iPad Camera Roll: Backing up, transferring and restoring images, albums

It had become very time consuming to locate a specific image among over 5000 photos and videos on my iPad, especially images not assigned to a particular album. Which in many cases were not!

Since the iPad is my post-processing tool of choice, I usually save several image versions to the camera roll as I experiment with various apps and functions. Therefore, I had a lot of “junk” images on the iPad, and the lack of organization was leaving me in a more confused state than normal!

So, I recently dedicated a couple of days to researching and developing a workflow to backup all the images (photos and videos), leaving only a few in the iPad camera roll. I also wanted to preserve the Photos app folders organization I had created when backing up to a hard drive.

Here’s an overview of the process I used.

To copy iPad Camera Roll to computer, I:

1. Copy iPad camera roll images to a folder on my MacBook Pro with the Image Capture software provided on the computer. By periodically backing up, not all 5000 images need to be downloaded this time.
2. Copy the images to two external hard drives (additional backups) attached to the MacBook Pro.
3. Determine the images had copied successfully to all hard drives.

After copying all images in the Camera Roll, I want to preserve the iPad Photos app albums, along with images contained in each album, as a catalog to better locate filed images on the hard drive.

PhotoSync, an app I use to quickly transfer photos and videos to and from my iPad and computer, recognizes the albums created in the iPad Photos app.

I spend some time checking to determine that the album images were transferred at full resolution rather than as thumbnails. From my checks with info sizes on the hard drive, the images appear to be the same resolution as those transferred from the iPad camera roll.

To copy iPad Photos Albums to computer, I:

1. Develop a PhotoSync path routine to transfer the albums, along with the images, one album at a time from the iPad to a folder on a hard drive.
2. Copy all the albums to a second hard drive.
3. All the images, both camera roll and albums, are now at least two hard drives.

Once all the images have been transferred and backed up to hard drives, I am faced with how to clean up my iPad camera roll. I can’t find a good method of batch deleting images from the camera roll since I have selected not to delete the images from the iPad at the time I use the Image Capture software.

An internet tip suggests using the Moments entry in the Photos section of the iPad Photos app. I don’t use this section very often, but it does allow selecting timeframes or individual images (including Photo Stream images) to be sent to the trash. (Note: Deleting an image in the timeline permanently deletes it from the Photo Stream on all devices.)

By tapping the “Select” option in the upper righthand corner of the Moments panel and then the Dateline entry “Select” option to the right of the timeframe date, all the images contained in a single timeframe can be selected and sent to the trash. Or, individual images in a timeframe can be selected for deletion.

• NOTE: If all images I want to leave on the iPad are in albums, I could speed the process by deleting all timelines from the Moments panel and using PhotoSync to transfer the desired albums back to the iPad Camera Roll. Since I know all the images in the Camera Roll are not assigned to an album, I individually select some images to remain in the Camera Roll.

It’s time to copy three albums (about 200 images) I want to reload on the iPad. The images transferred via PhotoSync are assigned to the Camera Roll, not individual albums. While empty individual albums remain on the iPad, the images are not automatically reassigned to the original album. And, if an image is originally contained in more than one album, it appears the image will be duplicated in the Camera Roll when transferred back to the iPad.

To copy images from hard drive to iPad, I:

1. Delete all the blank albums remaining on the iPad and start the album creation process from scratch.
2. Transfer an album to the iPad, make a note of the images in that album, create a new iPad album, and batch assign the images to the album.
3. Follow this workflow for each album containing images to be moved back to the iPad.
4. Delete duplicates in the Camera Roll.

Hopefully, I have not overlooked some fatal error that has prevented me from transferring at full resolution all the images as intended.

Please, leave a comment to suggest improvements or alternatives to the process I have described. (Ya, I know! Better organization is a good place to start.)