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Question about backing up photos from iPhone

P

Peter Franks

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 9, 2011
2,118
125
Do pictures when backing up iPhone go anywhere other than iPhoto?

I have it ticked and then back up, but when I open iPhoto, they're not there, until I click 'import photos' in the actual iPhoto?

So what does this do? I assume this should back them up to it, but it doesn't?
I always have to do it manually in iPhoto

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If you backup using iTunes that just backs up the pictures in your Camera Roll (and only the Camera Roll) and they do not go into iPhoto. They are in a hidden backup file.

Sync in iTunes syncs iPhoto (or parts of iPhoto depending on your selections) with the non-Camera Roll section of the photos on your phone.

If you want to move Camera Roll photos to your computer (other than the hidden backup file on your computer) you need to import them. I import them and delete them from the phone and then sync them back to the phone. I think of the Camera Roll as just recent "unprocessed" and unorganized pictures.
 
but where it shows 'sync photos from' on the grab, you can see it says I have iPhoto, so assumed the camera roll would be backed up to there?

I always get mightily confused by sync and back up? Sync I thought would be like restoring so would go over what is on my phone?
 
I can understand why you might assume that but that isn't what it does. I also have iPhoto and what I described above is what it does. Sync and Backup are two different things. Sync will keep the NON Camera Roll pictures on your phone in sync with your computer.
 
Yep, that's what I still after all these years don't understand... Sync I thought is to sync what's on the Mac with the phone, which is what I thought restore would be? Back up is backing up phone, restore is restoring, should you lose the data from phone, so Sync is.....??
 
Sync will keep the NON Camera Roll photos on the phone in Sync with the part of your computer that you have selected (e.g. iPhoto or parts of iPhoto).
 
so the sync isn't relevant to the apps, emails, music etc?

just doing the update 7.0.2. by the way, and it says
YOU HAVE CHANGED THE SETTINGS FOR OWNER'S iPHONE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO UPDATE THE SETTINGS?
Do you have any clue what that actually means, What settings would've changed? Never had that before on an update?
 
The "iTunes will backup the following information" section of this link gives more detail about what is included in a Backup: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946

There are some details about syncing in the following: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1296

Sync will sync contacts, apps etc but I didn't discuss that earlier since the original question was about photos. The above (plus the individual tabs in iTunes) gives information about what is synced.

Note that to get your phone back the way it was if everything was lost, you may need to both Restore and then Sync (I'm not sure if the Restore button in iTunes automatically does both).

Sorry but I can't help with Settings question on the update.
 
Peter Franks said:
but where it shows 'sync photos from' on the grab, you can see it says I have iPhoto, so assumed the camera roll would be backed up to there?

I always get mightily confused by sync and back up? Sync I thought would be like restoring so would go over what is on my phone?
Click to expand...

I see where the confusion is.

Rather like how Messages is two different systems working out of a common interface so is Photos, four actually. There's the Camera Roll, Imported Photos, Photo Library and PhotoStreams. iPhoto only talks to Photo Library during syncs. When you go into iPhoto to the import you are telling it to change modes and it looks like Camera Roll and Imported Photos like with a normal camera.

Not the most intuitive system so it's easy to get mixed up. Apple could so with some better explanations. Not to mention some tricks like syncing albums, an auto import checkbox in iTunes and IMHO going back to the events, faces, places and not this 'collections' thing in iOS 7. I really don't like it or find it useful. The other way was better to me and if I could have tagged faces, edited events etc and then synced it to the computer version it would have been perfect. Switch up 'iPhoto' to be plug ins for the base camera app and make it non destructive at give us a choice or 'replace original or save as duplicate' and it would be perfect to me.
 
Thank you yes, it does take a bit of understanding, like why for instance...

..... Because I just added one album to the phone, and had to press apply, it then automatically turned sync on, and I'm now waiting forever for it to sync over 1500 pictures, that have:
just been backed up to iTunes,
backed up to iPhoto,
and are already on my phone,
but STILL am waiting for it to do it? and watching 'copying photo 1 of 1506' which is really slow for some reason, but I don't need it doing!! I just wanted to put one album on! And that figure is wrong and doesn't correspond with the photos that are on the camera roll on the phone, There are much more

Also, since ios7 the pictures of the album don't show up on the phone like the previous ones did?
 
This ios7 is doing my head in!!

