Organized way of importing iphone 5 photos to Windows 7?

[450125]

My family, later than most, has now gotten to the "tipping point" where we're taking more photos with an iphone than with a "real camera." But we're still "old school" enough that we like to print some of the better shots. And the iphone, which makes picture taking pretty easy, has made photo organizing in Windows very hard.

What I'd like to do is connect the iphone to my computer as a device, "see" the photos, which are presumably stored in some organized manner on the phone, "drag" them to the Win7 computer, and then of course it becomes elementary to do whatever I want with them.

For starters, I can't even figure out how to "connect" the phone to the computer. The phone's charger has a cord that has a Windows USB connector on one end, and another connector that attaches to the phone. However, using this cord doesn't cause the phone to "appear" in Windows Explorer, or Devices and Printers.

So question 1 is what does the "right" cord look like and where do I attach it to the phone?

I assume the rest is either intuitive or googleable, but once the phone is connected and recognized by Windows, where are the photos stored?

I can't be the first person wondering this, but I cannot find an answer using google, or even within these usually very helpful forums.

 

[fireberd]

I transfer my photos to my windows PC with my iPhone5. I have iTunes installed and that probably has a driver for the iPhone. But, when I connect the phone, I just go to the File Manager and access the iPhone like any other drive (hard drive, USB drive, etc) and copy the pictures I want to a file in My Pictures.

 

[450125]

Thanks. I don't have itunes on my computer, and would like to keep it that way. Any recommended software that will simply recognize the iphone as an attached device? And do I have the correct cable (the one I'm trying is the charger cable).

 

[fireberd]

I have iTunes but rarely use it. About all I use if for is transferring music to the iPhone5. It does not interfere with other PC operations.

 

[Berton]

I don't use an iPhone but I either plug a USB cable into my wife's SmartPhone and treat it as another external drive or I remove the microSD card, put it in the adapter it came with and plug into the SD slot on the computer.

One way I haven't tried yet is the Bluetooth Wireless connection. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless feature that allows connected Bluetooth-capable devices but the computer needs the adapter, many newer Notebooks have it and an adapter can be purchased for use in Desktops, mine was about $25.

 

[fireberd]

Different phones may have plug and play capability. There is no SD cards in iPhones.

From what I see doing a google search on this, the iPhone5 is plug and play. According to one site, it may take plugging in and out several times to get it recognized.

 

[Mayank Parmar]

try to use the software "DISK AID"

 

[450125]

For some reason, I had not been alerted to most of the replies above. Sorry.

I solved the most critical part of the problem, when it turned out that a Windows 98-compatible scanner (don't laugh) that I had connected to my computer - this is more than the exception than the rule - was the problem. As soon as I turned the scanner off, the "installing device driver" dialog came up, and then the iphone was recognized.

I'm still less than 100% happy. I was able to "import pictures" using Windows' tool for that, but I'd still like to be able to "find" the pictures in Windows Explorer, and copy them over on my terms, ideally retaining their original file names (they import as 001.jpg, 002.jpg, etc.).

I will try Mayank's DISK AID suggestion tomorrow, provided I can find the software.

Thanks.

 

[450125]

I'm responding in frustration to this old post.

Shortly after the original post, I figured out how to do what I wanted, without Disk Aid or other 3rd party tools, but I have forgotten.

When I USB connect an iphone to my computer, I can "see" a DCIM folder (and nothing else) on Windows Explorer. The DCIM folder contains lots of helter-skelter-named subfolders (890SODPR for example), and each of those contains what I want, IMG_xxxx.jpg files. But all the subfolders are dated March 6, six months ago, although the content .jpg files are earlier than that. And none of them have more recent photos, even though when I import photos from the iphone, everything is there.

There are two things I don't like about using import to get photos from the iphone (three actually - I want to retrieve photos on my terms, and not Apple's or Microsoft's).

One is that the import always pulls in EVERY photo from the phone, instead of just the ones since last import, or better yet, the ones I choose.

The other is that I want the files to retain their IMG_xxxx.jpg sequence numbers, and import just names them 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc. I want more unique names than that; I'd like the IMG_xxxx.jpg names.

So... how do I do what I want? Ideally without the use of a third-party tool?

 

[Berton]

I treat the images on my camera's SD card just like they were on a floppy disk, CD or USB Thumb/Drive. I can remove the card and plug into a card reader or connect the camera by cable. I open Windows Explorer [File Explorer on Win8.1 and Win10TP] then merely Copy the subFolders under the DCIM Folder to the Pictures Folder on the computer. Or Drag and Drop them to the HDD. Depending upon my need at the time I may create a new Folder to store them in. BUT, the file names never change until I decide a need to do so.

