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How to Sync photos from iphone to ipad and know which are synced?

Transfering photos from iphone to ipad is proving to be a lot harder than we thought, and not doable by my girlfried.


There seems to be a number of options, most of which we cannot use:

  1. use the photostream in icloud. We cant use this becaue of the following:
    1. we have more than 5GB of photos, and she doesnt want to pay for more space just to be a glofied file copy.
    2. it doesnt transfer existing photos (can be overcome with other means)
    3. it uses the internet, its not device to device (we live in spain, the internet is very slow and I cant afford to have it clogged with uploading gigs of moves taken on the iphone when I need to work)
  2. Transfer files from iphone to a PC, then from PC to ipad. I currently do this manually for her. Its difficult and time consuming because:
    1. She doesnt have (or need) her own PC. I have two laptops, but travel with one or the other. The probelm is if we use laptop 1 to copy photos between iphone and ipad, then I take this, she is left with laptop 2. my understanding si that Apple cripple you by only allowing 1 laptop to sync - if she wants to use laptop 2, she looses all photos already on the ipad.
    2. I copy photos from the iphone to PC via the DCIM dir which is exposed when you plug in the iphone to a PC. Its hard to know which photos and videos are new, and which were previusly copied.
    3. I copy the photos and videos I think are new to a new directory on the PC, and give them a consecutive roll number as part of the folder name, e.g. 0042_iphone_photos
    4. I then plug in the ipad, fire up itunes, then click on library, then the button to eject the ipad in the top right (I would NEVER have found this, only by googling did I discover clicking on this gives more options. Why did they remove the easy to use device list on the left?).
    5. Then I set it to sync the directory above where I put my camera rolls.
  3. Use some paid for apps on the iphone and ipad.

    I dont do this as I dont have time to research which will do the job without uploading to some kind of cloud through our appaling ADSL, and doesnt require spending money each time the app upgrades, and is easy enough for my girlfriend to use, and has all the features we need.


We are currently using option 2, and its horrible.


We dont know how to solve these issues:

  1. When we transfer photos from the iphone to the computer, how do we mark them as transfered? In the iphone, she has about 500 photos and videos under "camera roll". There does not seem to be a way to rename this to "synced" or to move all 500 photos to a new album without slelecting each photo individually, which is not an option.
  2. When the iphone gets full, we will need to delete most of the older photos. However, she will want to keep some of her favourite photos. The iphone is too small and difficult to go through and select which photos, she wants to do this on the ipad. But then we have the whole difficult situation in reverse - how to make some photos persistent, e.g. copied into a favourtes album on the iphone, whilts not deleting the non favourites from the ipad or pc, but deleting the non-favourites from the iphone, in a fool proof an easy manner my girlfried could use?


Any thoughts or tips appreciated. My girlfried is horrified how difficult the process is, and how much time we have spent just to get this far.


The next problem is how to get the photos onto the TV, but thats another post. We have a first gen mac mini connected to our TV, but the HD is full, and its not possible to replace.


We have very fast wifi at home (but very slow ADSL).

iPad, iapd air ios 7.0.4

Posted on Feb 2, 2014 5:54 AM

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8 replies

Aug 14, 2017 12:24 AM in response to owverstea

I know it's a question years ago, but I want to post something useful. The two devices don't need to have internet connection at the same time, but, because right now you're using iMessage, I'm assuming your iPad has internet connection available at some point throughout the day.

If this is the case, I would recommend Dropbox (product)(http://www.dropbox.com). You can install the free app on your iPhone and iPad and upload photos from the iPhone to the app. Once the iPad gains internet connection, you can then save those photos to the iPad's photo library from the Dropbox app.

Make sure that on the iPhone Dropbox app, you first go to settings and change the upload quality.

If both devices are connected to the same iCloud account, Photo Stream (which you can toggle on in the device's settings app under "iCloud") will also sync the next thirty photos taken with both devices for the future.

Best of luck and I hope this helps.
Zach

Feb 2, 2014 10:35 AM in response to bilbobobbin

The following is not ideal but it is what I do and it works well for me:


As soon as I have imported pictures from the Camera Roll to a computer, I delete them from the Camera Roll. That solves some of the issues you mentioned, particulary the issue of knowing which photos you've already imported.


