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Renovatio77

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 29, 2021
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Hi everyone!

New user here, meaning that after a life with Android devices I decided to switch and in September I got an iPhone 13, Apple Watch, iPods and this week an iPad mini. Overall I'm super happy with the OS and the devices, it's a good experience and an amazing ecosystem. It's normal that some things you need time to get used to and some things you might find them "not that good", but my main concern is with the Photos.
I tried to find answers here and on the web but got some different feedback so I decided to open a thread. These are my doubts:

- Photo taken with the camera, downloaded images from apps and safari they go all finish in the recent folder. Really? REALLY? Like this it's really a mess. I found here a "shortcut" that will help to move (ah no... copy -_-) photos taken with the camera in another folder that I named "camera" but to me this is not really great as solution. Is there a way to keep things really divided?

- You download an image, let's say a wallpaper, from a website but to use it you need to copy it from the download folder to photos. Correct? Tell me I'm wrong please, this just get the point above even worse.

- With Google Photos you can upload your pictures to "the cloud" and they would still be visible on your phone like you actually still have there but without using the space on the device. Is there a way to do the same with Apple? It's not about being afraid to finish the storage but to me in 2022 doesn't make any sense to do not have this option.

Hope you can help me to have clear ideas on this and find some solution where needed.

Thank you!
 
You can download photos from the web directly into the Photos app. Instead of "downloading" them in Safari (or whatever browser you're using), choose to "view" them instead, then tap and hold on the photo and tap the "Add to Photos" option.

As for where photos are saved when you take a photo using the camera, I don't believe there's any way to change that, BUT iOS does provide some "Media Types" filters at the bottom of the Albums tab in Photos that you can use to see only those types of images (e.g. Selfies, Screenshots, etc.), but unfortunately there's no media type for just photos taken with the rear camera(s), so they will be mixed in with everything in the "Recents" album (which is really "all photos"). So you'd have to manually create albums from photos in the "Recents" album unless the images were one of the pre-defined media types.

I don't use a cloud-service to sync my photos, so I'll let someone else chime in on that part.
 
#1 & #2: What they said^^.

#3: iCloud Photos. Or keep using Google Photos: that has an option to backup your iPhone photos to their service. I have not turned on sync go gPhotos so cannot really comment on how well that works, but in theory, can sync to Google and remove the pictures from Photos. Use gPhoto for organizing.
 
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Welcome to the Apple ecosystem. You have discovered the big, stinking, 800 pound gorilla in the room. iOS and iPadOS don’t have a real, usable file system like macOS, Windows, Linux, etc. And along with that you discovered the other ugly truth and that is Apple doesn’t have a frigging clue about photography or image management. I gave up on that terrible garbage called “Photos” a long time ago. It is designed for mindless fan folks who just take photos for social media and what not. It isn’t designed for anyone who wants to do serious photography and serious image management. You need a decent file system which actually gives you access to itself for that to happen. BTW, be careful deleting photos from the Recents folder because chances are it will delete all the copies from everywhere you copied them too. And good frigging luck telling which copy is which since, you guessed it, there is no simple filing system way of naming them and seeing those names. Did I mention Photos suck? Well it does.
 
Welcome to the Apple ecosystem. You have discovered the big, stinking, 800 pound gorilla in the room. iOS and iPadOS don’t have a real, usable file system like macOS, Windows, Linux, etc. And along with that you discovered the other ugly truth and that is Apple doesn’t have a frigging clue about photography or image management. I gave up on that terrible garbage called “Photos” a long time ago. It is designed for mindless fan folks who just take photos for social media and what not. It isn’t designed for anyone who wants to do serious photography and serious image management. You need a decent file system which actually gives you access to itself for that to happen. BTW, be careful deleting photos from the Recents folder because chances are it will delete all the copies from everywhere you copied them too. And good frigging luck telling which copy is which since, you guessed it, there is no simple filing system way of naming them and seeing those names. Did I mention Photos suck? Well it does.
Thanks for the reply, so what is your solution for this? What are you using?
 
It is designed for mindless fan folks who just take photos for social media and what not. It isn’t designed for anyone who wants to do serious photography and serious image management.

I agree except for insulting casual users by calling them "mindless fan folks" ? Just because someone isn't a professional or serious amateur photographer doesn't make you better than them or vice versa.
 
There is no “solution” to the image filing behaviors experienced in iOS. It is what it is - apple’s way or the highway.
The “Recents” folder has changed its name over the years. It used to be called “Camera Roll” but behaved exactly the same.
They really don’t know what to call that folder, so I’ll call it what it is: All Photos.

iOS is so sandboxed that almost every app can only access images from the Photos app. In iOS 9 (6 years ago) the organization of the Photos app was much better- simpler.
 