I've seen too many issues folks have in using programs that Import or create Albums as a first step when it usually works better as an organizing function after having the pictures saved from the camera.

 

[GokAy]

I usually do it like Berton has pointed out, copy the folder or just open folder and copy contents.

However, if you don't mind uploading to cloud, once you install OneDrive app and run it, it asks to backup to OneDrive (also grants an addition 15GB space freely).

 

[450125]

I appreciate the replies received so far. I sort of solved my problem, and I'll document it here. But ick.

All my images are stored in oddly-named subfolders under DCIM on the iphone.

I tried using Windows explorer to find the .jpg files within DCIM and below (succeeded), and copy them over to Windows. For some reason I couldn't. Kept getting a 0x80030001 error, which according to what I read is because you can't copy files from search results across devices (maybe there's more to it than that, but that's the big picture).

So I had to copy all the oddly named DCIM subfolders to my computer. This too was odd. If I selected all of them, only a few would copy, whether I drag/dropped or copy/pasted. So I had to manually copy one folder at a time.

This then had all the iphone photos on my computer, in nonsense-named DCIM subfolders. I then did a search for the .jpg files contained within them and was able to mass copy them into another folder (copying from search results apparently works if you're on the same computer). Then I used Exifer, a program that can rename image files based on the EXIF date information, to rename the files yyyymmdd_IMG_nnnn where IMG_nnnn was the file name originally, and yyyymmdd was the EXIF date. Then I was able to create subfolders with date names, and finally (deep breath) I could create my own date-named subfolders and move the files to those based on when they were taken.

Guessing that some of the recommended software from this thread might do this in a more streamlined way.

I hate Apple. The company that made its first biggest splash with their 1984 Super Bowl ad is totalitarian in its "we know best" attitude and forcing people to submit to their way of doing things.

 

[Berton]

I can understand your frustration with Apple but please keep in mind that many digital cameras store photos in the same manner including my Canon EOS 60D. DCIM is simply a Folder name with the DC supposedly merely indicating Digital Camera. There's a couple of ways to allow usage of different storage methods, one is the Cloud and the other that I use is a NAS/Network Attached Storage device that contains a HDD/Hard Disk Drive and is attached by Ethernet cable to a Router, usually same one used for connecting to the Internet.

 

[GokAy]

Hey, you can try SynciOS Pro 4.2, which is a free offer at the moment at Windowdeals, SynciOS Pro 4.2 (100% Discount). Pro seems to be normally priced at 39.95USD, 19.95USD currently. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the free version restrictions if there are.

The deal will last another 2 and a half days.

(Not affiliated with this company or Windowdeals by the way )

 

[exoTron]

I appreciate the replies received so far. I sort of solved my problem, and I'll document it here. But ick.

All my images are stored in oddly-named subfolders under DCIM on the iphone.

I tried using Windows explorer to find the .jpg files within DCIM and below (succeeded), and copy them over to Windows. For some reason I couldn't. Kept getting a 0x80030001 error, which according to what I read is because you can't copy files from search results across devices (maybe there's more to it than that, but that's the big picture).

So I had to copy all the oddly named DCIM subfolders to my computer. This too was odd. If I selected all of them, only a few would copy, whether I drag/dropped or copy/pasted. So I had to manually copy one folder at a time.

This then had all the iphone photos on my computer, in nonsense-named DCIM subfolders. I then did a search for the .jpg files contained within them and was able to mass copy them into another folder (copying from search results apparently works if you're on the same computer). Then I used Exifer, a program that can rename image files based on the EXIF date information, to rename the files yyyymmdd_IMG_nnnn where IMG_nnnn was the file name originally, and yyyymmdd was the EXIF date. Then I was able to create subfolders with date names, and finally (deep breath) I could create my own date-named subfolders and move the files to those based on when they were taken.

Guessing that some of the recommended software from this thread might do this in a more streamlined way.

I hate Apple. The company that made its first biggest splash with their 1984 Super Bowl ad is totalitarian in its "we know best" attitude and forcing people to submit to their way of doing things.

I've since enabled iCloud Photo Library on my iPhone. While this doesn't solve the problem with the quirky album names, at least you have the photos always accessible form any iPhone and on any PC (once you log in to icloud.com). CopyTrans is another third-party utility which might help.

 

[GokAy]

I didn't try to copy but the other day after upgrading to iOS 9, all photos were inside a single folder. Anyone else that has upgraded checked it?

 

[exoTron]

Yeah, once you enable iCloud Photo Library, the Camera Roll becomes "All Photos" which is a single folder for all photos. Is that what you mean?

 

[GokAy]

exoTron, possibly. I can't remember what I opted for when I upgraded to latest