iphoto iPhoto, Photo Stream, and Camera Roll on iPhone. Workflow?

[Shadrack]

I don't think I've hooked my iPhone up to my Mac since v5 of iOS was released. Last night I was trying to ensure that iPhoto was in-sync between my Mac and iPhone so I connected it.

I went to import my photos, and it pulled a few photos off of the camera roll, but the other 320 photos iPhoto indicated that it already had. I'm assuming that it pulled those photos from the iCloud Photo Stream.

My old workflow was to import all my phone's photos into iPhoto and then delete them off my phone. Now I'm not real sure what my workflow should be. Should I just copy them from the photo stream into an album or something? What do you do?

[Elliott]

I'm really not quite settled on the workflow either. I've just been plugging in my phone to my computer every once in a while and clearing out my Camera Roll with iPhoto.

As for photos from Photo Stream, iPhoto automatically puts them into an event for that month, so you don't have to worry about them.

[PyX]

I don't think I've hooked my iPhone up to my Mac since v5 of iOS was released. Last night I was trying to ensure that iPhoto was in-sync between my Mac and iPhone so I connected it.

I went to import my photos, and it pulled a few photos off of the camera roll, but the other 320 photos iPhoto indicated that it already had. I'm assuming that it pulled those photos from the iCloud Photo Stream.

My old workflow was to import all my phone's photos into iPhoto and then delete them off my phone. Now I'm not real sure what my workflow should be. Should I just copy them from the photo stream into an album or something? What do you do?

The Photo Stream is a little special. I don?t really like how it works, but it does the job.

Basically, it automatically imports your pictures into iPhoto, meaning that you can?t really lose them in the cloud if you take too many pictures. It creates an event for every month. For example : "Jan. 2012 - Photo Stream". I don?t know if you?re the type to work with events or albums - I work with events only. So basically, I just have to put these pictures into another event or just rename it completely.

[Glassed Silver]

Guys, beware of Photo Stream importing.

Photo Stream's pictures are reduces size copies afaik...

Just sayin'...

Glassed Silver:mac

[PyX]

I didn?t know about that ? :/

Thanks for pointing that out.

I guess Apple has some more work to do with iCloud, and the carriers too. (they probably blocked it because of the high amount of data transferred otherwise, but they should have uploaded the pictures a second time as soon as connected on WiFi, or at least give us the opportunity to make our choice)

[Shadrack]

I'm going to turn off "Automatic Import of Photo Stream" in iPhoto. Its just too confusing right now, and it isn't clear what photos on my phone are in my library already and which ones are not and which ones are the better quality photos, etc.

Also, how do I delete my whole camera roll on my phone?

[Shadrack]

I guess the best way is just to manually select them all and click "Delete" in the Camera app.

[DomZ]

The Photo Stream is a little special. I don?t really like how it works, but it does the job.

Basically, it automatically imports your pictures into iPhoto, meaning that you can?t really lose them in the cloud if you take too many pictures. It creates an event for every month. For example : "Jan. 2012 - Photo Stream". I don?t know if you?re the type to work with events or albums - I work with events only. So basically, I just have to put these pictures into another event or just rename it completely.

This is what I currently do. Move any photos in the photstream events into their own album. Importing photos from my phone picks up any photostream missed for whatever reason.

Slightly concerning the issue with quality

[Elliott]

Photo Stream's pictures are reduces size copies afaik...

What gives you that idea? I only see a minuscule difference in file size between a photo imported from my iPhone using Image Capture and a photo uploaded over Photo Stream. In this instance, the Photo Stream version is 50KB larger than the Image Capture version (I'm assuming that's metadata). I don't see any difference in the actual image's contents.

[Glassed Silver]

What gives you that idea? I only see a minuscule difference in file size between a photo imported from my iPhone using Image Capture and a photo uploaded over Photo Stream. In this instance, the Photo Stream version is 50KB larger than the Image Capture version (I'm assuming that's metadata). I don't see any difference in the actual image's contents.

As I said "afaik"...

I once had that activated and when I checked my pictures in Aperture I was surprised to see them being of such small resolution...

I then deleted my Photo Stream imports and replaced them with the files I still had on my iPhone luckily...

I'm going to turn off "Automatic Import of Photo Stream" in iPhoto. Its just too confusing right now, and it isn't clear what photos on my phone are in my library already and which ones are not and which ones are the better quality photos, etc.

Also, how do I delete my whole camera roll on my phone?

If you have a Mac, you can delete them right after importing them in Aperture and Image Capture.app.

Not sure about iPhoto atm as I haven't used it to import anything for ages :p

Guess it should offer you that option too though! :)

If you have Windows, it depends on how you use it. Do you have Windows? Then go ahead and tell me how you import your pictures.

If you have Linux, then tell me how you normally import them, too.

Glassed Silver:mac

[cooky560 Veteran]

1. Open Preview.app

2. Click Import Photos from iPhone in the File menu

3. Select a target folder and click "Import all"

4. Delete your files manually on iPhone Camera Roll

Simple.

[Shadrack]

Not sure about iPhoto atm as I haven't used it to import anything for ages :p

In iPhoto if you import the pictures off your iPhone it then gives you the option at the end of the process to "Delete Photos on Camera Roll?" The thing that was thwarting my work flow was that because it was already importing the photos from Photo Stream it wouldn't let me import all of the photos on my iPhone because it was marking them as "already imported". And there was no option to just clear my camera roll.

Disabling the auto-import from Photo Stream seems like a better approach for my workflow. I can still see the Photo Stream and use it to post stuff to Facebook or whatever. I can also manually import from Photo Stream particular photos if I want to. Just now I can be-sure that iPhoto copies all my photos off my iPhone and then clears the Camera Roll for me in a way and process I'm familiar with.