How can I manage the photos I take?

[krauster]

My photo needs

This is what I want to do.... it is probably what most people want to do. I am trying to figure out how to manage the photos that I take.

First I have a Note4. I use the Photo app and the Gallery app. I have the Google Photos app. And for years I've been using Picasa on my PC.

and I also have Dropbox. I used to have Dropbox set up to copy all photos that I took go into Dropbox so that they would end up on my PC in a Camera Uploads folder. Recently I've turned that automatic thing off.

I think both Dropbox (when set up to do so) and Google Photos copy the photo from the Gallery to the cloud to be sync'd to the PC. I have set it up to only do this when connected via Wifi.

I want to take a picture. It initially gets stored on my phone and then on my PC via sync'd storage in the cloud.

If I don't like the photo I want to delete it. If choose to delete it I want it deleted from every place that it is being stored. If I am reviewing photos in the phone's Gallery and choose to delete in the Gallery and don't want to see it again anywhere. Same requirement for the Google Photos. If I am looking at a photo in Photos and delete it there I want it deleted from the Gallery too. And if I delete from my PC I also want it to be deleted from my Gallery and Photos on my Note4. I can't figure out how to do that. It seems that deleting a photo from one place doesn't necessarily delete from the other places.

What is the correct strategy for effectively deleting photos?

 

[SpookDroid]

Re: My photo needs

To the best of my knowledge, that's what Photos does. Whatever you erase there, goes away everywhere else.

The Gallery app, unfortunately, is not linked to your Google account, so whatever you delete there only goes away from your phone, but if Google has already backed up the image, then it will still be in their servers and anywhere you sync your Google Photos to. Furthermore, deleting a picture in the Gallery app might make it go away from the phone, but if you open the Photos app, you might still see it. Why? It's pulling the backed-up image from the Cloud. It's not actually in your device, but it's not gone.

In my case, my usage is the complete opposite of yours. I want my pictures backed up, and just need them deleted from my device to free up memory, but want them safe and ready in the cloud. Whatever I delete because I didn't like it's usually right away and before I plug the phone in and it gets a chance to back pictures up.

 

[gone down south]

Re: My photo needs

Yup , use Google Photos and not your native Gallery app.

 

[krauster_sk]

Re: My photo needs

To the best of my knowledge, that's what Photos does. Whatever you erase there, goes away everywhere else.

The Gallery app, unfortunately, is not linked to your Google account, so whatever you delete there only goes away from your phone, but if Google has already backed up the image, then it will still be in their servers and anywhere you sync your Google Photos to. Furthermore, deleting a picture in the Gallery app might make it go away from the phone, but if you open the Photos app, you might still see it. Why? It's pulling the backed-up image from the Cloud. It's not actually in your device, but it's not gone.

In my case, my usage is the complete opposite of yours. I want my pictures backed up, and just need them deleted from my device to free up memory, but want them safe and ready in the cloud. Whatever I delete because I didn't like it's usually right away and before I plug the phone in and it gets a chance to back pictures up.

I just tried selecting and deleting from Google Photos and I get the message "Cant delete item. Photos does not have access to delete item on your SD card. Go to the Gallery app to continue deleting." Then I have the option to cancel or launch the Gallery. Then it shows the selected photo full screen in the gallery for an instant and deletes it. So your suggestion of initiating the delete from Google Photos seems to work.
Is there a setting that could eliminate the message about Google Photo not having access to the SD card?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

[krauster_sk]

Re: My photo needs

Also it seems like there are instances where I can't delete the photo from Google Photos. I think these instances are when I've previously deleted the photo in the Gallery first. I select the photo in Google Photo and hit the garbage can but the image stays on the screen instead of going away.


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

[krauster]

Re: My photo needs

Thanks for providing the very important tip that removing photos from Google Photos can remove it from the phone's Gallery, and not the other way around. I guess that means that if I shoot a dozen pictures and then want to review them and delete some I should immediately go the Google Photos, not go to the Gallery. Unfortuantely it's the Gallery that is show in the camera app, not Google Photos. So I guess I would want to avoid going to it and instead pop out to Google Photos to view and sort for deletion?

By the way, some people may wonder about my obsession to not want to save everything considering that storage is free (until you hit some pretty high limits). The reason I delete is I don't like to scroll my way through my collection of junk photos. Deleting the junk makes for less to scroll through when I am searching for something.

 

[krauster]

Re: My photo needs

And another thing about the problem I'm having of deleting from Google Photo. A while back I bought an SD card. I can't remember how I did it but I moved the photo storage location of the Gallery over to the SD card thinking it would be nice to have more space. Now when I try to delete photos from Google Photo it tries to go to the Gallery. I get the message about Google Photo not having access rights to the Gallery on the SD card. So I'm thinking of moving the photo storage back from the SD card to the phone. How do I do that? I forgot how I changed it the first time. I might have done it while connected to a PC and did it in Windows, by just dragging the DCIM folder. I can't remember.

And, another question. I know Google Photo is storing in the cloud. But is it also storing on the phone? I think so because ts pretty speedy. Where is it storing the local copy from the cloud? Should I set that to be on the SD card?

 

[SpookDroid]

Re: My photo needs

Unfortunately because of the new restrictions set by Android since Lollipop, access to the SD card has been restricted. Now, only system apps can have full access to SD card (read/write/delete/modify), and non-system apps, like Photos, are restricted to only modify contents in folders they created. Since the SD card pictures were created in a folder by the Camera app, Photos doesn't have access to modifying them. But the Gallery app, being a system app, can do it. Only way to let Photos access the SD card fully is to root/hack your phone.

As for the cloud question, your pictures are all stored in Google's servers and the previews are stored in Photos cache (periodically flushed, but you can flush it out yourself, should you feel the need to). When you select an image, that downloads a temporary, low-res copy of picture. Only if you select to download the full-res picture does it do it to a location you specify. The temp location is in internal storage, not SD card, and it cannot be moved (unless you root/hack the phone).

 

[krauster]

Re: My photo needs

I am trying this now: As mentioned above I have an SD card. I've moved everything that is in the DCIM\Camera directory back over to the phone's DCIM\camera directory and in the camera app I've changed back the settings to store on the phone, not the card.

So I can take pictures and they get stored in the Gallery which is assigned to the phone. But they also go to Google Photos which means that they go to the cloud when connected on wifi. I can now delete from Google Photos because Photos can access the photos in the gallery because they are back on the phone, not the SD card.

the only thing I don't like is that Google Photos, as explained to me above, are in the cloud with thumbnails stored locally and when I browse through them it seems pretty slow and there are large areas of the screen that are blank waiting for the thumbnails from the cloud to show up. If I am doing this while not on Wifi am I using data to download the thumbnails? I wish I could store all of the Google Photos cached thumbnails on to my SD card.

 

[krauster]

Re: My photo needs

I'm giving Google Photos a try but I'm not so sure it suits my needs. One thing is that I sometimes want to take a picture and send a low res version to someone. With it in the Gallery I can select Share Via, select Email or Messages and I then get a choice to Resize Image > Original, Large, Medium, or Low. That's useful for me.

Doing that from within Google Photos I can select Share Via but there is no choice for image size. And worse it seems like it might not even do it until it's been uploaded to the cloud, which based on how I have it set can only happen when connected to Wifi.

Maybe Google Photos doesn't work for me.