Photos can't display sub-folders?

Question

Level 1

76 points

Photos can't display sub-folders?

OK, I've tried several different approaches and nothing seems to be working, so maybe one of you fine people can help me.

I am trying to sync folders of photos from a Vista PC to iPad, while retaining the directory structure. Here's what I mean:

I have a folder called "Trips" which has several sub-folders: "Vegas 2009," "Monterey," "Mexico," etc. I have another folder called "Concerts" which also has several sub-folders, one for each event.

I have tried selecting the "Trips" and "Concerts" folders individually (Sync Photos from "Pictures" > Check "Trips" and "Concerts" boxes), which didn't work. So I tried putting them in a separate folder altogether (Sync Photos from "iPad" > All Folders). Also didn't work.

In both cases I get just two folders in Photos: "Trips" and "Concerts" -- with none of the sub-folders, just all the photos that should be nicely organized all jumbled up under those two folders.

Is there a way to make Photos recognize and respect the folder structure? Thanks to iTunes being totally awesome, I can't drill down from within the Sync Photos tab to access those sub-folders. And of course, trying to choose each folder individually overwrites the previous choice.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.
-j.

PC, Windows Vista

Posted on Apr 20, 2010 1:48 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 9, 2017 4:50 AM in response to joePM

I have the same problem. We have a store and we wish to use the iPad as a medium for displaying our hundreds of products and different lines to customer. The iPad simply does not cut it. Not for work!

Apple should LET USERS choose how they want to display photos, instead of hardcoding this into the devices. We at the store decided to buy an Android device for this purpose.

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Answer 2

Jeffland

Level 1

4 points

Jul 2, 2017 11:56 PM in response to JohnMcporra

I too struggled with the same for a while. I finally settled with this not-so-perfect method to upload a copy of photos (with directory structure) from my win10 to iphone7

- Zip up your photos from photo root directory. e.g., c:/myphotos

- download and install FileManager from app store (free)

- In FileManager, go to settings (the wheel on the lower right corner) --> Upload by Wi-Fi sync --> follow the instructions

- On win10, type the URL given by FileManager in a browser (Chrome)

- Click "Choose File" and go to where the zip file is in step 1 --> open --> upload ( It seems to me the only indication of uploading is that clocking arrow on the chrome tab)

- Once done(disappearing of the clocking), go back to iphone and click 'done'. Then tap the "Home" on the lower left.

- Now scroll to find your zip file, tab on the file, select 'unzip' .

- once done, you have your photo tree on iphone. (FileManager comes with a photo viewer as well :)

This is somewhat manual, but it serves my purpose.

FileManager also works with itune for syncing. I am still figuring out how well it works

- In itune, select iphone device --> click apps --> scroll down the right panel to see 'file sharing' --> select 'FileManager' to sync files

Good lucks!

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Answer 3

Jul 3, 2017 6:30 AM in response to Jeffland

Hi Jeffland. That's good, but I expect that the photos are still inside the FileManager app, not in the iPad Photos app. So it doesn't do exactly what users are looking for. Still a workable solution for some purposes.

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Answer 4

Apr 20, 2010 2:09 PM in response to joePM

Sorry but you can't do that.

Apple users who are accustomed to letting iPhoto organize all their photos into albums and events for them (as opposed to setting up heirachical folders the way you have) don't have as much of a need for this. Organizing photos with iPhoto is kind of like organizing your music in iTunes into albumns and smart albumns. Plus you can tag photos or organize them automatically by where they wer taken. Or uses faces to pick out and identify certain people in photos (not that it works that well)

I'm not saying that using nested folders is wrong or something, I'm just saying that a lot of us apple users have gotten used to a different approach. One benefit od the iPhoto approach is that you can easily put the same photo in more than one album. Using your approach, you would have to copy the photo into a different folder and thereby end up with 2 copies of the same photo.

Again, I'm not saying one approach is better than the other. I'm just trying to explain why you can't do what you want to do on the iPad. There might be some 3rd party apps that give you what you want if you do a search in the app store for "organize photos"

Sorry. I know this is probably really frustrating for you. I have no doubt people will start chiming in with reasons why Apples approach is so much better, but I personally think you should be able to work however you want. Best of luck finding a third party app that does the trick for you.

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Answer 5

joePM Author

Level 1

76 points

Apr 20, 2010 2:37 PM in response to erik graham

Thank you for the thorough and thoughtful response! I guess my best bet is to simulate iPhoto's albums on my PC, and just structure them horizontally rather than vertically.

I was toying with setting up a separate "iPad" folder anyway to include just the best photos, so having two copies won't be too much of a hassle as it'll be a small portion of my library.

