Photostream and the Camera Roll

Question

Photostream and the Camera Roll

I'm confused by the Photostream feature as it applies to the iPhone and my Mac at home. My understanding was that the pictures would go to Photostream and if I happened to like a bunch of shots I could save them to my Camera Roll so they wouldn't disappear when I passed a thousand pictures. Instead, everything goes into Photostream and also to the Camera Roll. This means I'm doubling up every picture I take on my phone and then on my computer when I sync to it at home, right? There isn't really any good explanation of this process from Apple and it's not operating as advertised. It makes me want to shut down Photostream so I can leave things as they were. Am I looking at this the wrong way? Does iPhoto know when Photostream and my Camera Roll have matching pictures so it saves only one copy? Is Photostream really just streaming photos from iCloud without taking up space on my phone or my Mac? Is my Mac going to keep all of the Photostream shots including lame ones I don't want? If not, how do I make sure I keep the ones I do want? Where's the manual for this feature?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Oct 16, 2011 1:34 PM

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Answer 1

phil_a

Level 1

34 points

Oct 16, 2011 2:19 PM in response to Carlos Mora-Arias

I totally agree with you on this !

To be honest, I dont understand the concept. The only benefit I can see is that I dont need a cable to sync my camera pictures with my Mac.

The whole iCloud concept is also strange: They are plugging the fact that your mail will be on your phone and your Mac. Wasnt it already doing that ? I am sure my Mobile Me email and iPhone email was replicated by Push.

So whats the iCloud doing that we didnt already have ? Apart from pushing some photos...which means y9ou end up with double pics - on your phone and your Mac.

Anyone tell me if I am missing something here ?

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Answer 2

Allards1

Level 1

14 points

Apr 15, 2012 12:42 AM in response to Carlos Mora-Arias

I think this is a design flaw, Camera Roll should include the Photostream functionality... storing pictures in two places is not minimal at all and it's consuming unnecessary storage space.

That's why i just disabled Photostream, it drove me crazy that i had to delete pictures twice to get rid of them. When i need a picture from my iPhone elsewhere i just upload it to my Mac using Dropbox.

(I like Apple's OS X but the rest of Apple's software is not that great in my opinion.)

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Answer 3

Mar 5, 2014 8:09 AM in response to Allards1

I second that! The term design flaw also came up in my mind.

Why in earth would you store one photo 1,2,3,4 times! 1=when in camera roll, 2=an automated copy in the photo stream, 3=in e.g. the Mac in Aperture, 4=in the e.g. a Time Machine backup. What a waste of memory when you are dealing with many photos! I am always suffering from a memory shortage on the iPhone, so bye bye Photo Stream for me.

Also it is to much hassle to clear the Photo Stream all the time, unfortunately also a manual process if you do not want to use Aperture of iPhoto on the Mac, applications that I am not using anyway. I am on Adobe products.

Photo Stream could be a great feature if it was part of the Finder/Explorer. Then 2 folders, one for local photo's on the iDevice, and one for transferred foto's on the Mac/PC. You can watch them straight in the local folder as well, or delete them as files, or drag them to the transferred folder. Full control. And everyone can understand it. No need for the camera roll any more, that one becomes redundant. And MUCH more popularity among the pro users. How about it, Apple?

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