My iPhone 4s is getting pretty full, mostly from pictures/videos. I know i can just save my pics to my MB Pro, but i still want to be able to access my pics from my phone when im on the go, whats the best way to go about doing this?
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If pics are on Photo stream can i delete them from phone?
- Thread starter Wills.Details
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Photostream is a duplicate saved on the device. So deleting it off photostream OR camera roll will reduce usage. Just keep in mind deleting a photo off of photostream will affect other devices sharing that photostream.
I save all my photos to my Mac. I also save them to Dropbox. So I can access them from my phone without them being on the phone.
"My Photo Stream" only saves photos in the cloud for 30 days. After that, while they may still stay cached on your phone, if you ever have to erase the contents of the phone, you'll only get the past 30 days photos back afterwards. You can setup your Mac to automatically download new Photo Stream images to iPhoto/Aperture. ("Automatically" does not necessarily mean instantly - I've seen several hours go by before the images were pushed onto my Mac).
"Shared Photo Stream" is permanent storage in iCloud, and has the added benefit that you can share those streams with your family and friends. This is what I'd recommend for you. Create one or more shared streams (you can have up to 100), add the desired images, then delete the images from your Camera Roll.
I think I read somewhere that photostream doesn't have the full-resolution files and is only a temporary placeholder until you back up and sync your iPhone.
This idea sounds very good to me. How do you go about being able to access your photos via drop box on your phone? Is there an app or some other way?
Also whats the best way you have found to be able to transfer your pics from your phone to drop box?
Thanks all for your replies.
No, not the case.
The original image is uploaded to iCloud in full resolution.
Downloading from My Photo Stream is a somewhat different story - images that are pushed from the cloud onto Macs and PCs will be delivered in full resolution. Images pushed to other iOS devices will be delivered in "device-optimized" resolutions.
In other words, if you take the photo on your iPhone, the version stored in iCloud will be full resolution, the version downloaded to iPhoto on your Mac will be full resolution, but the version downloaded to your iPod Touch may be in reduced resolution.
Apple's official FAQ
So, as long as you have your Mac or PC setup to automatically download from My Photo Stream, you will be saving the full resolution images to your computer. It's the same quality you'd have if you synced your iPhone to the computer.
But if you create a Shared Photo stream, it will take up space on your device anyway...?
Effectively you're moving your photos from your camera roll to the Shared Photo Stream, which can only be removed from your device if you delete it, in which case it will be deleted from ICloud and your other devices too.
Dropbox app. You can upload and view photos from the app. This requires data obviously. You can also re-save the photo back to the phone if you know you are going to be viewing it a lot or whatever.
Thanks for the clarification. The support page isn't clear on this, but I now see if I have "Automatic Import" box checked in Photo Stream (under preferences in iPhoto), this does the trick.
PhotoStream is not suitable for long term storage at all. Think of it more like a bridge to get your photos to other devices wirelessly. The only proper backup solutions would be to either sync them to your computer directly or download an app like Dropbox/OneDrive and upload them there. In either of those cases once the photos are copied you can remove them from the iPhone to free up space.
Yes, the images from Photo Stream will take up space, but it'll be less space. As I noted earlier, iCloud pushes an "optimized" image back to the device, which reduces storage space and necessary bandwidth. To quote Apple:
The 8MP camera on most iPhones yields a resolution of 3264x2448. The "optimized" version would be equivalent to a 3.1MP camera.
Further, in the case of Shared Streams, if you never view the full-size image, only the thumbnail will be stored on the iPhone. The first time you tap to view the image you'll see "Loading..." and the spinning gear.
It also seems that the full-size Shared Stream images are automatically deleted at some point, leaving just the thumbnail behind. If I access a Shared Stream I haven't viewed in a while, the images have to load again. Presumably, they were deleted at some point based on criterial like "last viewed on" and available space on the device.
I suspect that under iOS 8/Yosemite, when Apple hopes we'll trust our entire iPhoto/Aperture library to iCloud, even thumbnails of infrequently-viewed images may not be stored on the device - maybe it'll store only the micro-thumbnails we see when browsing Collections in iOS 7.
Ultimately, no matter what we do, if we don't delete stuff we're going to hit a storage space limit at some point. That'll happen if we upload to Dropbox or a photo sharing site (need to pay for additional storage), it'll happen on a 3TB HDD, and it most definitely will happen on an iPhone. Do we really have to carry around every badly-made image we've ever taken? Archive it all on your computer, and keep only the good stuff on the phone. Create albums on the computer and sync or use Shared Streams to put them back on the phone.