Why SO many random DCIM Folders? I want ONE!

The Windows image import capability is no harder to use than Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer was never intended by Microsoft to be the primary way to import photos; Microsoft has provided a tool designed for image imports going all the way back to Windows 2000, that opens automatically unless you went to the trouble of disabling it. It's name has changed from version to version, but it has always been there. It was just happenstance that Windows Explorer worked. And it didn't even work with all digital cameras. It doesn't work with my Nikon DSLR when I have a lot of images on it, for example. Or my Doxie scanners. And it doesn't work with many newer digital cameras that allows image editing on the camera. Apple could not have provided the added image management features in iOS 8 and still kept a single folder for images. So their choice was to leave the iPhone brain damaged for a few people who insist that Windows Explorer always worked and should forever work the same way, or to provide enhancements that most users would take advantage of and appreciate.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

....Apple could not have provided the added image management features in iOS 8 and still kept a single folder for images. So their choice was to leave the iPhone brain damaged for a few people who insist that Windows Explorer always worked and should forever work the same way, or to provide enhancements that most users would take advantage of and appreciate.

The enhancements are great, but it seems to me you're presenting a false dilemma. As I've said before, Apple could have programmed their Windows device driver to show as one folder to Windows Explorer, just as it does within the Windows import utility. Nothing about that necessitates breaking the new enhancements.

Plenty of the other necessary background organization on iOS devices is hidden away, doing its job quietly. But for some reason Apple specifically chose to show the confusing folder structure in Windows Explorer instead of giving us what we've come to expect from Apple: an intuitive experience.

I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but it certainly seems like Apple is going out of there way to make their stuff work badly with Windows (iTunes being the prime example). It would be one thing if they just didn't support PCs. But instead, they actually bothered to make Windows versions of iTunes and drivers, then made them work far worse than the iOS versions.

I assume you are not a system level software developer, then? A device driver is not supposed to interpret content that it handles; it should leave that to the application level. Which it does. It leaves it to the built-in Windows photo importer, or other third party tools. Of which there are many, and most of them free.

drume wrote:

Lawrence Finch wrote:

....Apple could not have provided the added image management features in iOS 8 and still kept a single folder for images. So their choice was to leave the iPhone brain damaged for a few people who insist that Windows Explorer always worked and should forever work the same way, or to provide enhancements that most users would take advantage of and appreciate.

The enhancements are great, but it seems to me you're presenting a false dilemma. As I've said before, Apple could have programmed their Windows device driver to show as one folder to Windows Explorer, just as it does within the Windows import utility. Nothing about that necessitates breaking the new enhancements.

Plenty of the other necessary background organization on iOS devices is hidden away, doing its job quietly. But for some reason Apple specifically chose to show the confusing folder structure in Windows Explorer instead of giving us what we've come to expect from Apple: an intuitive experience.

I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but it certainly seems like Apple is going out of there way to make their stuff work badly with Windows (iTunes being the prime example). It would be one thing if they just didn't support PCs. But instead, they actually bothered to make Windows versions of iTunes and drivers, then made them work far worse than the iOS versions.

"could have"

That's irrelevent. We deal with reality.

Philly_Phan wrote:

"could have"

That's irrelevent. We deal with reality.

I agree. I was simply refuting Lawrence's statement that "Apple could not have". But both Lawrence and I have provided multiple solutions to the problem at hand, and each solution has its strengths and weaknesses.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

I assume you are not a system level software developer, then? A device driver is not supposed to interpret content that it handles; it should leave that to the application level. Which it does. It leaves it to the built-in Windows photo importer, or other third party tools. Of which there are many, and most of them free.

"...not supposed to"? According to whom? Device drivers do this all the time, including Apple's Windows device driver. It only presents a small subset of folders and files to the Windows operating system, and it does so in a specifically chosen way.

It's not that they can't. It's not even that they didn't. It's that they absolutely did, but did it badly.

drume wrote:

Lawrence Finch wrote:

I assume you are not a system level software developer, then? A device driver is not supposed to interpret content that it handles; it should leave that to the application level. Which it does. It leaves it to the built-in Windows photo importer, or other third party tools. Of which there are many, and most of them free.

"...not supposed to"? According to whom? Device drivers do this all the time, including Apple's Windows device driver. It only presents a small subset of folders and files to the Windows operating system, and it does so in a specifically chosen way.

It's not that they can't. It's not even that they didn't. It's that they absolutely did, but did it badly.

