Why SO many random DCIM Folders? I want ONE!

tab1075 wrote:

Lawrence, I'm not sure why you think we're not doing it the "right" way. Just because there are other ways to view our photos on a PC doesn't mean viewing them in Windows Explorer is the "wrong" way. I'm not sure how you know what Apple intended, or didn't intend. To put it bluntly, you don't know. That is, unless you work for Apple in this particular department.

Using Windows Explorer, whether it be with our iPhones, a flash drive, etc., is one of the most common (if not THE most common) ways for PC users to view files. I assure you, we are not going about this the "wrong" way.

But you are, Explorer has no specific image handling organizational abilities, you may choose to use it, but it will be a mess.

What you are missing is that a short time ago APPLE and microsoft did work just fine but APPLE changed it..NOT Microsoft.

It is now much harder because of APPLE.

And i truly think APPLE did this intentionally and i am done with them...done!

not like this...i used to be able to open one folder and drag and drop some or all of my pictures until a few months ago...now i have to do a wild goose chase.

I have enough going on in my life to now have to search for new ways to make it easier to do something that was intentionally done to make it harder

i am sure Samsung has an easier way

Yes i am sure apple has better systems as you can see on this thread...it is working so well for apple...lol

The superior attitude is another reason i hate apple...they will end up like microsoft is now...tooo big for their britches

Too cocky

Thanks for helping me make my decision

Lawrence Finch wrote:

The choice is yours. I don't care what you do.

Apparently you do.

You offered alternate means of transferring photos from an iPhone to a PC, and that's great. But the fact of the matter remains, before iOS 8.1.2 (I believe), it was just as easy to find new photos via Windows Explorer as it is on a normal flash drive. This isn't so much an issue of transferring photos that have been edited within the native app. It's about having to dig through (sometimes) dozens of DCIM folders to find our most recent photos. Hence the title of this thread. And that's why we're here. Apple made a change that makes it more difficult to locate newer photos within Windows Explorer and everyone comes here to find a possible solution. We're not wrong for having done it the way we have for years. It worked perfectly before. We'd simply like Apple to tweak a few things to make it as easy as it once was...and hopefully people are using the feedback system to let them know. Until then, people continue to come here to see if anyone's found a way to fix it or at least work around it. That's why the forums exist. Let's face it, not everyone is going to read an entire large thread, so they won't read the work-arounds that have already been made available. So some of us who are experiencing the same issue come back to tell them what we know. It doesn't help anyone when users, who aren't even experiencing this issue mind you, keep coming back to tell everyone they're doing it wrong or we should just go buy Macs.

I'm not going to address Csound1 directly. He doesn't even use a PC, so isn't having the issues this thread is here to help with, and continues to come here just to troll. Sure, as a business, Apple would love it if PC users went out and bought a Mac instead, but they are not trying to force PC owners who also use iPhones/iPads to buy Macs. That's just ridiculous. If their business plan depended on millions & millions of PC users to buy Macs just to use their mobile devices, they wouldn't have been in business for very long. The fact of the matter is, it worked well for years. I believe this problem occurred because they began to sort photos within the Photos App by month. That's why each DCIM folder only has photos in them taken during a single month. We'd just like to see it better organized so we can continue to do it the way we have when it worked.

Well said!

However i disagree that this was not intentional. I have been a computer programmer since 1982 and you have to consciously program this mess. It doesnt happen on its own and it didn't happen to Apple users...just PC users.

My wife who is an apple user and has made sure we have purchased 2 - iphones...2 i touches...4 ipods...two i pads and a new Macbook pro has done the Apple argument trying to convince me to just go to a Mac. She recently saw what had happened and remembers how easy it was. She is also a programmer and realizes this was done intentionally.

She is also a liberal and we are both pro- gay but hated that the CEO of apple got so political....we both hate that.

In leaving Apple i must say that if Apple had addressed this issue and made Itunes better for PC users i would have been a APPLE fan big time...i dont like being forced to do anything harder...when it could be so much easier

Apple changed the way it worked for a reason. It was entirely intentional. And if you use the right tools it will work on a PC as well as it does on a Mac. You have deliberately chosen to use the wrong tools, and you want the world to support your use of them. It isn't going to happen. You remind me of the anguish when Windows started allowing file names of more than 8 characters. While Apple is the first to change the way images are managed, they aren't going to be the last. I'm sure Android phones will move to the new approach soon, because the current way of managing digital images is the equivalent of 8 character filenames. It isn't just the folder structure; there are other significant differences that Windows Explorer doesn't know about either.

