iOS5.1: delete individual photos in Photo Stream?

[mavis]

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Just wondering if it's possible in 5.1 to either delete individual Photo Stream photos or disable Photo Stream without having to delete all of them.

I disable and then re-enable Photo Stream almost daily, requiring me to re-download all 600 pictures just so that one or two pictures or screenshots don't end up in my Photo Stream. Kinda ridiculous, really ...

 

[MonkeySee....]

No way i'm afraid.

Hope they fix this. Its nice to have photos backed up but not screen shots and crap like that.

 

[mavis]

No way i'm afraid.

Hope they fix this. Its nice to have photos backed up but not screen shots and crap like that.

Exactly.

My wife and I share a Photo Stream, it makes it easier for us because that way we can use either 4S to take pics of the kids and we both get them on our phones right away, BUT having to delete and then re-download 600+ pictures every time I want to take a non-family picture or a screenshot is downright asinine.

 

[mavis]

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Actually, I've had to re-download all 609 pictures three times today. Fun.

 

[shotts56]

It is just stupid, isn't it ?

My photostream is full of 50 close-up pictures of my two year old's feet when he got a hold of the phone for a minute, plus umpteen screen grabs accidentally taken and thrown into the camera roll.

Its nuts that your prized photos have to stand alongside garbage like this that you cant delete.

 

[Small White Car]

While I agree that they should add this feature, I find it a bit extreme that you're going to all that trouble for a screenshot or two.

So there's a screenshot in there. So what?

Yes, I'd erase it if I could but I can't understand why you're going to all that trouble for something that will cycle out of the stream in a week or two anyway.

 

[mavis]

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If it was just me, I wouldn't care so much. But I share the Photo Stream with my wife, and it's just much easier if I don't have to explain every time I take some random screenshot showing my uncle where in Settings to enable emoji or showing my coworker my battery life because he's on the fence about jumping ship from Android, or whatever. You know, random garbage that doesn't belong sandwiched between cute pictures of my kids.

 

[Night Spring]

If it was just me, I wouldn't care so much. But I share the Photo Stream with my wife, and it's just much easier if I don't have to explain every time I take some random screenshot showing my uncle where in Settings to enable emoji or showing my coworker my battery life because he's on the fence about jumping ship from Android, or whatever. You know, random garbage that doesn't belong sandwiched between cute pictures of my kids.

You aren't actually saying you would have to explain to your wife *every time* there's a random pic, are you? Just explain to her once to expect and ignore the random pics, and you should be done.

Annoying to have these random pics cluttering up your stream, I know, but your choices at this point are to put up with it or not use photostream. And if you haven't yet, leave feedback at Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Hopefully if enough people complain, they'll fix it.

 

[applesith]

I keep wifi off. Take picture. Email it to myself. Delete photo from camera roll. Then the picture is not sent to photostream when wifi is turned on. a little involved, but it works alright.

 

[iArch]

Agree that it needs fixing. In the meantime, a good workaround for me has been to use Camera+. You can set it to store pictures (taken with it) within the app. It's then easy to weed through and delete unwanted pics, and transfer the rest to your camera roll (which will then sync with Photo Stream), etc. It's a cool little app for other reasons, too, but I really like the ability to filter out pics before they head off to the cloud.

 

[PNutts]

While I agree that they should add this feature, I find it a bit extreme that you're going to all that trouble for a screenshot or two.

So there's a screenshot in there. So what?

Yes, I'd erase it if I could but I can't understand why you're going to all that trouble for something that will cycle out of the stream in a week or two anyway.

Agreed. I want an individual delete as much as the next person, but after a day or two I stopped worrying about it and now my ATV2 screensaver cycles through my Photo Stream and I get to see the screenshots, back of a clock to get a serial number, etc. It's part of life's rich tapestry.

 

[Eric8199]

You aren't actually saying you would have to explain to your wife *every time* there's a random pic, are you? Just explain to her once to expect and ignore the random pics, and you should be done.

Annoying to have these random pics cluttering up your stream, I know, but your choices at this point are to put up with it or not use photostream. And if you haven't yet, leave feedback at Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Hopefully if enough people complain, they'll fix it.