I spent an earlier part of my career writing device drivers. "According to whom" means best practices for any who work at the OS level. Device drivers run as part of the operating system image, and the OS (at least Unix, Linux, Windows, Z/OS, HPUX and most other extant operating systems) runs with interrupts disabled, so it cannot time share with any other executables. Thus, code in a device driver stops everything else from happening until it completes its job. That's why device drivers do the minimum necessary. And Apple's Windows device driver DOES NOT do anything beyond basics. It's the phone's file system that presents a small subset of folders and files, not the device driver.

Your suggesting that the device driver should "lie" and combine folders for your convenience neglects the fact that there are other processes on the computer that need to know that structure, so munging it would break other things. There is no need to do something in the operating system that dozens of applications do correctly, notably every photo management app in the world, except for Windows Explorer.

Can I try and offer a practical solution to the issue

IHave made one one folder on my computer

I search DCMI for files named image

I Copy all into that folder

delete all

then replacing all back from the folder into my photo stream for which I want left on my phone

long winded but works fine for me

Here's what worked for me: As a previous responder suggested, I did a search for the character * in my folder containing the random-name folders. Then I simply dragged the resulting file names (appearing below the long list of folder names) to a new folder. I then deleted the folder containing the (now empty) random-name folders (or even, just delete their containing folder, which contains no files, just empty folders). I now have a single folder containing my 600 or so pictures, which I sorted in descending-date order.

I recently upgraded to Windows 10 - there's now an easy way of getting around the multiple folders in DCIM:

In any Explorer window, right click on your iPhone icon in the "This PC" drive list, and choose "Import Pictures and Videos".

This takes you to an import wizard that allows all the photos and videos to be imported off an iPhone into Pictures (or chosen folder), with the benefit of being able to select individual photos or in bulk, and also sort them into Groups via a slider. The slider will sort and import the pictures (all or selected) into a single folder or multiple folders based on time-stamp.

mrlew wrote:

Can I try and offer a practical solution to the issue

IHave made one one folder on my computer

I search DCMI for files named image

I Copy all into that folder

delete all

then replacing all back from the folder into my photo stream for which I want left on my phone

long winded but works fine for me

aledw wrote:

I recently upgraded to Windows 10 - there's now an easy way of getting around the multiple folders in DCIM:

In any Explorer window, right click on your iPhone icon in the "This PC" drive list, and choose "Import Pictures and Videos".

This takes you to an import wizard that allows all the photos and videos to be imported off an iPhone into Pictures (or chosen folder), with the benefit of being able to select individual photos or in bulk, and also sort them into Groups via a slider. The slider will sort and import the pictures (all or selected) into a single folder or multiple folders based on time-stamp.

It's a nice tip to clean things up, but keep in mind it's only temporary. Your iPhone will continue to generate new folders within the DCIM. Each folder corresponds to the month the photos within them were taken.

tab1075 wrote:

It's a nice tip to clean things up, but keep in mind it's only temporary. Your iPhone will continue to generate new folders within the DCIM.

True. Using import, or a saved search, or other software (as previously instructed on this thread) are all better options.

tab1075 wrote:

Each folder corresponds to the month the photos within them were taken.

Nope. I wish it made that much sense. The subfolder logic is completely meaningless and useless to any actual human being. It has a back-end purpose, which is why it should have stayed on the back-end.

In the age of Nokia E90 phone had Monthly photo folders like 032010 042010 052010... , i do not know why apple is using randoms numbers to divide Monthly photos on IOS 8.4, hope they would incorporate in IOS 9 folder names like was done in Nokia E90 phone. It would lot easier to access the photos. I have made list of random names of photo folder and each folder has monthly photos and new folder will be created when new month starts to view the photos. Not expected from Apple such thing.

drume wrote:

Nope. I wish it made that much sense. The subfolder logic is completely meaningless and useless to any actual human being. It has a back-end purpose, which is why it should have stayed on the back-end.

It's exactly how it works on mine. Granted, each sub-folder has a random name consisting of a string of letters/numbers, they are not in any particular order, and ALL of the folders themselves are dated with the same creation date. A date in which I don't even have any pictures on my phone from that date. And I noticed that date did change at some point. BUT, when I open the folders, each one contains only photos taken from a single month. They all get their own folder according to the month the photos were taken. I have 46 sub-folders within the DCIM consisting of 46 separate months that those photos were taken.

So what would be great to see is, each sub-folder be named according to the month the photos within it were taken. The creation date of each sub-folder correspond to, let's say, the first photo (or maybe most recent photo) taken that's in that folder. And also to have the sub-folders within the DCIM organized in chronological order according to the dates the photos within them were taken. Even if they left the stupid random folder names, it would still help us greatly if they were organized chronologically.

drume wrote:

Windows File Explorer is the single most commonly used file management tool. ...on the most common operating system. But hey, no need, right?

It may be, but it is not an image management app, so it's no good at managing images.