Photo Stream and Camera Roll - Let me see if I have this straight. . . .?

Welcome to the Apple Community.

You are correct except for point 3, photostream isn't included as part of your backup. Additionally in regard to point 8, photos taken on your phone would already be in your camera roll, you would need to copy them from your photostream album.

You'd want to back up your camera roll, if they weren't backed up somewhere else (such as on your computer), obviously they are for you. You can see your backup and how much room it uses at settings > iCloud > storage & backup > manage.

If you don't wish to back up camera roll, turn off backup for camera roll from settings > iCloud > storage & backup > manage.

So, if I turn off iCloud backup to my Camera Roll, my Photo Stream photos will not be affected?

Incidentally, I see no point of consuming space of my 5GB on iCloud if Photo Stream will keep my photos saved. or am I not right?

Also, I'm not sure I understood Coachyod fine in the point that Photo Stream saves up to a limit of 1000 photos only. is that how it is? or how does that go?

Need some info about this, I'll b glad if I could get some help here, guys.

thanks

Do NOT use photo stream as a form of storage, the stream is a syncing mechanism used to copy photos between devices. Photos are saved there for a max of 30 days and up to 1000 photos. After 30 days (unless the 1000 limit is reached, in which case older photos are deleted) the photos are deleted.

You should be importing all pics taken with the iphone to your computer regularly as you would with any digital camera. If you do this (and many users don't, relied on icloud backups and eventuall lost some or all the photos doing a restore), there is no reason to add photos to icloud's backup.

iOS: Importing personal photos and videos from iOS devices to your computer

um, regarding your first point... will my photos still be deleted from my Photo Stream after passing 30-days if they were less than 1000?

Yes, whether you have 1 or 1000 photos, they remain on icloud up to 30 days. After they/it is deleted.

hmm.. well, idk about that. My Photo Stream have saved all my pix since I bought my phone. I have pix dated to six month ago saved there...

Photostream photos are deleted from the cloud after 30 days, they may not necessarily be deleted on your device after 30 days.

If however you were to turn photostream off and on again on your device, only the photos from the last 30 days would reload from the cloud.

Ooh, alright.

ok, if you don't mind, help me understand something here...

My iCloud storage got filled up, with 3GB of the 5GB consumed by the Camera Roll backup.

So I plugged my iPhone to my PC, and Moved all my Camera Roll photos and videos to my computer.

Later that day, my Camera Roll backup in iCloud dropped from 3GB to 2GB.

So for now, my camera roll is empty! (known that after I emptied it, my iCloud Camera Roll backup dropped from 3 to 2 GB)

What does that mean? is it possible that the remaining 2GB are old photos that I had, and deleted, but were still saved on my iCloud? and if that's how it goes, they why weren't the photos that I recently moved to my PC saved to iCloud? (I.e. if the 1GB dropout was from removing them)

I hope I made my case clear. thanks for help.

iCloud back up, backs up more than photos, is your 2 GB photos or other content,

You can see what your iCloud storage is used for and delete any unwanted content at settings > iCloud > backup & storage > manage......

I am aware of that. yes, 2GB are taken by the Camera Roll backup. could these be old photos that I have deleted but were still backup? or how does this goes?

Are you saying you don't have any photos in your camera roll.

yes. 0 photos in my Camera Roll, and 2GB of space on my iCloud is taken by my Camera Roll backup.

never mind... I turned-off-and-deleted the backup. I'm guessing they're old photos that have been backed up, and then I deleted them from my phone. or is it....?

Apple states that you can restore from the last 3 back ups, presumably, the back up is keeping your older photos until you have backed up 3 more times.

Camera roll backup includes the photos that are currently in your photostream on said device.

I thus have turned off camera roll back up as I either open Mac iPhoto more often than 30days/1000 pics however just in case I never delete photos from iOS manually and just handle this when plugging into Mac iPhoto so I ensure they are on my mac and then I backup iPhoto library.

If I have camera roll back up on I find I am using too much of my free 5gb - this backup would only save me from losing my phone / phone dies but again I'f that happens ill open iPhoto that day and all my current images would be on photo stream. You would lose video tho.

What would be better is that camera roll iCloud backup only backed up local files (photos and videos)

And/or video stream

A quicker way to reduce the size of your Camera Roll backup is to turn it off, backup, turn it back on, and backup again. I had removed 60% of the photos from my Camera Roll, but it had gone down in size at all. After I did this my Camera Roll went from 3.8Gb to 1.9Gb. I think I backed up three times, but maybe I was being impatient. Anyway, this trick is easy enough if you're impatient like me.