The digital photo standards have changed over the past few years. The right tools have kept up with it. iOS 8 is the first smartphone operating system to take advantage of the new standards. They apply to how digital images are saved and modified. Specifically, Apple has implemented the XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) standard. Prior to this if you edited an image file you lost the original file, unless you saved it separately. If you made a lot of edits over time, unless you saved each intermediate version, there was no way to backtrack through your changes. XMP changes that. Any editor that uses XMP (like the iPhone camera) keeps a "sidecar" file that tracks the changes to the image, so the original and every intermediate remains available. XMP data can be included in the jpg, or kept as a separate file (with the .AAE type), as Apple has chosen to do, because not all programs understand embedded XMP yet.

as an apple i phone user it would have been a smart business decision to let its customers know and how to use it.

PS Apple censored one of my comments and sent me a nasty letter saying i was a bad boy...i am so done!

Well i guess you are the the Chief judge and can determine right and wrong for other.

I insulted no one...i did however respond to being insulted...but i guess you didn't see that

And it would be nice if there was some rules of integrity of Apple to fix this issue and make it as easy to access not harder

but dare i say the king has no clothes

When i said i was so done i didn't mean this forum but apple products....and thanks for helping me solidify my decision.

it is that pervasive attitude that makes me glad for you to see me go :-)

Dear T-Minator

THANKS so very much! This is a brilliant tip.

I was growing desperate someone would actually reply with some sort of solution (other than "import everything and start sorting").

This really helped.

Also, I'd like to say I've never used the photo stream (iCloud), it's disabled on my phone, and yet I seem to have zillions of these "local disk" files... I don't know why.

Anyway, thanks a bunch :-)

The "Local Disk" files don't have anything to do with photo stream or saving to iCloud. They are created when you edit a photo within the Photos App. For example, remove red-eye, crop, or brighten an image...things like that. I believe it creates this Local Disk file because it gives us the ability to revert the edited photo back to its original state. The Local Disk file contains the edit data (my guess). I do know that if you delete that particular photo from your phone or revert it back to its unedited state, the Local Disk file for that particular photo disappears. A Local Disk file will appear for each photo that's been edited.

One problem with this is, when we edit a photo in the Photos App and use Windows Explorer to copy the photo over to our PC, it will not save the edited version of the photo, only the original. You have to import edited photos to your computer using another method to be able to save the edited version.

tab1075 wrote:

The "Local Disk" files don't have anything to do with photo stream or saving to iCloud. They are created when you edit a photo within the Photos App. For example, remove red-eye, crop, or brighten an image...things like that. I believe it creates this Local Disk file because it gives us the ability to revert the edited photo back to its original state. The Local Disk file contains the edit data (my guess). I do know that if you delete that particular photo from your phone or revert it back to its unedited state, the Local Disk file for that particular photo disappears. A Local Disk file will appear for each photo that's been edited.

One problem with this is, when we edit a photo in the Photos App and use Windows Explorer to copy the photo over to our PC, it will not save the edited version of the photo, only the original. You have to import edited photos to your computer using another method to be able to save the edited version.

Those "local disk" files are not local disk at all. You are correct, they are a file type that stupid Windows Explorer does not understand, but any photo management app will understand, and they are a standard "sidecar" file for saving, as you say, edits you have made to the image.

PLEASE HELP ME WITH MY PHOTO BACK UP DILEMMA
how do you import them all at the same time?

I have to click inside every folder, copy the pictures, and paste them on my computer. and when I plug the phone in later again, I don't know which folders are already on my computer because it moves around the photos in different folders.

plus I categorize my photos on my laptop (friends, work, school,....) so what is the easiest way to sync my new photos to computer and only getting the new pictures imported to my computer.

i've been uploading to dropbox but now that's full, and I don't want to pay $10 a month just to back up photos on dropbox

I'm a designer and I constantly have to use my phone to snap shot the screen or take pics of clients homes so I really need an organized system to be able to come back and find a picture or an idea i saved and keep my personal photos out.

I would really appreciate your help with this.

Guys I skimmed through all the pages of discussion and what I could figure out the best workaround for copying pics to windows is as follows.

We have to type * in the search option in the windows explorer and then copy the pics one by one or we can right click to locate the folder and then copy multiple pictures.

Please correct me if there is other better way of doing, that I have missed as its difficult to read each post in detail. Special thanks to those who shared this workaround, making the job easier.

And Yes for deleting pics going to individual folders seems the only option……….. 😟

You could do it the way Microsoft designed Windows to import images from ANY digital camera: use the Camera and Scanner Wizard rather than Windows Explorer. Then you will never see the folders. It can even delete the images after copying. Or you can delete them using the Photos app on the phone.