or shortcut) to a file or folder on your desktop (on your computer). The alias or shortcut is not a duplicate of the file or folder, it's simply a pointer to it so that you can go right to it.

I disagree with Apple's approach on this. I think you should just be able to move photos to actual albums and store them there, but I'm not the one making the decisions so I'm stuck with it. Which is why I installed PhotoAlbum+.
 
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This functionality represents the worst in software design principles.

The user story is: As a user I want to move (not copy) a photo from the default camera roll to a new album so that I can quickly access photos that I am looking for.
Software team interpreted requirement: Users will be forced to only organize photos on their laptops because they are ignorant and don't know what they want. There is never a good reason to move an image file from the camera role and only keep a reference to the file in another folder. We know, we work for Apple.

Nothing logical or computational prevents a function from creating a pointer to an image file in a new folder (directory | album) and removing the original pointer in the camera roll.
 
I see no issue. It makes sense that camera roll is the file system storing the photos and albums are a shortcut to seeing related pictures that are tagged. Whats wrong with these duplicates ? Is it space ? As someone who cherishes photos the more backups that are available the better.

If space is the issue then in that case I would say the issue is we need larger memory iPhones not change how they are stored. Actual online storage and Viewing is what should be implemented and not what the OP suggests imo.
 
Nevaborn said:
I see no issue. It makes sense that camera roll is the file system storing the photos and albums are a shortcut to seeing related pictures that are tagged. Whats wrong with these duplicates ? Is it space ? As someone who cherishes photos the more backups that are available the better.

If space is the issue then in that case I would say the issue is we need larger memory iPhones not change how they are stored. Actual online storage and Viewing is what should be implemented and not what the OP suggests imo.
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Photos should exist in one place. Either in the Camera Roll or in an album. But not in the Camera roll with an album serving as a pointer. Wherever the photo is located, the space is the same because there is only one copy. We may disagree on that, Apple obviously does.

But that's the great thing about jailbreaking. I don't have to be bound by what Apple thinks should or should not be. Consequently, my Cameral Roll functions the way I think it should.
 
For me the issue is I need to easily identify just my new photos so that I can move them to a new item. That would be much easier if I can clean out camera roll.
 
I like it the way it is. It's not using anymore space it's just showing photos from the camera roll into a more personalized folder.
 
What I like about my secondary device (the Lumia 920) is that Windows Phone automatically sorts pictures into the following folders: Camera roll (pictures taken with the camera), Saved Pictures (pictures saved from the internet, texts, etc.), and Screenshots (this one is obvious). I wish iOS did something similar because it makes everything much easier to find.

For example, if I save a picture today, go on vacation tomorrow and take lots of pictures, then come back from vacation and remember that I need to reference the picture I saved today. Instead of scrolling through all my pictures, I can just go to the saved pictures folder and find it easier.
 
I wish Apple would just re-name the albums as Photo-Playlists so people can stop complaining about this.

I've never heard anyone complain about iTunes music playlist existing and yet this album complaint keeps popping up again and again even though it's the exact same system.

I can only figure that they've chosen bad descriptive words.
 
I presume the reason they still exist in a camera roll AND album is because of syncing between devices. Every photo my wife takes and I take syncs between our two phones. This ensures that we don't have to manually share the photo of our son (yes we take too many...) every time.

Being that these photos aren't actually using up space twice, I am sort of at a loss as to why this is an issue. Sure you can see it in two places but... why is that such a bad thing? :confused:
 
Small White Car said:
I wish Apple would just re-name the albums as Photo-Playlists so people can stop complaining about this.

I've never heard anyone complain about iTunes music playlist existing and yet this album complaint keeps popping up again and again even though it's the exact same system.
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it's far from being the same system actually. while your itunes songs are separated by albums and artists (that is, even without playlists), there is no such distinction for the pictures in the camera roll.

to further your analogy, the camera roll is like a heap of untagged itunes songs. you could arrange it into playlists where each album is a list, but it would be crazy.

of course, not all pictures need to be arranged this way (unlike songs). there is also geotagging which is handled perfectly in ios. but separate albums would still be very handy. typically for holidays. you spend 3 weeks travelling, shooting tons of pictures. why not put these into a separate folder? it's tiresome to scroll through a 1000 pics everytime you need to find a pic taken before that vacation...
 
Hi MacPerforma, there's meanwhile the iOS app Utiful for moving photos into folders. Utiful is a complementary photo library, so you can freely move photos between the Camera Roll and the Utiful folders. So, unlike the Photos app than only duplicates photos into albums, Utiful makes it finally possible to physically MOVE photos out of the Camera Roll.

