Possible to sync only _new_ photos with iphoto?

[betsyroper]

Hi,

Newbie here - sorry of this has been covered elsewhere. i searched, but couldn't find anything. My problem is that every time I sync with my computer iphoto wants to import all the photos on my iphone. then i have to tell it to ignore duplicates - every time. highly annoying. anyway to disable iphoto sync, or specify that only new photos be imported?

thanks in advance,
betsy

 

[Small White Car]

In iTunes (when the phone is plugged in) you select the "photo" tab.

You choose which iPhoto albums you want the phone to sync with. You can pick a few manual albums that you arrange by hand if you like.

I suggest making a smart album in iPhoto and program it to only show photos taken in the last 3 weeks. Then sync that to the phone in iTunes. That's a good way to keep recent stuff without having to think about it.

 

[bstpierre]

I think the situation that the OP is talking about is when she connects her iPhone to her Mac it thinks she has just attached a camera so iPhoto openes up and offers to download all of her pictures.

If I am correct with that read of her question than there are possibilities.

With the iPhone connected you can open the application called ImageCapture and there is a menu selection to specify what occurs when the device is connected. I think you can select "ignore". It has been a while since I have done this and I think it works properly these days. In the past the selection wouldn't stick so you had to instead tell it to run a specific application and there was an applescript application available that would quickly load, do nothing and move on (avoiding the lengthy iPhoto loading).

I am at work where there are no Macs but I believe the most modern iPhoto does allow you to download only new photos. I'll have to check that (and the status of the imagecapture app) later tonight and confirm back.

Edit: I just reread the original question and see that you know you can specify new photos only but don't like doing so each time it comes up.

 

[gigapocket1]

When in iphoto and you are at the import screen. At the bottom left you should see something that says something like hide already imported photos. Just have that checked.. Now everytime u open iPhoto when the phone is connected it will only give u the option to copy over new photos

 

[Small White Car]

With the iPhone connected you can open the application called ImageCapture and there is a menu selection to specify what occurs when the device is connected. I think you can select "ignore".

Ah, I think you're right and I think you have the right solution here.

That's only half the solution, though.

When the OP eventually DOES import photos, she'll still get the "duplicates" message because she is apparently not erasing photos after she imports.

Betsy, when you import you need to "Import All" and then "Erase All" once the import is done. Don't use your camera roll as a long-term storage solution or you'll just run into annoying trouble (like having the 'duplicate' message pop up all the time).

Alway import and erase. Then, by making albums and syncing back to the phoen (as I said in my other post) you'll continue to have all those photos with you. They'll just be in albums and not your camera roll.

 

[betsyroper]

thanks - and a follow up question

thanks guys - you nailed it - I wasn't importing and deleting and my camera roll file was huge! So I imported and deleted and made custom albums in iPhoto which I now sync. Works great.
Only one problem, there is one video I shot on the iPhone that I wanted to keep a copy of on the phone. Now it's imported into iPhoto and I have it in a folder to be synced back to the phone. My iTunes preferences are checked to 'include video' but the folder registers as 0 items in iTunes and it doesn't sync and transfer. I tried emailing it to myself but iphone said the file was to large to read. Am i out of luck here or do you have a possible work around? Also, in the future, how should i import & delete if i want to retain my videos since it seems I can't sync them once they've been deleted from the iphone?

thanks again - you guys are invaluable!!
betsy

 

[Small White Car]

I don't have a 3GS so I can't shoot video, but I THINK what you want to do is take the video out of iPhoto and import it into iTunes.

iPhoto keeps videos, but doesn't do much else with them. (It can't even play them!)

I believe iTunes won't sync the videos from an iPhoto library to an iPhone, but if the movie is IN iTunes then it's just like any other movie and will copy to the phone just fine.

Let us know if that doesn't work, I have 2 other ideas. But if this works it'll be your best solution.

As an additional tip, I would open the properties of the movie file inside iTunes and set its genre to either 'Home Movie' or 'iPhone Video' or something like that.

That way you'll have an easy way to search iTunes for your own movies in the future.

 

[The Wedge]

Moving them to iTunes will probably work, but won't you lose the ability to use them in iMovie? iMovie will not import the videos from the iPhone. The only way is to import to iPhoto then open iMovie and select the option to use iPhoto videos.

It's pretty annoying that iMovie will not import video from the iPhone like other videos.

 

[betsyroper]

Update and still further questions...

Thanks yet again!

Importing the video into itunes and then syncing back to the iphone worked. Interesting side note, the video was taken with the iphone held vertically but somewhere in the sync universe ended up being stored back on the iphone horizontally - so in order to view the whole image you have to zoom out, thus cutting the picture size in half. weird, huh?

so my question is about imovie, which I have never had occasion to use before. i can't seem to import video into imovie - not from the desktop, not from itunes, and not by dragging and dropping. I'm stumped. Someone mentioned checking the 'use itunes video' option but I can't find that tab. Any suggestions for how to make imovie talk to itunes?

thanks!!!
betsy

 

[betsyroper]

clarification

I meant iphoto - how to make imovie talk to iphoto. Well, either really.