I used to back up, end of story....

Because I added one new CD in Music, it made it sync, and now I have all my photos all over again in a load of other albums:

Last Import, 382 pics from My Mac
Last 12 months 858 pics from My Mac
Videos etc.
as well as them in camera roll

I DON"T WANT THESE!! why can't they leave things alone???

How do you get rid of all this crap from the phone now?

Syncing has obviously done this, not just the backing up, but I couldn't get any new music on without syncing. I pressed apply after ticking new album in iTunes, and it automatically synced.

Anyone else experiencing this bloated rubbish now where they just had the one camera roll..
 
If you don't want the photos synced from iPhoto on your computer, uncheck the "Sync Photos from iPhoto" (see the screenshot in your first post) and then sync again. If my memory is correct that will remove the pictures from the phone -- the ones that came from the sync. The sync action is not different in iOS 7 -- the way you had it set in the screen shot would have brought 1648 pictures and videos from your computer to your phone in previous versions of iOS as well as in iOS 7.

Again, I prefer to import the pictures into iPhoto, delete them from the Camera Roll, then sync selected Albums back to the phone. This allows me easier control over how the pictures are organized on the phone and it also minimizes the size of backups.
 
Thanks will do. But they'll still back up on 'back up' presumably?
Why does sync double up the pics anyway. Makes no sense at all
 
If they are in the Camera Roll they are in the backup. The Camera Roll photos are the only ones included in the back up.

It is your choice whether you keep them in the Camera Roll after you import them. Two ways to not duplicate them on the phone:

1) delete them from the Camera Roll after you import and then bring them back (all or some depending on how you set Sync). That is what I do and what works for me and what I want. It keeps the size of the phone backup minimal, allows me the most control over organization, keeps the pictures under control of iPhoto on my computer and my backup routine there, allows me to decide what pictures I store on my phone.

or 2) keep them on the Camera Roll and either a) don't import to iPhoto or b) import but don't set Sync to bring those albums back to the phone.

I understand that it is confusing.
 
You say the sync action is no different in ios7 but in all the years I've done it, the has never happened on sync.
 
I don't know what to say. It works the same for me as always and you clearly have iTunes set to bring 1648 pictures from iPhoto. If you had it set that way in pre iOS 7 versions it should have brought everything in iPhoto to your phone when you did a sync, whether or not they were also in the Camera Roll. It has worked that way since at least iOS 4.
 
I don't get it either. It's always been ticked before. And when synced never did that. I will untick and see what happens. Thanks for your help. Much appreciated
 
Also....

I just saved 2 pics from Email and they ALWAYS saved to camera roll. Now, they're nowhere to be seen and are either elsewhere or just not saving.

In a nutshell don't update if you're on iPhone 4! Too many things have changed and not for the better.
 
I can't help on the email thing since I use the Gmail app for email. I just tested it and it does still save pictures to the Camera Roll, but I don't know about the regular Mail app.
 
Peter Franks said:
Also....

I just saved 2 pics from Email and they ALWAYS saved to camera roll. Now, they're nowhere to be seen and are either elsewhere or just not saving.
Click to expand...

Just tried saving pictures from email on my iPhone 5S, and they did save to the camera roll.

I've noticed that sometimes when pictures are being saved to the camera roll, they end up out of order -- I think they sort according to the date in the photo's data, not the order you saved them. Did you scroll up and down the camera roll to see if the pictures are there somewhere?
 
Previously with pics you could 'save all' in one hit, easily. I've now discovered that option doesn't work anymore, It's still there, but didn't work, but saved one at a time is OK.

Since the #2 update, it's definitely worse for freezing and crashing apps and other apps opening when you've not opened them. Probably just the '4' though.
 
Peter Franks said:
...
Since the #2 update, it's definitely worse for freezing and crashing apps and other apps opening when you've not opened them. Probably just the '4' though.
Click to expand...

I'm having a completely different experience on my iPhone 4 and 7.0.2 -- haven't had a single freeze or crash or a case where a wrong app opens. That doesn't help you except to let you know that it isn't happening on every iPhone 4 -- and that might hopefully eventually be of some help to you in resolving the issues.
 
Thanks. The biggest gripe Safari?

Is anyone enjoying the new Safari where you can't see the open pages properly anymore? The whole Safari experience is now horrible
 
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