Our wives must be related. I don't think he means that she's upset with the photos, I think he means that she's likely going to ask "what was that for?" out of curiosity. My wife would do the same. I don't have to explain myself, but I guarantee she would ask. She doesn't have photostream enabled however. Only I do.

 

[mavis]

Our wives must be related. I don't think he means that she's upset with the photos, I think he means that she's likely going to ask "what was that for?" out of curiosity. My wife would do the same. I don't have to explain myself, but I guarantee she would ask. She doesn't have photostream enabled however. Only I do.

Yup, that's it. She's not upset, just curious. But for me it's a combination of that and the fact that I don't want or need some pictures in the cloud. And the current system, where disabling Photo Stream - even for thirty seconds - causes all of the Photo Stream pictures to be removed from the device, is pretty lame. TBH, the decision to not allow deleting of individual pictures sounds very Steve Jobs to me (control, control!) so hopefully they'll be able to do the right thing now and allow it. Or at the very least, allow people to disable Photo Stream without actually removing Photo Stream images from the device.

 

[NJFP]

Make sure your photo's are backed up to camera roll. Turn photostream off. It will now delete all photos in photostream. Turn it back on. Delete "junk" photo's from camera roll. Viola! Clean photostream!!

 

[Night Spring]

TBH, the decision to not allow deleting of individual pictures sounds very Steve Jobs to me (control, control!) so hopefully they'll be able to do the right thing now and allow it. Or at the very least, allow people to disable Photo Stream without actually removing Photo Stream images from the device.

I doubt it was a conscious decision, just an oversight -- oops, we forgot to build in *that* feature! In fact, I think Jobs might have caught it had he been healthy and involved with day-to-day stuff at Apple.

Whatever the cause, now that so many people are complaining I'm sure they'll get around to fixing it -- eventually.

 

[mavis]

Make sure your photo's are backed up to camera roll. Turn photostream off. It will now delete all photos in photostream. Turn it back on. Delete "junk" photo's from camera roll. Viola! Clean photostream!!

You obviously don't know how Photo Stream works. Once a photo is in there, it's stuck there for 30 days or until you take 1000 more pictures, whichever comes first. That's kind of the point of this thread.

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I doubt it was a conscious decision, just an oversight -- oops, we forgot to build in *that* feature! In fact, I think Jobs might have caught it had he been healthy and involved with day-to-day stuff at Apple.

Whatever the cause, now that so many people are complaining I'm sure they'll get around to fixing it -- eventually.

You may be right, but it's hard to imagine Apple simply 'overlooking' such a basic feature when developers have been complaining about it since day iOS5 beta 1, back in June!

Actually, if you look at Apple's Photo Stream page it says right on there that "you can’t edit or delete photos from your Photo Stream." So apparently it's by design that they don't let you do this. I guess they thought it would be nice if it was a turn-on-and-forget-it thing that people would just use without really thinking about?

 

[acfusion29]

While I agree that they should add this feature, I find it a bit extreme that you're going to all that trouble for a screenshot or two.

So there's a screenshot in there. So what?

Yes, I'd erase it if I could but I can't understand why you're going to all that trouble for something that will cycle out of the stream in a week or two anyway.

what if i wanna take a sexy picture and send it to my gf.. it will show up in photostream

 

[shotts56]

Then your wife will definitely be unhappy when it shows up on her iPhone.

 

[CosmoPilot]

Just turn Photo Stream "Off" on your iPhone until you have the camera roll set up with only the photos you want sent to Photo Stream, then turn it "On"

This is no different than when you had to physically connect the phone to the computer to transfer the pictures off your camera roll into iPhoto (etc.).

 

[NJFP]

You obviously don't know how Photo Stream works. Once a photo is in there, it's stuck there for 30 days or until you take 1000 more pictures, whichever comes first. That's kind of the point of this thread.

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<sigh> I clean my photostream by doing what I posted above. I've done it several times. If you care not to believe me, then ok. Cosmo Pilot gets it.

 

[George Knighton]

Because of the intent to share content, it's an issue establishing ownership rights to delete a picture from a shared Photostream, isn't it?

