Google Plus Photo Management Nightmare

[just.garet]

I am using a Sony Zperia Z1 phone running Android 4.3, and a Nexus 7 tablet running 4.4.1.
Having no success at syncing photos between the two devices using Google Photo App which is part of Google + on both devices.
All my photos taken on both devices are unploaded to google drive and google plus.

When I delete or edit photos, the changes sometimes show up on other device and sometimes they don't. When I create albums, sometimes I can view on the other device, and sometimes I can't. Auto awesome videos often don't show up on the other device too.

It's just a huge mess and thinking of deleting google plus entirely and just using third party photo management app.

Please give me some advice on how to get google plus photos to sync seamlessly, or help me with an alternative.

 

[sauce_a_poutine]

On my phone, edited pictures are stored in a different directory than the originals. They show up in the "Album" app, which is the default picture editing/management app on my phone, but they have to be copied/saved manually to my main album or else "syncing" would be impossible without having material left out of the operation. On my phone, I have stuff in going to "DCIM", "Images", "Pictures" and "Edited".. Perhaps the syncing problem you refer to is because your edited photos are also, like mine, saved and stored in a different physical location ?

The cloudy crowd seems happy enough, but I think picture management on Android is a big mess, whatever the album/gallery you use. The dorks at Google are so hellbent on cloud that it did not occur to them to make one dedicated and user-controlled (from settings applet) directory for all images. One main A/V folder called "Pictures" containing "DCIM", "Movies", "Edited" and "Screenshots" would have make picture management a lot better. As it is, it's all over the place, and it gets worse if you try different picture editing/management apps which, typically have their own "Edited" picture folder. Adding insult to injury, these folders are often difficult to find because the app tries to take the user by the hand and obfuscates everything to give them a "seamless experience", which, incidentally, also requires one to do everything with the said app...

I have tried and fiddled with Android's management systems for pictures, and quite honestly, there's just too much push for Cloudy storage on some apps, and not enough control over where and how things are saved and stored on the others.

Because the said mess on Android, I still prefer editing/copying/organizing my pictures using a Windows device, and then save them to my SMB network storage. This way, all devices, both mine and family members' can access all media, and don't need to deal with pictures/movies getting lost by buggy management software or because of a digital device's operating system quirks.

I know your goal is simple, but trust me, Android won't make it easy unless you go cloudy, which also has it's risks and problems. I suggest you get a NAS, or WD TV Live Hub 1TB Media Center (I have two of these, and portable HDs hooked through USB ). They allow to store your stuff using SMB (Windows network shares) and playback/visualization on TV.

Everything is available to all device connected to my network. No fuss, no problems.

 

[just.garet]

The cloudy crowd seems happy enough, but I think picture management on Android is a big mess, whatever the album/gallery you use. The dorks at Google are so hellbent on cloud that it did not occur to them to make one dedicated and user-controlled (from settings applet) directory for all images. One main A/V folder called "Pictures" containing "DCIM", "Movies", "Edited" and "Screenshots" would have make picture management a lot better. As it is, it's all over the place, and it gets worse if you try different picture editing/management apps which, typically have their own "Edited" picture folder. Adding insult to injury, these folders are often difficult to find because the app tries to take the user by the hand and obfuscates everything to give them a "seamless experience", which, incidentally, also requires one to do everything with the said app...

Yes, Google photo management is a mess. It seems like their emphasis is just to push you into using their services in the cloud.

I have deleted all of my Google Plus photos in the cloud and turned off camera upload. I will start over using only Sony's gallery app, which is quite good, but doesn't allow you to make folders or events.

Before I was using HTC One, and Sense 5.0 has the best gallery because you can make events and move pictures into them. The video highlights is something I'll also really miss. Google's Auto Awesome video feature doesn't always work, and it's also flaky about saving or uploading. I gave up this phone because I just can't deal with phones without microSD card support.

Unfortunately, my solution was to delete all the photos on my phone and start fresh using only my Xperia Z1 gallery app and storing all photos on the Micro SD card. Then I can copy it all to my computer and control it better, though it does take more time.