Delete single photos in photostream

I've spent some time looking through this VERY long thread as I too was interested in deleting photos from the photostream, however after looking into the purpose of photostream, it seems everyone here has missed the point of it…

For example, think of photostream as a replacement for a camera's memory card. When you're out, you snap as much as you like without paying attention to the quality of the photos you've taken. When you get home and plug your camera into your Mac, you pick and choose the photos you want to keep. Most of the time you delete the memory card after you've imported your photos because otherwise your memory card will run out of space.

Photostream doesn't run out of space however, it recycles space when you hit a 1000 photo or 30 day limit. The great thing about photostream is that your photo's are automatically downloaded and saved to your Mac to ensure you never loose them and if, for example, you want to keep a photo taken with your iPhone on to your iPad, save the photo to your camera roll to ensure it doesn't get deleted.

A lot of people are concerned about the security of photostream, but frankly why is no-one worried about the security of their contacts, calendars or their emails? They're all protected with the same username and password. If everybody sees photostream as a temporary memory card that you can pick and choose from, there will be no need to worry about deleting individual photos from it

Sorry Ben, but photos on your camera's memory card don't get streamed automatically to your Apple TV for everyone to see, or get automatically streamed to all your mobile devices and Macs. Not the same at all.

In both cases you have a choice:

A. Why are you putting your photostream photos straight up on your AppleTV? Why not sync an album you've vetted from your Mac? Would you throw any old picture from your digital camera on to your TV for all to see? If so, use PhotoStream. If not, don't.

B. If you're not the only person that uses your iDevices or your Mac, switch off photostream on those that are shared, set a passcode lock or set a password on your Mac and create another user account for everyone else to use. If you are the only one that uses those devices, what are you worried about…? They're YOUR photos!

Photos are for sharing, not switching off access. That's the whole idea of photos, to share the experience with others.

Just saying 'don't use PS', or 'switch off PS' is not the answer. Having a simple delete option is.

It sounds as though you want PhotoStream to be something it's not. If you want to share your photos, use FaceBook, Twitter or Flickr. There are loads of apps out there designed to allow you to share the photos you WANT to share and believe it or not but Flickr is integrated into the AppleTV already… just put in your account details and watch your CHOSEN photos appear. PhotoStream is not a sharing platform (because it's locked under your username and password), it's more of a backup solution.

Ben, I don't need you to tell me about PS. I've been using it for quite a few months now.

I am fully aware of it's purpose and it's limitations. If you would just listen to what I and others have said, all that users want is a delete option. Why do you have a problem with that? Seems perfectly sensible, and would keep everyone happy.

A delete option would be sensible indeed. I posted much earlier in this forum thread to say the same--it's amazing how much life this one has!

Even if we take Ben's analogy of PS being like a camera's memory card, the delete option still makes sense. When I take snapshots with a dedicated camera, as soon as I can, I take a couple of minutes to review how the last few pictures came out. If any of them are obvious rejects, I delete them immediately, so I don't have to worry about them later. Much less to go through when transfer/processing time comes around...

One other thing: it has been pointed out to me that these forums are designed to foster solutions, but this thread really expresses more of a feature suggestion for Apple. While there are some work-arounds proposed, I (and apparently many others) do not consider them solutions. I don't know how closely Apple has paid attention to this particular thread, but let me once again take this opportunity to encourage everyone that would like to have a delete option in PS to let Apple know directly: http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

OMG thank you for these thread. I wanted to know how to delete a couple of "adult" photos which my husband and I took and which ended up on the photostream on my phone. Little did I realise that these get synced to icloud! and therefore can be seen by others! I have taken the dramatic step of deleting ALL the photos form my photo stream. Safest option considering my children sometimes get onto my phone & other apple devices.

While the debate rumbles on the best advice is to switch off Photostream - a real shame when user options to control upload to the cloud and selctive deleting would avoid us having to use Dropbox instead! Come on Apple you know it makes sense!

Yawn.

Can we delete indivdual photos yet?

Yeah, the bottom line is that there is no way I can have a private photo, that I do not want on my computer or iCloud, on my phone and also use photo stream. Since photo stream is such a great way to sync, and for me the only way to wirelessly sync, this really *****. All I can do is turn it off I guess. And it would be so easy to fix (not for me, I'm not a developer, but all you'd do is make photosyreamability into a property that photos have by default, and give us the ability to remove the ability, like uncheckubg a box, for particular photos. Not that complicated.)

Because simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Unfortunately, making it too simple is just dumb.

+1000 I'd really like to be able to delete a single photo from photostream, from iPhoto on my Mac, or from my iPad or iPhone.

When u turn off ps it says it deletes the photo's but once u turn it back on the photos repopulate. I do not the fact that u can't delete photo's as u wish.How was this over looked

I went to icloud.com to reset my photostream, then turned it off on all my iOS devices (I thought), and when I turned one back on the photostream started to repopulate. Is there no way to kill this thing? Photostream is a joke if you have even one picture you don't want anyone else to see. It's already burned me once.

If you reset it correctly, then switched off on your devices, then it will not re-populate. However, I always switch it off on mobile devices first then do the reset.