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Photos - how do I import properly?

I have just imported 80GB of photos and videos from my iPhone to free up space.

Annoyingly, the albums they were organised in have all been ignored.

Also some of the photos I swear I deleted on the phone have been imported and I'm having to delete them again.

And, in instances where I took a series of 10 photos in succession (timer mode) and have already chosen the best one.. these have imported all of the photos and now I have to go back again and choose them again deleting the rest.


Is there something missing in the way I'm importing them or is there a setting I need to enable?

Posted on Aug 1, 2023 11:27 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 1, 2023 11:56 PM

When you import manually from the iPhone using a USB connection to a computer, you will import just the naked original media files, as you have saved them right from the camera or an app, the image files, the videos, the Live Photos, etc., but not the organisation of your photos in albums and folders.

If you want to transfer the Photos Library from the iPhone with its structure and all adjustments you applied, you will have to use iCloud Photos. Only iCloud Photos will give you a perfect syncing. If you enable iCloud Photos on your iPhone and your computer (iCloud Windows on a Windows PC), the Photos Libraries on all your synced devices will automatically be kept identical. Any modification you are applying to your photos on one of your devices will be synced to iCloud and from there it will be synced to your other devices and update the library there. All albums and folders will be the same across all the devices, with the same captions, dates, favorite hearts, places, even the same keywords. You will not see the keywords on the iPhone, but can search for them.

You will need a subscription to iCloud + to keep 80GB of photos in iCloud, however.


Here is how to set up iCloud Photos on your iPhone: Use iCloud Photos on iPhone – Apple Support (UK)

And on your other devices: Apple Support article: Set up and use iCloud Photos



Added: I forgot to answer your question about the deleted photos. The items in the Recently Deleted album will also be downloaded, when you download from the iPhone. Did you empty Recently Deleted, before you started to download your Photos from the iPhone?





2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 1, 2023 11:56 PM in response to bojack_horseman

When you import manually from the iPhone using a USB connection to a computer, you will import just the naked original media files, as you have saved them right from the camera or an app, the image files, the videos, the Live Photos, etc., but not the organisation of your photos in albums and folders.

If you want to transfer the Photos Library from the iPhone with its structure and all adjustments you applied, you will have to use iCloud Photos. Only iCloud Photos will give you a perfect syncing. If you enable iCloud Photos on your iPhone and your computer (iCloud Windows on a Windows PC), the Photos Libraries on all your synced devices will automatically be kept identical. Any modification you are applying to your photos on one of your devices will be synced to iCloud and from there it will be synced to your other devices and update the library there. All albums and folders will be the same across all the devices, with the same captions, dates, favorite hearts, places, even the same keywords. You will not see the keywords on the iPhone, but can search for them.

You will need a subscription to iCloud + to keep 80GB of photos in iCloud, however.


Here is how to set up iCloud Photos on your iPhone: Use iCloud Photos on iPhone – Apple Support (UK)

And on your other devices: Apple Support article: Set up and use iCloud Photos



Added: I forgot to answer your question about the deleted photos. The items in the Recently Deleted album will also be downloaded, when you download from the iPhone. Did you empty Recently Deleted, before you started to download your Photos from the iPhone?





Aug 8, 2023 11:58 AM in response to léonie

Thank you. I used to use iCloud to site 5GB of my most important files. Can't do that anymore because it wants to store everything, all the time, and 5GB isn't enough to store everything, so the whole iCloud thing is not working for me at all. The whole thing seems like a push to get me to subscribe for cloud storage I don't want or need. And honestly 2TB on iCloud would be a nightmare. It's hard enough using the interface to manage 1000 photos, let alone terabytes.

Photos - how do I import properly?

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