It's available both for iPhone and iPad, here's the link to the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/utiful-divide-rule-your-photo/id1034958660?ls=1&mt=8


MacPerforma said:
When I create a photo album on my iPhone (5s / iOS 7), the photos are copied from the Camera Roll to the album yet still remain in the Camera Roll. Along the same lines, if I delete a photo from the Camera Roll, it will also be deleted from its assigned album.

Is there some sort of third party app that I can use either on my iPhone or my Mac to sort my Camera Roll photos into albums and actually have the photos moved to the album (without having to keep a copy in the Camera Roll)? In other words, I'd like to be able to create multiple albums, move the pictures from the Camera Roll into the albums, and have an empty Camera Roll when I'm done.

Thanks for any advice!
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1455151394][/doublepost]The iOS app Utiful does the job.

thelookingglass said:
As far as I know, the only way to do this is to offload the photos on to a computer, sort into albums and then sync via iTunes. There's no way to do it directly on an iOS device.
Click to expand...
 
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pavelatanassov said:
Hi MacPerforma, there's meanwhile the iOS app Utiful for moving photos into folders. Utiful is a complementary photo library, so you can freely move photos between the Camera Roll and the Utiful folders. So, unlike the Photos app than only duplicates photos into albums, Utiful makes it finally possible to physically MOVE photos out of the Camera Roll.

It's available both for iPhone and iPad, here's the link to the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/utiful-divide-rule-your-photo/id1034958660?ls=1&mt=8



[doublepost=1455151394][/doublepost]The iOS app Utiful does the job.
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You resurrected a 2.5 year old thread to promote an app?!!!

Most assuredly the OP of this thread either solved his problem or moved on in the last two and a half years!
 
eyoungren said:
You resurrected a 2.5 year old thread to promote an app?!!!

Most assuredly the OP of this thread either solved his problem or moved on in the last two and a half years!
Click to expand...

Actually that helped me out a lot. Thank you for the advice on the app. Found your thread through a google search and dl'ed the app and love it.
 
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smithrjames said:
Actually that helped me out a lot. Thank you for the advice on the app. Found your thread through a google search and dl'ed the app and love it.
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That's great - for you and the dev who still has only ONE post (the one in this thread).

No offense, but there is a reason newbies choose to dig up old threads and spam them with links to their apps. And that is to avoid detection by moderators and subsequent deletion of their posts.

pavelatanassov could have started a brand new thread about this app but the chances of it staying up would be very slim.

So, my point is that while I'm glad whatever app he was advertising helped you - that doesn't justify his creation of an account here solely to link-spam for his app.
 
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eyoungren said:
That's great - for you and the dev who still has only ONE post (the one in this thread).

No offense, but there is a reason newbies choose to dig up old threads and spam them with links to their apps. And that is to avoid detection by moderators and subsequent deletion of their posts.

pavelatanassov could have started a brand new thread about this app but the chances of it staying up would be very slim.

So, my point is that while I'm glad whatever app he was advertising helped you - that doesn't justify his creation of an account here solely to link-spam for his app.
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It seems I just created an account to say I'm happy people do stuff like that, because I'm researching this problem myself, and coming across this did two things....

-It helped me with my problem

-It introduced me to this forum. I probably would have not bothered and kept on scrolling if I saw the most recent post on this was 2.5 years ago when I could find more up to date info elsewhere.

He answered a question that people have, and still have. I am getting more and more into my art, both digital and other media. I have photos saved for reference, inspiration, study....etc.... So my camera roll is a mess. I can't jailbreak my iPad because I need to be able to keep up to date with the most current IOS in order to keep my art app up to date. So while I would love to jailbreak my iPad, I can't, so I'm still looking for other options.

But honestly, I'm impatient, if I would have looked at the last response on this being so long ago, I probably would have just moved on. Now I'm a member of this forum that could help me with other problems in the future. I think that's a good thing, right?

However.....Maybe I'm missing the problem, I'm a "newb" too, and may be jumped on for bringing any of this up anyway, but I felt it needed to be said. I guess I thought that part of the purpose of this forum is to help people with issues. So honestly don't know if I'll come back around, it seems kind of negative just from the back and forth responses I've read in this thread alone. Good grief, it's not religion or politics.....its just a phone lol

Anyway....yeah, it's not lost on me that I claim impatience but took the time to post this :rolleyes: I'm a mess too. I just thought it was a little harsh.
 
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