As stated in the subject line, I don't understand the differences between these (3) items that appear on my iPhone.
iPhone 4, iOS 5.0.1
Any photo I take with the iPad camera, first goes into the CAMERA ROLL, then a copy also goes into my PHOTO STREAM. This creates two copies of the same photo.
Because you have Photo Stream enabled, which is a way to have the photos captured or saved by one device available on other devices with the same Apple ID and allows for transferring the photos to your computer automatically with Photo Stream enabled on your computer without having to import the photos.
If you don't need or want to use Photo Stream it is quite simple, turn it off.
I pulled a photo from a Web site. I did a hold on the photo with my stylus, and selected COPY. It only shows up in CAMERA ROLL. When I select it and try the ADD TO, I have no way to put it in my PHOTO STREAM. I can add it to any existing FOLDER or create a new one.
There is not an option to do so and there is no reason to do so since photos captured or saved by the device which are stored in the Camera Roll will be added to your Photo Stream automatically when the device is connected to an available wi-fi network.
I Just attached my SD Card Reader attachment, and when I selected the photos for IMPORT, they all went to my PHOTO STREAM. None went to the CAMERA ROLL. Also equally confusing is that there are three import folders, all with copies of my photos imported from my SD card: IMPORTED PHOTOS & VIDEOS, LAST IMPORTED, & ALL IMPORTED.
As already provided, the first is not supposed to happen and can't happen unless you are importing the photos while the iPad is connected to an available wi-fi network. I don't believe photos imported by a camera or from an SD card using the Camera Connection Kit are imported to the iPad's Camera Roll. They are imported to or stored in Imported Photos and must be placed there first before the photos are transferred to your Photo Stream.
I tried to delete these, but I've seen photos disappear sometimes (not always) from my PHOTO STREAM. When I delete from one IMPORT folder, the image is deleted from all three, if they are in them. It seems to also disappear from my CAMERA ROLL.
Photo Stream is temporary with a maximum of 1,000 photos and 30 days.
There is a primary import folder for imported photos and a recent import to view the most recent imported photos. Deleting a photo from the recent import album should not delete the original from the primary import folder.
Deleting a photo from a user created photo album does not delete the original photo stored in the Camera Roll or from wherever the original photos is stored.
When I copy a photo from PHOTO STREAM to a FOLDER, existing or new, a copy is also put into my CAMERA ROLL.
Because the Photo Stream is temporary storage with the main Photo Stream library stored on the cloud. To place a photo that is in your Photo Stream in a user created album, a local copy must be stored first as already provided. In this case in the Camera Roll.
When i DELETE from my PHOTO STREAM, or any FOLDER, that is the only copy of a photo that is deleted.
Correct since the Photo Stream is completely separate from the Camera Roll and from your Import folder. As already provided, all photos in a user created album or folder are not duplicates as in taking up double the storage capacity. The photos in a user created album or folder include a pointer to the original photo stored in the Camera Roll. You can remove the copy in a user created album or folder without affecting the original stored in the Camera Roll, but if you delete the original stored in the Camera Roll all copies or pointers to the original will be removed as well.
When I DELETE from my CAMERA ROLL, it deletes the photo from every single folder, including the PHOTO STREAM in cases where I shot a photo from my iPad and it placed a copy there after it went to CAMERA ROLL first.
The first part is correct as already provided, but once a photo is in your Camera Roll and transferred to your Photo Stream, deleting the photo from your Camera Roll does not or should not touch the photo in your Photo Stream and vice-versa.
There is no folder called PHOTO LIBRARY. Do I just create it? When I go to settings and look at Photos App, I see that most of the space is taken up by CAMERA ROLL, and it shows PHOTO LIBRARY, but it is always empty.
As provided in my previous post, the Photo Library is for photos that were transferred from your computer via the iTunes sync process. If you don't have a computer and never transfer photos from a computer, you will never have a Photo Library.
