Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Stop backing up photos

hehe299792458

hehe299792458

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 13, 2008
783
3
I sync my phone often, and every time it syncs, iTunes makes a backup.

The backup is getting quite large because they include my photos. Is there any way to have iTunes not backup the photos on my phone and just backup calls/sms/etc?
 
turn photostream on, so pics will be uploaded to your mac, and after that you can delete the photos on your camera roll. but this sucks because you dont have the photos anymore in your camera roll.

the best way for me is to use this app ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/web-albums-picasa-photo-viewer/id344997890?mt=8 )

and manually upload your photos over there, you can make albums too. so you dont need to have all of your pics in your camera roll anymore. the best of this thing is when you need to restore your phone to start fresh or you just buy another iphone or even switch to android phone, you just use this app or the native gallery app in android, just login and boom, all your pics are there. no space wasting too when you only got 16gb iPhone.

the bad thing about it is it needs internet connection to view the pics. i dont mind though because sometimes pics need to be archived and will not be viewed for a long long time.
 
aleni said:
turn photostream on, so pics will be uploaded to your mac, and after that you can delete the photos on your camera roll.
Click to expand...

If you have more than 1,000 images in the camera roll, then this won't work because the oldest photos will get deleted from photo stream.

(And yeah, quite a few people who've never moved their photos out of the camera roll have thousands of photos in there. I've seen it.)

Best bet is to import the photos into iPhoto, then sync them back via iTunes (or just use iTunes directly if you're using a Windows PC). Then the photos won't be in the backup. And while the photos won't be directly in the camera roll, you'll still be able to see them in the photo galleries.

If you don't want the photos anywhere on your computer at all, another option is to upload them to dropbox, but then you'll need to use your internet connection to see them.
 
scaredpoet said:
If you have more than 1,000 images in the camera roll, then this won't work because the oldest photos will get deleted from photo stream.

(And yeah, quite a few people who've never moved their photos out of the camera roll have thousands of photos in there. I've seen it.)

Best bet is to import the photos into iPhoto, then sync them back via iTunes (or just use iTunes directly if you're using a Windows PC). Then the photos won't be in the backup. And while the photos won't be directly in the camera roll, you'll still be able to see them in the photo galleries.

If you don't want the photos anywhere on your computer at all, another option is to upload them to dropbox, but then you'll need to use your internet connection to see them.
Click to expand...

photos are best kept in picasa instead of dropbox. because with picasa you can make album, and have a better thumbnails and photo management for that.
 
dropbox or picasa doesnt really solve my problems

I want to manage my pictures manually. Uploading them to the cloud would take too long.


I simply want iTunes to stop backing them up everytime I connect my phone
 
I don't understand.

You want to stop backing up your photos to icloud or to your computer?
 
You can do what you want for iCloud backups.

But that's because Apple assumes you want control over your free 5 GB of iCloud space. They also assume your computer has a large hard drive so they didn't bother putting that option into the iTunes backup.

Would be nice, but the answer is no.
 
It would be very cool if Apple would figure out a better photo management system other than camera roll and the ability to create your own albums.

I'm thinking similar to how music is managed but instead of Artist>Album> Song it would be Year>Month>Day or how iphoto sorts by event. Apple spend so much time and effort on the iphone's camera capabilities but not much on the management of the photos. Many people use their iphones as their sole camera. But then we just have a massive camera roll with no organization.

I would love to have some of the features of iphoto on iphone without having to pay $4.99 for the editing features. I dont need to edit but I like the photo management.
 
This is easy. Just transfer all of your pics to a designated pictures folder on your computer. Then delete everything from your camera roll after you are 100% positive everything's been transferred to your computer. Voila - your photos are no longer part of the iTunes backup.

To get your photos onto your device after this, just select your designated pictures folder in the Photos tab when you click on your iPHone in iTunes. Sync and voila - entire problem solved.
 
Un check auto back up. Then go to photos and uncheck back up photos. Should work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back