I'd like for them to find a way to delete from Photostream, but it's hardly a deal breaker. I'm usually not going to worry about it.

It's more of a worry to me (personally) that people remember to save what they want before the Photostream has to be reset at some point.

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

No way i'm afraid.

Hope they fix this. Its nice to have photos backed up but not screen shots and crap like that.

Photo stream isn't a backup service.

It's an easy way to get your photos on your machine without a sync cable.

But I do agree that being able to delete unwanted ones would be nice.

 

[mavis]

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Just turn Photo Stream "Off" on your iPhone until you have the camera roll set up with only the photos you want sent to Photo Stream, then turn it "On"

This is no different than when you had to physically connect the phone to the computer to transfer the pictures off your camera roll into iPhoto (etc.).

Actually, it's quite different. When you manually import photos to iPhoto or Aperture you can 1) select which photos are imported and 2) delete unwanted photos. With Photo Stream you can do neither.

<sigh> I clean my photostream by doing what I posted above. I've done it several times. If you care not to believe me, then ok. Cosmo Pilot gets it.

According to Apple it's not possible to 'clean your Photo Stream,' and I'll take their word over yours. Once Photo Strea is enabled, the only way to temporarily disable it - for example, to prevent a screenshot from going to Photo Stream - is to turn it off. Doing so causes all existing Photo Stream pictures to be removed from your device. You then take your screenshot or whatever, and it goes in your camera roll, but not your Photo Stream (because it's disabled). You then re-enable Photo Stream (because you wanted it on all along, except for that one screenshot or whatever) and now all the pictures in your Photo Stream have to be re-downloaded to your device. THAT'S what's irritating. THAT'S the point of this thread. Get it? Because it doesn't seem like you or Cosmo Pilot are actually reading what is being said here.

 

[chenks]

According to Apple it's not possible to 'clean your Photo Stream,' and I'll take their word over yours. Once Photo Strea is enabled, the only way to temporarily disable it - for example, to prevent a screenshot from going to Photo Stream - is to turn it off. Doing so causes all existing Photo Stream pictures to be removed from your device. You then take your screenshot or whatever, and it goes in your camera roll, but not your Photo Stream (because it's disabled). You then re-enable Photo Stream (because you wanted it on all along, except for that one screenshot or whatever) and now all the pictures in your Photo Stream have to be re-downloaded to your device. THAT'S what's irritating. THAT'S the point of this thread. Get it? Because it doesn't seem like you or Cosmo Pilot are actually reading what is being said here.

you are wrong to take apple's word then, as they do offer the ability to wipe the photostream.
to wipe the photostream you simply log into icloud.com and choose the "reset photostream" option - this deletes all content from the photostream.

then to remove the photos from devices, you turn off photostream and then turn it back on - voila an empty photostream.

 

[mavis]

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According to Apple it's not possible to 'clean your Photo Stream,' and I'll take their word over yours. Once Photo Strea is enabled, the only way to temporarily disable it - for example, to prevent a screenshot from going to Photo Stream - is to turn it off. Doing so causes all existing Photo Stream pictures to be removed from your device. You then take your screenshot or whatever, and it goes in your camera roll, but not your Photo Stream (because it's disabled). You then re-enable Photo Stream (because you wanted it on all along, except for that one screenshot or whatever) and now all the pictures in your Photo Stream have to be re-downloaded to your device. THAT'S what's irritating. THAT'S the point of this thread. Get it? Because it doesn't seem like you or Cosmo Pilot are actually reading what is being said here.

you are wrong to take apple's word then, as they do offer the ability to wipe the photostream.
to wipe the photostream you simply log into icloud.com and choose the "reset photostream" option - this deletes all content from the photostream.

then to remove the photos from devices, you turn off photostream and then turn it back on - voila an empty photostream.

Context, man. I meant "clean your Photo Stream" as 'delete one or two pictures,' which is precisely what this thread is about (hence the thread title). Besides, I don't WANT an empty Photo Stream! I want to be able to either remove certain photos OR take one or two non-Photo Stream pictures without having to re-download ALL of them.

Seriously, is reading comprehension that difficult here?