There is no “solution” to the image filing behaviors experienced in iOS. It is what it is - apple’s way or the highway.
The “Recents” folder has changed its name over the years. It used to be called “Camera Roll” but behaved exactly the same.
They really don’t know what to call that folder, so I’ll call it what it is: All Photos.

iOS is so sandboxed that almost every app can only access images from the Photos app. In iOS 9 (6 years ago) the organization of the Photos app was much better- simpler.
The "Recents" folder isn't "All Photos", "Library" - "All Photos" is "All Photos".
 
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Use "Search". Over time this will get populated with "Locations", "People", Categories" and more. Also, if you open a photo, tap on the little "i", than you can name that photo and search for that to.
 
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I’d suggest at least getting used to viewing your photos from the main “All Photos” window rather than “Recents” in the album view. It’s much easier to see your photos organized by, day month, year, etc. from that window.

Because Photos is a package file it’s not letting you see the underlying folder structure—in fact, if you could it would just be a bunch of gobbledygook.
 
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The "Recents" folder isn't "All Photos", "Library" - "All Photos" is "All Photos".
Welll...sort of...it IS the dumping ground for all photos/videos until YOU move them somewhere else.

1) Would like the option to auto dump certain photos automatically into an album of my choosing BEFORE taking a series of pics. I find myself using the "library" view more now to organize as it at least shows pics in a a dated format making it easier to move to a personal created album.

2) Still would like a passcode for access to the "hidden" album. I take photos of certain i.d's, passports, credit cards, etc so have them in one place...it certainly NOT for and nudes I may have on my phone ?
? ?

Other than that, I really like the way photos handles pics...just takes a little work to find some workarounds that work best for you to get the most out of it. But considering even Apple admits that the iPhone/iPad has become mainly a photographic device, they should put more attention to the file management of photos and vids IMHO.
 
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The "Recents" folder isn't "All Photos", "Library" - "All Photos" is "All Photos".

Welll...sort of...it IS the dumping ground for all photos/videos until YOU move them somewhere else.

Actually, it IS "all photos" in order from most recent (thus the name) to oldest. And if you add photos from "Recents" to another album, they still show up in "Recents".

Library > All Photos is simply the catch-all category vs. the other categories (Years/Months/Days) on the Library tab. It is identical to the "Recents" album.
 
Library > All Photos is simply the catch-all category vs. the other categories (Years/Months/Days) on the Library tab. It is identical to the "Recents" album.

Yep…don’t disagree…my point is, they are at least sorted/labeled so one can find and grab a set of pictures to dump into a spec user specific album.

I also need to do a better job of adding people so I can search via “face”.
 
Yep…don’t disagree…my point is, they are at least sorted/labeled so one can find and grab a set of pictures to dump into a spec user specific album.

I also need to do a better job of adding people so I can search via “face”.

Actually the part of my post that was meant to address your quote was this:

And if you add photos from "Recents" to another album, they still show up in "Recents".

I was just pointing out that even when you add photos from "Recents" to a separate album, they don't disappear from Recents. So you're not really "dumping" them anywhere but rather simply adding a more specific "tag" to them (namely, an album title). My apologies if you knew this already, but your post seemed to imply that photos actually get moved out of "Recents" when you add them to an album.
 
Actually the part of my post that was meant to address your quote was this:



I was just pointing out that even when you add photos from "Recents" to a separate album, they don't disappear from Recents. So you're not really "dumping" them anywhere but rather simply adding a more specific "tag" to them (namely, an album title). My apologies if you knew this already, but your post seemed to imply that photos actually get moved out of "Recents" when you add them to an album.

Yep…I know that…although, “hidden” does remove the photo from recents, but it’s the only exception I am aware of.
 
Thanks for the reply, so what is your solution for this? What are you using?

No easy fix.
I use Files to move the photos to a destination, manually from my 13 ProMax.
Have a personal cloud drive and a dongle with mSD cards. Once moved I rename them and sort them.
This is my work around for iOS.
It is a lot easier on Android.
 
Thanks for the reply, so what is your solution for this? What are you using?
Easy. Don't let the phone be authoritative. There's no reason to do so, even if it had the best management possible.

It's a camera. It takes pictures. That's all.
 
...
- With Google Photos you can upload your pictures to "the cloud" and they would still be visible on your phone like you actually still have there but without using the space on the device. Is there a way to do the same with Apple? It's not about being afraid to finish the storage but to me in 2022 doesn't make any sense to do not have this option.
...
In Settings -> Photos turn on iCloud Photos. Once on, two new options appear, select Optimize iPhone Storage.
This way the full resolution photos are uploaded/stored in iCloud, while a lower resolution version sits on the phone. When zooming in/editing/sharing a photo however the full resolution version is downloaded automatically and used. We have an old 64GB SE here will 'all pictures/movies on it' while the photo library is actually +200GB ;-)
 
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