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ios - 8 where are the 'camera roll' and 'photostream' albums?

I see the ios8 had done away with the "camera roll" and "photostream" albums and replace them with a "recently added" album. Is there any way to get this old functionality back?


All I want is one folder that contains all the photos on my device and another that contains the photos that I'm happy to share across my devices. I would have hoped I could have create some smart albums, but albums seem to have to be curated manually.


I know I can see all my photos with the photos tab, but there are two issue I have with this, #1 the "collections" interface is horrible – I just want a nice grid of photos like in albums – and #2 my photostream photos are merge within them.


I now have no way of telling if I'm deleting a photo from the phone or the photostream, for example when I'm trying to free up space on the phone.


Would turning on the "icloud photo library" feature help? I would rather not use that as I don't want it to waste all my icloud space.

iPhone 5, iOS 7.0.3

Posted on Sep 17, 2014 12:55 PM

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109 replies

Sep 17, 2014 3:05 PM in response to think.different

I think Recently Added means (if you have PS "on" - recently added from any device. Not sure how many images "live" in Recently Added. There is also a "recently deleted" folder to show an "audit trail" of what has been deleted from any device. Ill have to play with this on my PC, phone, and ipad to see how it works.


BTW - There is still an icloud/photos folder on my PC - not sure what it is talking to or how it fits with these other things.


Apple could have explained this better - much better.


This whole "beta" feature thing is news to me and most....I have no clue how to get to it...turn it off etc


On another note..I tried icloud drive.....it has Less functionality than DropBox V1.0 - its horrible - you can only upload files - not FOLDERS....diffewrent thread for that

Sep 17, 2014 3:15 PM in response to BestWesTurn

Here is a new twist....scrolling through pix in the Recently Added album. One pic has the "heart" to make it a favorite, another picture does NOT have it !! The ones that do NOT have the heart - when you click on edit...a popup says This photo is not editable. Do you want to duplicate it and edit a copy?" This must have something to do with where the image is NOW, where it came from etc.


They got a lot of explaining to do

Sep 17, 2014 3:16 PM in response to JonnyB

I think Recently Added means (if you have PS "on" - recently added from any device. Not sure how many images "live" in Recently Added. There is also a "recently deleted" folder to show an "audit trail" of what has been deleted from any device. Ill have to play with this on my PC, phone, and ipad to see how it works.

"Recently Added" behaves like the Camera Roll in many ways:

That is what the manual says: (http://help.apple.com/ipad/8/#/iPadf8dcf211)

All photos added to your Recently Added album—including screenshots and photos saved from email, for example—appear in My Photo Stream.

Photos added to My Photo Stream on your other devices appear in your Recently Added album on iPad. iOS devices can keep up to 1000 of your most recent photos in My Photo Stream;

Sep 17, 2014 4:48 PM in response to think.different

Right I deactivated/activated photostream under settings and it has now imported all the photos from the photostream. So in that regards we are now back to square one.


I just now need to find out to to see only the photos on my phone and only the photos in the photostream.


From reading other threads, here and elsewhere, according to Apple documentation there should be an album called "My Photostream" so this may not be showing because if a glitch in ios8. That would still leave how to tell which photos are only on the phone (camera roll).

Sep 17, 2014 5:10 PM in response to think.different

Are you saying that the "photos" tab and the "recently added" album are the photostream now?

It looks like it. But it may be a glitch and not intended. The documentation talks about the Photo Stream like it were still an album, that can be viewed and edited. On my macs I am still seeing a My Photo Stream album. On the iPad and iPod is the only place I am seeing photos from the Photo Streaming the "Recent" album and in Photos view.

Sep 17, 2014 8:00 PM in response to think.different

What I can't seem to understand is where are the pics that are stored on my device? I can't distinguish between local pics and photstream?


When I take a pic, is it stored on my device or on iCloud?


I want each device to have "their own" pics and then the capability of Looking at the photostream from all devices.


if someone can explain this new concept, please do so. Maybe I am just too old school to comprehend what is happening.

Sep 17, 2014 9:04 PM in response to think.different

This whole change is a HUGE problem. The camera roll is supposed to show images taken with or saved by THAT device. Mixing those images with photos from iCloud is a major mistake from an interface perspective. As a photographer this causes a major problem for me. First, I don't necessarily want every photo I made moving up to the cloud by default. Under this new system I have to either send everything up to the cloud or nothing up to the cloud. Not acceptable. Second, by losing the distinction between images taken with or saved on the device I lose the ability to manage the storage on that device and to determine what photos were made where. I use a bunch of different hardware to make photos, so they're NOT all "created equal" as Apple seems to want me to think they are. I need to know which were made by the iPhone I have in my hand and which were made by the camera around my neck. Removing the camera roll and mixing all the photos together removes the ability to do this. Ultimately this system numbs out the whole process of trying to organize images from various devices and makes it FAR harder to manage and sort photos unless you ONLY use an iPhone to make them and are comfortable having Apple house a copy on their servers. I'm a professional photographer working with copyrighted images. The LAST thing I want to do is have every one of my photos automatically upload to Apple's cloud.


This has to be changed. It's a massive screw-up. Bringing iCloud Albums back online will NOT fix it. We need the Camera Roll back and we need a CLEAR distinction between LOCAL photos and iCloud uploaded ones. We should be able to tell what device made a photo. All photos are NOT created equal, Apple.

ios - 8 where are the 'camera roll' and 'photostream' albums?

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