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iPhone X Managing Photos in a way that doesn't suck

R

Ricky Smith

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 28, 2006
222
1
Boston, MA
For years now I've wanted to throw my iPhone into a shredder because of how LOUSY Apple handles its photo integration. I use to be able to use Image Capture to select the photos I want to remove from my phone and then import / delete. I would import them into folders on my storage array.

That no longer works correctly, half of the time it just locks up and does diddly with Image Capture. It refuses to delete anything from the damn phone even after I've imported them also. Photos sucks because I have zero interest in using Apples photo library. I also can't seem to select and delete images I don't want?

So what gives what do you guys do to manage your photo library from your iPhone? I want to select certain images / videos dump them to a folder on my storage array and delete them from the phone. Using windows explorer also seems to be hit or miss. Basically I want to copy it as if it was a dang SD card from a camera?
 
i feel you there!

i use an app called PhotoSync for years, it's the best solution i found.
 
FileBrowser app will let you transfer your photos to your Mac easily. - to any folder and then you can delete them off your phone.

Maybe for pre-deletion, put all your pics that will be transferred then deleted into an album in the photos app on your phone (to group them), then copy them over with file browser, then it'll be easy to delete everything in that album.

FileBrowser - Document Manager by Stratospherix Ltd
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/filebrowser-document-manager/id364738545?mt=8
 
Apple really needs to make the software quality match the hardware.

Apple makes great cameras but every time I hear Apple brag that “The iPhone is the worlds most popular camera” I want to throw my iPhone at the TV. The Photos.app and lack or family sharing is just embarrassing.
 
PhotoSync is great, let’s you transfer to PC etc or another device, even direct to DropBox, OneDrive etc or a NAS, plenty options, has view mode and transfer mode and can transfer photos/videos quickly with the quick transfer setup.

Adam.
 
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I got tired of the whole mess and moved my entire digital photography library to DropBox. It allows me to allow selected people to look at certain folders and keeps the rest secure. It works cross any platform and it works perfectly for my needs. I got over 1.5 terabytes of digital images.
 
Reason why I refuse to use iCloud for pictures is because there’s absolutely zero way to organise them so I still copy to my desktop and sync into the folder I want.
 
adamgbiggs said:
PhotoSync is great, let’s you transfer to PC etc or another device, even direct to DropBox, OneDrive etc or a NAS, plenty options, has view mode and transfer mode and can transfer photos/videos quickly with the quick transfer setup.

Adam.
Click to expand...

Which Photosync ? There are two that I see in the App Store. One called “Photosync Pro” and the other just called “Photosync”. Neither by the same developer. Thanks.
 
fred98tj said:
Which Photosync ? There are two that I see in the App Store. One called “Photosync Pro” and the other just called “Photosync”. Neither by the same developer. Thanks.
Click to expand...
This one ...
0D7D1C83-979D-4E10-BBD0-E306F289A9B7.jpeg

Adam.
 
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Agree OP. I finally threw in the towel and deleted all photos from my phone, and started using iCloud Photos. Now, for the most part, I can have things the way I want them, using Photos on my computer to organize everything. I had resisted because I didn’t want to upload all my photos to iCloud, but now I’m happy I did.
 
lyceumHQ said:
Reason why I refuse to use iCloud for pictures is because there’s absolutely zero way to organise them so I still copy to my desktop and sync into the folder I want.
Click to expand...
I'm curious: how do you want to organise them that you can't do with Photos / iCloud Photo library (which can group them by date, by location, by person in the photo, manually in albums or automatically in albums based on set search criteria)?
 
I gave up trying to organise and share our family photos with Apple and went to Google photos. Created a single Google ID for the family and it works great. Sorry, Apple, but Google wins here.
 
adamgbiggs said:
This one ...
View attachment 799355
Adam.
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I’m going to try this. I used to transfer to PC using the cord and Windows Explorer, but that’s become a pain as it gives me an error after transferring a handful of files, leaving me to figure out where it left off, many times out of order. I’ve tried 3 different USB-Lightening drives which work for the most part but slow, each with their own app: iDiskk Pro, iXpand Drive, Xtra Drive. Things have gotten worse with 4K videos. I had to upload one a couple days ago to One Drive in the Cloud to then download to the PC, nothing else worked.
 
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Google Photos is undeniably better. High quality = unlimited photo storage up to 16 megapixels (the iPhone shoots 12MP so you're perfectly fine) and uncapped 1080p 60FPS videos. The only limitation is you can't upload 4K video into the unlimited capacity associated with high quality images since 4K is tedious in terms of size consumption.

