My wife runs several online shops. She uses a Canon digital SLR to take photos, inserts the card into her computer and it used to just open a box to choose what to do. I think she had it set to always just open in Picasa BUT...
She had a problem with her iPhone. It had over 7G of photos on it and is a 16G phone, there was not enough space to even update, she was having to delete photos in order to take more.
iTunes, iCloud, and iCloud drive are maddening to me, I just don't have the time or patience to learn to use them. I was trying to get her photos backed up but I added iTunes to her computer and it now tries to take over. I installed Dropbox but am going to have to buy the premium version before continuing her sync because you get 2G free and she had over 7G on her phone. I THINK that they all downloaded from her phone to her computer but have not synced because, like I said, I stopped the sync because of space.
So, the other day she, not knowing what to do, deleted her "my photo stream". It had over 1700 pictures but I think the pictures are on the computer waiting to be synced to Dropbox... I think.
So today she took some pictures of new items. She put her card into the computer and iCloud tried to take over, Dropbox loaded them and Picasa was no where to be found unless you opened it, there was no option to "open with" with a right click on the drive (card) folder... like usual. So there was stress and trouble.
Does anyone who works with photos, cameras, and phone pictures have a way to simply explain what to do? She needs to save her iPhone photos, delete them from the phone regularly, have photos taken with the digital camera load and easily be used in Picasa. I understand a little, but just enough to cause trouble, she wants to just turn it on, plug it in, and have it work.
 
I am about ready to ditch iTunes, iCloud, and iCloud Drive it is almost like Apple intentionally makes things hard to use. Perhaps it is just me but I have never quite understood iTunes nor have I ever been able to easily get it to do what I want it to do.
I think I need to upgrade her to Dropbox premium and add the Dropbox APP to her phone but she is at the point of, OK... I can get this to work, "Don't do anything else". ..but unless I upgrade DB it is not going to have room to sync al those photos and if I don't add the app to her phone she wont be able to access them from there, right? I wish I had just left it alone.
 
Anyway... if you can help or know where or what for me to read or view... thanks.
 
Julien
 

Wow!  What a mess!  I'm not sure how to clean all that up, and I'm not sure my "way" is that easy, but here's what I do (since I also have a LOT of photos to deal with - over 155 GB).  I have my own domain that I don't use as a normal website, but I have unseen directories that I upload the images to using FileZilla (a very easy to use FTP client - just drag and drop - plus it's free).
 
First I plug my phone into my PC, open it as a directory to see the files, navigate to the folder that contains the pictures on the phone then select and drag them to a directory on the PC (for use, backups and for uploading to the internet).  Most images need to be worked in PhotoShop before I'll upload them.
 
I've tried Dropbox, but you hit the limit immediately and I'm not paying for more space (though that may be your easiest option).  I also have Picasa, but I only use it for organizing images.  iTunes is only for music and it doesn't even do that well unless you have a Mac, and I've never tried any of the iCloud stuff.

Can't you just plug your iPhone into your computer, open it as a device, copy and paisted them all into a "Pictures" folder, and then delete them off your iPhone. Check to make sure that they are on your computer before you delete them from the phone.

MakeShift
Can't you just plug your iPhone into your computer, open it as a device, copy and paisted them all into a "Pictures" folder, and then delete them off your iPhone. Check to make sure that they are on your computer before you delete them from the phone.

That's pretty much what I was saying (just in a different way and with more words  ).

Thanks Craig. I do not put any music on my phone nor does she. I do take photos etc so I think I am going to see if I can do away with iTunes, iCloud, iEverything, and just use Dropbox. It easily holds all my photos. If she has to pay 10 bucks a month for easy... it is well worth it. There is nothing quite like having an unhappy woman in the house. I'm serious, I really don't care if it costs a little as long as it is EASY and works. I'll get a 20G (or so) thumbdrive and keep her pictures backed up so if anything I will be the hero and not the villain! As they say, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", lol. She seems to be figuring DB out so I think that will be the best bet.
 
J

I don't iTrouble my self with such matters.
 
Of course all my pics are of the hobbyist nature and if I lose them, so be it.

MakeShift
Can't you just plug your iPhone into your computer, open it as a device, copy and paisted them all into a "Pictures" folder, and then delete them off your iPhone. Check to make sure that they are on your computer before you delete them from the phone.

Yeah, I don't have a problem... but my wife, well that is another story.
Can I delete the pictures off my phone, are the saved, why is there a camera roll and my photo stream? I don't have enough room for this update (or the last one). I need to go take a course and learn how to do this.
 
ARRRGGGHHHHH, now things don't work like they did... what did you do?? Wel, let me take a look.. NO! Just never mind.
 
I'm sorry. It's OK.
 
Geez.
 
I think it will be OK, until the next time she turns her computer off and back on. I will try to fix it so that iTunes is GONE.
Like I said, I really don't have a problem. I should have left it all alone, you'd think I would learn. I have been married since 1978 and raised two daughters.. you'd think I would have learned by now, lol.
 
Actually, I thought think that this is a problem that more meds might will help !
 
J
 
 

I think Google's Gdrive feature allows up to 15GB of storage (you just need a gmail account and you already have access to GDrive). Anything above that for any service you'll pretty much have to pay for and personally I don't trust any online storage to keep things safe (Outlook helpfully deleted a decade's worth of contacts on me a while back... like industry people and long time friends... ugh).
 
What it sounds like to me is you have a pile of auto sync apps all trying to upload willy nilly and fighting each other. That's why I never use those darned things or install them. Windows recognizes cameras just like a hard drive so it is a lot less annoying, intrusive and resource hogging to just plug in the device and a) open the devices folders using the windows autoplay thing or b) click Start > My Computer then click on the device's drive (it will have the camera's name or just show up as "Mass Storage Device"). Then you just copy/cut the files and paste them where you want on your computer and THEN upload them to wherever you want without iTunes or Dropbox "helping" you.
 
If this is a constant thing though USB flash drives and external HDDs are pretty cheap these days and a heck of a lot less aggravating then uploading and/or trying to manage data on the web. More secure too and you won't have to worry about limits (aside from the size of the drive) or the website deleting all your stuff.
 
You probably know most of that but really to me the old school local way of doing things is still the best/easiest. The only major concern is fire or theft but that's when you use the cloud stuff as a backup. Just compress and backup the most important stuff so you aren't maxing out your cloud accounts.
 
BTW you can have multiple Gmail (and thus Gdrive) accounts so if you have a few of them and you compress the files you can store quite a bit of data.
 
Cheers.

hmm... if one of the uploader apps is being a jerk and you don't want it to automagically start screwing around before you remove it try booting into Safe Mode and uninstalling the program. Safe Mode should prevent it from automatically screwing around.
 
I'm probably missing the point.
 
PS: CCleaner is a good program for removing stubborn creepoid programs that leave bits of crap on your system after you've "uninstalled" it.

I guess I'm thinking along the lines of Beepster. For a commercial enterprise, I'd buy an external drive and use it for storage. When you use anything offline, you're at the mercy of the provider and North Korea. I wanted a little call of duty over the weekend and found Sony shut down. I couldn't even use single player mode because it wanted to call home before it started up.
 
When the cloud turns black and stormy it's not so much fun.