Deleting photos from iPhoto and iPhone simultaneously

Question

Level 1

21 points

Deleting photos from iPhoto and iPhone simultaneously

Hi,

I'm trying to get ride of some photos I took on my iPhone. I delete them in iPhoto 11 and empted the (iPhoto) trash. The next time I sync my iPhone though, they keep showing up with the new, to be imported photos. I can't find an option to keep photos that are deleted from iPhoto from showing up at iPhone syncing. Did I missed it or is it just non-existent?

I could, additionally, delete those photos in iPhone ALSO, but this feels very un-Apple-esque. Specially since the search function of iOS doesn't find photos by their name (IMG_0257.JPG, IMG_0916.JPG etc).

So, the only way I know of, to get ride of photos is to delete them in iPhoto AND in iPhone by flipping through all my photos until I found them. Please tell me this can be done easier?

Regards,
Leon

MacPro3,1 (2008), Mac OS X (10.6.4), working with Macs since 1992

Posted on Jan 3, 2011 6:19 AM

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Answer 1

wjosten

Level 10

95,321 points

Jan 3, 2011 7:05 AM in response to Leon Buijs

iPhoto sees your phone just like it would any other digital camera. If you import photos, don't delete such from your phone, then delete in iPhoto, how do you expect iPhoto, or any other program for that matter, to know not to import them again? The iPhone camera roll is designed for temporary storage only. You should be importing ALL photos in your camera roll on a regular basis, then deleting them from your camera roll. If you want some to remain on your phone, sync them back & delete the rest in iPhoto.

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Answer 2

Leon Buijs Author

Level 1

21 points

Jan 3, 2011 8:32 AM in response to wjosten

Well, to be honest, I expect better functionality when I'm using Apple's iPhoto with an Apple smartphone then with 'any other' digital camera. Apple is usually very good at these kind of things and from a technical point of view, it would not be very hard to think of a solution for this, like to store a list of previously exported / deleted photos on the iPhone.

I you compare this with the way info in the Address Book is handled, you'll see that it's synchronized both ways and deleting an item is much easier. I assumed this was how photos were handled too.

I've looked in to this some more and understand now, that the way to do this, is to first get all photo's into iPhoto, sort/label/album them and then (maybe) sync them with your iPhone again.

IMHO it would be more intuitive if you could at least at labels and comments in the iPhone camera roll. And since iOS isn't doing anything intelligent (like keeping track of deleted photos 😉 with the file names, why not let the user decide what the photo file name / prefix is?

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