Thank you. By the way, can you please tell me know how can I acess iPhoto database on hard drive?
I think only pictures that are taken while you are using WiFi show up in photo stream - Not the ones taken using cellular data.
Incorrect.
Photos captured by your iPhone when not connected to a wifi network are transferred to your photo steam the next time the iPhone is connected to an available wifi network.
You're welcome.
Photo Stream is synced between all computers and iOS devices that you have your photo stream enabled on.
Well put. I, too, have followed Allan for a long time, and have used Apple products for years. I still struggle with photos in iOS.
Answered in my previous post.
Something you should be aware of is that I mentioned over Wifi, and not wanting to deal with an iCloud account.
I know how to copy pics after connecting through USB, that was not my question.
I think there is, I have it disabled but I used it in the past for Music, and I don't see anything saying it wouldn't work for photos. Check out General->iTunes Wi-Fi Sync.
Franck
My Itunes library shows triple the amount of pictures that are actually on my Iphone. Any idea how to reduce the Library amount down to the actual amount of pictures.
MYRBCHMAN wrote:
Allan, please forgive me if I am doing this wrong but I also have a PHOTO Stream and Photo Sharing question
Please start a new thread of your own.
Hello Allan,
many thanks for your answers.
But I still have that problem, when I delete a photo from my camera roll, it will be also deleted from my photo stream!
I am not sure if I am posting this in the correct place (I haven’t done this before) but I have read your post and have found it very helpful and useful and think I now understand the difference between Camera Roll and Photo Stream. The reason why I was looking at this information is because something has happened recently to my iPhone photos that I don’t understand.
I have an iPhone 4s which was running on OS7. When I first bought the phone it had Camera Roll on it – Camera Roll only. It did not have Photo Stream.
At some stage, and I don’t know, or can’t remember, what happened to trigger this but Camera Roll disappeared and was replaced by Photo Stream. I had updated the OS and this may have been when the change took place (I can’t remember, as it is a long time ago). I was happy with Photo Stream because any new photos that I took on my phone went straight into Photo Stream and were automatically uploaded onto my iMac and once I had stored them on my computer and filed them on my phone I just simply deleted them from Photo Stream, whereas I never really liked Camera Roll because all of my photos stayed in Camera Roll despite me sorting them into individual folders. I though because they had doubled up in this way that this would use more memory and I wasn’t happy with that.
For a long time now I have kept receiving message notifications telling me that I can update my OS but I have not bothered doing this because of all of the hassle I had the last time I updated, however, recently I have been having a few small glitches and wondered if it was due to the OS being old so I decided to update.
I did this yesterday (updated to OS 9.3.5) and now I have both Camera Roll and Photo Stream and I have never had both at the same time, so this is new to me and I din’t understand what the difference was, hence my search for help.
What is puzzling me, is that now that I have got Camera Roll back, there are 561 photos in there but in my individual folders that I use to keep and organize my photos there only 246 – where have all these extra photos come from? And can I delete them without losing them form my iMac. I recognise some as pictures that have been on my iPhone at some point but have been deleted, so why have they come back? Some of these photos are in Photo Stream but not all (there are only 40 photos in Photo Stream and some are very old – so again I don’t know why they have reappeared).
Seeing as I have not had Camera Roll for a couple of years and it has now reappeared I am not sure if that means that if I delete photos from Camera Roll they will also be deleted from the individual folders I have organised them into? After reading your post I guess that I will lose the photos if I delete them so that would mean that I will have to go though all of the 561 photos and check my folders to see which ones I have already saved on my phone and then delete the rest, the ones that I do want to keep, which is something I could do without. Some photos are easily recognised as ones I do not want but others I am not sure whether or not I have already saved them in the individual folders.
Q. Can you explain what has happened?
Q. Is it safe to delete the photos I want to keep from Camera Roll, now that I has reappeared, after working without if for so long?
Difference between camera roll, photo stream, and photo library