Thanks again.
-j.

Message was edited by: joePM

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Answer 6

Josh3101

Level 1

0 points

May 3, 2010 2:18 PM in response to joePM

I have the same problem,
Is there any 3rd party application that can keep the folders ?

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Answer 7

red555

Level 4

2,581 points

May 3, 2010 3:31 PM in response to Josh3101

I set up a folder for iPad photos and put 6 subfolders of photos in the iPad-sync folder. After syncing, I had 6 albums on my iPad with the correct photos in each.
(Wintel laptop)

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Answer 8

weinhold

Level 1

0 points

Jun 9, 2010 11:29 PM in response to joePM

I was so frustrated with IPAD's poor handling of hierarchical photo libraries, that I put together a small Windows perl script to create a flat mirror just for IPAD sync. It's not pretty, but if you aren't afraid of perl or the cli, it might help you out, too. http://beeline.org/flatphoto

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Answer 9

PTNLemay

Level 1

2 points

Jul 17, 2010 1:43 PM in response to erik graham

But then... how do I tag photos on my iPad. I'd be very happy to try the alternative to a hierarchy organization, but how do I run iPhotos on a non-Mac computer? Is that even possible?

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Answer 10

Jul 17, 2010 1:53 PM in response to joePM

Have you considered using Airsharing HD ? this bypasses iPhoto altogether, you establish a connection over your wifi home network, the iPad appears as a drive in Finder, transferring files is a simple case of dragging the files from your computer to the iPad, all your file names and folder structure remain as straight duplicates of the files on your computer.
I have to be honest I have no idea if this works with a Windows machine but for a Mac it is perfect.

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Answer 11

Oct 17, 2010 6:50 PM in response to weinhold

Weinhold,

I have the same frustrating problem. I like to have a hierarchical folder structure for my files using dates. Your scripting solution is very interesting. Quick questions:

* Are junctions safe in Windows 7?
* Do the junctions need to be synchronized, or do they display the current folder contents of the source folders?
* How would I do the same for video folders? Is this merely a function of modifying a regular expression to also include *.mov and not just *.jpg?

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Answer 12

Jan 11, 2011 4:09 PM in response to red555

I did just what red555 suggested. Made an 'iPad sync folder', and put new sub-folders in it, in which I put copies of photos. I synced using the 'iPad sync folder' as the top selected folder and it actually created separate albums on the iPad in line with the new sub-folders created inside the 'iPad sync folder'. I did not think this would work, because I already had folders and sub-folders in a typical hierarchical structure. Using the top folder of this hierachy to sync from did not preserve the sub-folders as 'albums' on the iPad. But the new structure does preserve the sub-folders as 'albums'. It requires some Windows Explorer management but that's OK. Who would have thunk?

I also read that if one uses Photoshop Elements, and then organizes in 'collections' that this will map to 'albums' on the iPad. Any ideas on this?

Message was edited by: wiretoysfun

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Answer 13

Jan 14, 2011 7:50 AM in response to joePM

Hello Joe,

I am not sure if this helps but if you have keywords assigned to your images instead of just folder names you can use a third party app such as Sort Shots to help you. It will read your images exif/metadata keyword (and in some programs ratings) and allow you to sort based on those terms. i.e. Vegas2009 as a tag and only those images will be shown.

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Answer 14

Dec 28, 2011 7:07 AM in response to wiretoysfun

wiretoysfun, it does this natively but fails to create 3rd level subfolders. So you have your iPad sync folder with sub folders created as albums. Any folders under the subfolders get merged together into the subfolder. Not a good solution for me.

Has anyone found anything to do this syncing from iTunes? I found Photo Transfer App but it only lets you create folders at one level. Then I tried Photo Folder app and it lets you create all levels of subfolders on the iPad but no way to synch them. You would need to move any new items manually through the app to the subfolders. Is it really that hard? Can't believe no one has created an app to do this.

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Answer 15

Nov 5, 2013 3:42 PM in response to erik graham

Hi Erik, thanks for your patient and thoughtful response. I am a multi-media artist who enjoys both PC and Mac, and in all objectivity I offer this critique of the so-called Apple hierarchy approach: it presumes that all pictures are born of a camera. I have a widely diverse portfolio of images, many that have no faces or capture times or keywords. They were painted and composed and illustrated and sculpted, etc. This is not to say that I don't appreciate the flexibility of a tag-system, but it requires a robust means of pulling and filtering by those tags, which iOS does not offer. I argue that we should at least have one of these solutions in consideration of those who create images without a camera, and who need to organize with greater dexterity than a singer-tier folder structure can offer.

Respectfully,

D

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