I then organize the pictures on my computer in whatever way I want them there. I also separately organize the photos the way I would like to see them on the phone (e.g., eliminating some that I want to keep on the computer but don't want on the phone and also organizing the ones I want on the phone into separate folders or albums). This can be done without duplicating storage on the computer using Albums in iPhoto if you have a Mac; it can be done on Windows by copying pictures into separate folders but will duplicate storage.


Once I have the photos organized I then use iTunes and sync them back to the phone (and can also do the same to the iPad). In Windows if you set up a main folder (e.g. iPhone pictures) with sub-folders, when they are synced they will be organized in Albums on the phone. If she wants a different set of pictures on the iPad than on the iPhone, that can be done as each device can be set in iTunes to sync to different photos. But as you note, the sync will delete photos if iTunes is set to sync to no photos or a different set of photos. The computer is considered to be the primary storage location of the pictures.


This is a lot of effort the first time but not bad (for me) after that as it is a case of importing a few pictures, organizing in mostly pre-existing folders and syncing.


The above has some pluses over what you are currently doing -- but it also still has the issue of her not having a computer and other negatives. Primarily due to the fact that she doesn't have or need a computer, I would seriously look at http://www.photosync-app.com It is advertised as being able to transfer directly between iPhone and iPad using either wi-fi or bluetooth. I haven't used it but would look into it if I had the needs that you described.

Feb 2, 2014 11:00 AM in response to FoxFifth

A good answer, thanks.


Looks like the utopia of not needing a PC: putting the photos directly from iphone to ipad and editing them there is a pipe dream. Its amazing to think I have bought my girl friend two devices which cost £1200 between them, and they cant easily do this simple task of photo organsiation and editing.


We will probably end up with using the PC to edit and organise as foxfith suggests, but the huge limitation of only being able to use one of our two laptops is a real kick in the teeth from Apple.


We tried downloading a selection of photo editing apps on the ipad. They all suffer the same problem: they write the edited image back to the camera roll, not to he album they came from.


So the flow is this:


  1. Plug iphone into PC
  2. copy photos from DCIM to a temp place on PC.
  3. Plug ipad into PC.
  4. Load Itunes.
  5. Sync the temp directory of photos to the ipad, which show up in "camera roll"
  6. disconnect the ipad
  7. on the ipad, organise your photos from the camera roll to albums, e.g. "trip to stockholm"
  8. edit each photo in the album and save it.
  9. find where they editing program has put the file. This is susauly stupidly in the camera roll not the album it came from, or for snapseed, in a sapseed directory (which is slightly better, but still *****).
  10. copy the edited file back into the album.
  11. Now delte the old copy. This is the crux, they both have the same name,and its very hard to tell which is which.
  12. plug ipad back into PC.
  13. copy albums photos from the DCIM directory to a temp directory on the PC.
  14. use itunes to sync the temp dir to the camera roll on the iphone
  15. in the ipone, coyp the file back into the required album.


This is insane. I guess apple do this to force you to purcahse a Mac, i.e. crippple the iphone/ipad in order to not canablise sales. And my girlfriend wonders why I keep telling her Android is better.


I guess we have to pay for an app like the one suggested to be able to transfer photos from iphone to ipad, but this leaves the nightmare of having to organise every photo several times, e.g. copy it back to album after editing, then copying the album back to the iphone etc. I guess we will wait in hope for an app to come out which allows organisation, editing and syncing in one.

Jul 9, 2014 8:19 AM in response to FoxFifth

If you import the pictures from your iphone into a PC and organise them manually, and afterwards use Itunes to synced these pictures to another iphone, when you check them on your iphone would they still keep all their information as before?

What I am interested to know is if I would keep the location information with the world map feature and the categorisation by location and time within the "Photos" app on your iphone/ipad


Thank you very much

Jul 10, 2014 1:34 AM in response to Jolieteddie

Thank you for the info!


Would you recommend any app specifically? It seems there are many.. also, please note that i am interested in doing a massive transfer of all pictures from my iphone to my ipad, but it seems that with these apps I would need to select the pictures I would like to transfer. Do they have an "all photos" transfer option? Otherwise the process could be really annoying


Best regards

Aug 25, 2014 8:15 PM in response to bilbobobbin

I used to transfer photos from iPhone to iPad via iCloud, but my photos are less 1G. And I think iCloud is convenient for those whose transferred pics are not large.

Settings > iCloud > log in with your Apple ID if you aren't logged in > turn Photos on.

Then repeat on iPad.

Provided that your photos are too large for iCloud, you'd better rely on some transfer software.

How to Sync photos from iphone to ipad and know which are synced?

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