I've encountered an annoying problem with Photo Stream. Yesterday I shot about 15 photos using my new iPhone 4S. Those photos automatically synced to my Photo Stream on my iPhone besides still being in the normal photo album as always. Last night I uploaded the original photos I shot to A3 not changing the file name at all. Then I had A3 delete the photos since I knew they were still in my Photo Stream on my iPhone. So, tonight I plug in my iPhone to sync again to A3 b/c I shot a few more photos today, and there are my photos from yesterday again! This time though they're dated with today's date! I do have the “do not import duplicates” box checked. I went ahead and imported them just to compare to yesterday's batch and sure enough they're all considerably smaller sized files (less than a mb whereas the originals are between 2-3 mbs) than the originals I imported last night, which means they must be the ones in Photo Stream, right? Honestly, that's going to be a huge pain if this is the way it works. It'll make me turn off Photo stream entirely.
I don't know if it makes a difference concerning my above experience, but I don't have Photo stream turned on at all in A3 b/c I wanted to have it on in iPhoto '11 which I still use sometimes for simple editing. I wasn't allowed to have it on in both. Does this mean Aperture is always going to see these Photo Stream photos as new and want to import them every time since they're not already being added to A3 through the Photo Stream?
Hope I'm making a little bit of sense. Even I'm confused reading this. ;)
Debbie,
Just a bit confusing, but I think I follow :)
First off, are you sure PhotoStream is disabled in Aperture? It sounds to me like it’s pushing new photos to the PhotoStream (third option of the three).
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Nope, it’s definitely disabled b/c it wouldn’t let me have both A3 and iPhoto on at the same time. I just double checked to be sure. I turned it off in iPhoto and am only going to use it between my iPad and iPhone for now. I don’t want to find the same photos I’ve already imported showing up again and again in the Import window just b/c they’re in the Photo Stream. Very annoying!
~Debbie
Debbie,
I just cleared out all the photos in my Camera Roll on my iPhone, and am going to try to reproduce what you’ve seen. It’ll take an extra day, but it’s worth pursuing.
Hang tight! And if you don’t get a follow-up from me in a day, feel free to nudge me on here.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
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Debbie,
I tried to reproduce your issue but couldn’t. However I’m not sure I did everything the same way you did.
Can you please try to reproduce it again, and tell me exactly what you’re doing, including what settings are on or off on the iPhone, Aperture and iPhoto?
From the simplest point of view though, simply enabling Photo Stream in Aperture is all you have to do. There’s no need to manually import photos from the iPhone, since the full resolution image — with adjustments! — is synced through the Stream. Unless you’re shooting a ton of photos and really don’t want those in Aperture, I don’t see why not just leave the Stream on.
But regardless, if you can reproduce the issue with precise steps, I’ll try again here.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Yes! I’ll try today. I’d love to think it was just a quirk, but I definitely had duplicates of iPhone photos I’d already imported then deleted show up in my Import window, but at much smaller file sizes, which made me think they were Photo Stream photos, not the originals. Be back later… thanks!
~Debbie
Actually Debbie that itself is a bit confusing, since I just discovered today that images added to Photo Stream from Aperture directly are actually shared at full resolution to other Macs. If you see a photo in the Stream on the iPhone, then choose Save to Camera Roll, that I’m sure is going to be lower resolution.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Hmmm… you may have just hit on something. I did go into the camera app and create Albums using photos from the Photo Stream. I did that the day after I shot the photos, and after I had imported the originals and deleted them, which would explain the duplicate photos having a date that was a day later than the originals and being a smaller photo size. Interesting. This means we can’t create albums in Photo Stream without them being added back to the Camera roll. At least that’s my interpretation.
~Debbie
Debbie,
then that’s it. You manually added the photos from the Photo Stream back into the Camera Roll, so of course Aperture will see those and want to reimport them.
I see that you can create a new Album on the phone now and choose what photos go into it, but even if you select photos from the Photo Stream, they are still added to the Camera Roll.
I hadn’t even seen this until just now; so you do have the ability to create new Albums and even move items between them now, which is great. But yes if you pull something form the Stream, it does end up back in the Camera Roll.
I just tried this too; if you then delete the photo from the Camera Roll, it will warn you that it will delete them “everywhere”. In my mini test though, it only deleted one of them from the newly created Album.
So it looks like Albums created on the iPhone are just a sorting of references to the original files and not an actual copy of the file.
Interesting!
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Well, I’m so glad we figured it out! LOL! Now I can use Photo Stream again, though I’m reluctant to use it in A3 b/c then my photos haven’t been imported using my iPhone 4S import preset. Another quandary. ;) I’ll use iPhoto for the Photo Stream for now, and regular import for A3. Thanks!
~Debbie