I use it as a standalone back up should dropbox/onedrive fail on me someday. :)
Apple's photo app is also weird and clunky to me right now... hence the three back up points for me; dropbox, onedrive, google photos.

don't give two ***** if google wants to take my data since i'm not someone who's significant in life. as long the data is used for better (aka building a realistic 3d image of the world at that particular GPS location is something i'm keen on)
 
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iKevinT said:
I’m going to try this. I used to transfer to PC using the cord and Windows Explorer, but that’s become a pain as it gives me an error after transferring a handful of files, leaving me to figure out where it left off, many times out of order. I’ve tried 3 different USB-Lightening drives which work for the most part but slow, each with their own app: iDiskk Pro, iXpand Drive, Xtra Drive. Things have gotten worse with 4K videos. I had to upload one a couple days ago to One Drive in the Cloud to then download to the PC, nothing else worked.
Click to expand...
In my opinion PhotoSync is awesome, it’s just so easy to transfer to/from devices without cables etc, it’s well worth it.

Adam.
 
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alFR said:
I'm curious: how do you want to organise them that you can't do with Photos / iCloud Photo library (which can group them by date, by location, by person in the photo, manually in albums or automatically in albums based on set search criteria)?
Click to expand...

I use folders like ‘my dog’, ‘nieces’ etc etc.

When you upload to iCloud it deletes all the photos I’ve synced from iTunes and uploads them all into one folder. I then have to reorganise 5k pictures into folders again. But they don’t just stay in the folders they also stay in the ‘all photos’ folder. It annoys me because I sort them into folders for them to be sorted not to then still have a massive folder with every pic in.

Any once synced to iCloud Even if I deleted a pic from the phone it would reappear after every sync. So I’d then have to log in to iCloud on my desktop to delete the photo and 9 times out of 10 it would turn up on the phone again after the next sync.

I tried the desktop version but again. Delete from phone. Pictures turn up on the phone next sync because I’ve not deleted them on my desktop. So I have to have separate folders on my desktop.

Far simpler to sort into folders on desktop. Sync via iTunes. Pics show in the folder I want them in. I don’t have one big ‘all photos’ folder. And if I delete a pic. It stays deleted.

Surely apple could just allow the user to move camera roll photos into existing folders.
 
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I tried iCloud Photos when it first came out and found that I couldn’t edit the photos on my iPhone with other apps because the full size version of the photo wasn’t on my iPhone, it was in the cloud. Slow connection or whatever, wouldn’t download the pictures to my iPhone. It felt like I had lost all control over my pictures and will never trust it again.
 
adamgbiggs said:
In my opinion PhotoSync is awesome, it’s just so easy to transfer to/from devices without cables etc, it’s well worth it.

Adam.
Click to expand...

Wow the app is awesome. I just transferred 182 files at 47.9 GB from my iPhone to my PC in a few minutes without any hiccups! Thank you.
 
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I’ve been using iCloud photo for years until now. It worked great, it allows me to have my entire photo library accessible across all my devices, let it be a 64g iPhone, 128g iPad, or 256g Mac. Also when i’m Traveling, i just bring a lightning-SD adapter, import all photos i take to my iPhone/iPad, edit it, post it and it will be saved to cloud and to all my devices. And iPhone will automatically optimize storage so it doesn’t even take much of storage.
However the problem is, the storage only goes up to 2TB. I have a sony A7 camera and one photo alone is 80/40m (uncompressed/compressed). I can easily shoot 100GB+ a day with not much 4K video.

So now i use google cloud. I pay $10 a month and i have unlimited storage, for all my photo, video and other stuff there. Yes it’s not as well optimized, integrated, and not as easy to use as iCloud photo, but it works.
 
I'll have to try PhotoSync I should have mentioned two other requirements (perhaps one requirement)

Actual Requirement: I don't want it in the cloud I want to backup to my local RAID array and be able to edit. I don't want anything in the cloud for pure storage volume and I don't like having to worry about paying a monthly bill when I have terabytes of storage sitting idle.

Second Requirement: I would prefer to use the lighting cable for speed sakes, so I'm trying PhotoSync but my gripe with that is its over the wifi.
 
I guess I’m one of those lucky people who the Photos app happens to “just work” for.

After many years of resisting I finally gave in and paid for iCloud storage. I’m convinced Live Photos exist for only this reason. (File sizes make it impossible to fit in the free 5gb of storage) I travel a lot and take loads of photos and videos. I have relied on my own backups for years but it became a pain. I just have more important things to do.

I also don’t turn off EXIf data or GPS. I did my best to train phots to the faces in my library. Now pretty much all my photos are in one location and easily searchable. I can name a person, a place or a date in search and the photos app seems to locate exactly what I was looking for.

It’s also not hard to share photos with other people and it integrates well into FinalCut Pro X and other iWork apps.
 
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