Copying Photo Albums onto PC from I phone (not camera roll)

Question

Level 1

8 points

Copying Photo Albums onto PC from I phone (not camera roll)

Have seen many posts on this topic but haven't really seen a definitive answer on whether this is possible.

What I want to do is very simple I just want to copy all the albums I have created on my i phone onto my PC - I know you can simply connect your Iphone and download

the camera roll this way onto the PC but this does not let you copy across the albums you have created and that appear underneath the camera roll - this method also displays the photo folders in a weird code ABCY1382 for example.

I have also tried various apps to see if I can view then copy these album folders across but without my success (i fun box and touch copy 12) both apparently let you browse your albums and then copy them onto your PC - but amazingly have been unable to figure out how to use them to view the albums.

Would appreciate anyones help on how to do this as in theory it should be an easy thing to do (at least I would have thought so) and it is clearly something other i phone owners have been trying to do judged by the number of posts on the topic!

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.1.1

Posted on May 14, 2013 5:27 PM

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Answer 1

May 14, 2013 5:35 PM in response to mac4488

The photo app is not designed to do this. As the photos in the albums are synced from your computer they should always be there, so there should be no need to copy them back. Touchcopy and similar programs can copy the images to your computer, but the resolution in the photo app is optimized for the iPhone, so if they were taken with a higher resolution camera than the iPhone's screen dimensions you will lose resolution.

For what you want to do I suggest using a 3rd party photo app that syncs to cloud-based albums, like MyPics, which syncs Google Picasa albums to the iPhone. You can also view the albums in any web browser.

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Answer 2

mac4488 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 15, 2013 10:33 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Lawrence many thanks for the reply.

However not sure I understand your reply

1)Not sure what you mean by photo app?

2)at the moment I am using the i phone to take my photos and also as the main storage (its a 64gb model). - I occasionally back up the whole camera roll to my PC using a USB cable (but this does not save the albums onl the camera roll. I have seldom if ever used i tunes to sync the phone and computer although I have used i tunes to create a back up of my phone although believe this doesn't include photos.

3)I do use cloud to back up some parts of my phone (but this does not include photos as there are simply to many phots and I would have to purchase lots of extra storage).

4)If I used mypics are you saying this would back up my camera roll and the user created albums from my phone onto picasa (I have heard of picasa but am concerned I would need to purchase lots of additional storage for this to work - can U simply use mypics to back up all my i phone created albums onto the HDD of my PC?)

Hope my question is now clearer and please note I DO NOT have any of these albums created at the moment on my PC or on I tunes I created them on my phone while travelling and all the photos on my phone were taken with the i phone camera and I have no concern if I have to lose some resolution on the photo.

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Answer 3

May 15, 2013 10:49 AM in response to mac4488

MyPics creates albums in Picasa on the web (picasa.google.com) that can then be synced to your iPhone and also viewed on the web.

The best way to use the photo app on the iPhone is to sync the camera roll to a photo management app on your PC (Photoshop Elements, for example, or iPhoto if you have a Mac), then sync its albums to the iPhone's photo app using iTunes. This gives you control over what is on the phone and lets you edit the images on your computer.

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Answer 4

mac4488 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 15, 2013 11:22 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Lawrence ok understood and noted for the future.

But considering where I am at the moment - with the albums created only on my phone (something I had been doing for over 12months so it would be hugely time consuming to try and recreated them on my PC).

So is there anyway I can back up the albums I have created on my phone onto a PC or webrowser after which I will clear the photos on my phone and start again as you suggeted (noted I have a big volume of photos in these albums but would be willing to buy storage to try retain all these albums and not have to recreate them). Note all these apps I have tried such as fun box let me browse my phone but appear not to show the albums I created but only the camera roll with photos arranged by date when they were taken - I find this not particuarly logical - I am guessing if I can locate these albums on my phone I must be able to save them to my HDD?

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Answer 5

wjosten

Level 10

95,369 points

May 15, 2013 11:34 AM in response to mac4488

There is no supported way to do what you want, as Apple has designed the photo sync to be one way: computer to phone. To extract these photos, from your phone, requires the use of third-party software, like this:

http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/index.php

Bear in mind, these photos were reduced in resolution when synced to your phone. There is no way to recover their full resolution.

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Answer 6

May 15, 2013 11:40 AM in response to mac4488

Touchcopy and similar apps don't seem to be able to view the metadata used to organize photos on the phone, so I'm afraid I can't help with what you want to do. There may be a way, but I haven't seen one.

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Answer 7

mac4488 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 19, 2013 5:57 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Lawrence many thanks for your reply and your right touch copy 12 does not let you view the albums (and the albums appear to be connected with the metadata you refer to) - have now been in touch with the technical support people for touchcopy 12 and they informed me there actually working on a fix for this issue which should be released shortly and that will let you view these albums.....

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Answer 8

May 20, 2013 5:48 AM in response to mac4488

Thanks for the update; I'm sure a lot of people would like this feature in touchcopy. I suspect it was an oversight in Apple development, a holdover from the time when the only way you could put an image into an album was by transferring it from your computer. Thus, there was not need to be able to transfer albums back to the computer because they were already there.

Even better, it would be nice if iTunes could do it.

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Answer 9

wongc28

Level 1

0 points

Jun 11, 2014 1:13 AM in response to mac4488

Hi mac4488,

I'm just wondering if you have found a solution to the issue you posted here. I have yet to find a solution...

Thanks.

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Answer 10

Jun 11, 2014 3:59 AM in response to wongc28

If you read the entire thread you will see some of the solutions.

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Answer 11

Jun 25, 2017 4:32 AM in response to mac4488

Just an other idiot issue of the iOS! How about you have changed you computer and you want to transfer an album from your iphone to the new laptop? Unbelievable...

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