How do I clean up my Photos gallery?

[Vagulus]

I have a plethora of folders in my 'Photos' gallery: Camera Roll, Selfies, Video, Bender (four of them), General, Littlies (3 of them), Moving, P_Temp, Mixer, Kids etc., Other Mixers (4 of them), Other Videos, and PFR (2 of them). How did it get like that?

Syncing with my PC comes from a dedicated folder called 'P_Temp' which has four sub-folders called Bender, General, Littlies, and 'iPod Photo Cache' which something Apple put there (I certainly didn't - I don't have an iPod). As far as I know, syncing should get rid of all the fodders existing on the iPad Air and leaving only Bender, General, and Littlies, and these three should have in them the images I put in the PC folders.

What's wrong, and how do I fix it?

I have just updated my iPad O/S (again) and the version of iTunes is 12.4.0.119.
My machine is Intel QuadCore i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz, 16 GB RAM, MS Windows 7 Home Premium v. 6.1 64-bit SP1. It was assembled by Net Solution Computers of Morley, Western Australia, and has a SAMSUNG U28D590D VDU driven by an NVIDIA QUADRO K620 Video Card and RealTek High Definition Audio on Motherboard MSI B75MA-P45. I have Windows Security Essentials as Anti-virus with IE11 and Skype running in the background.

 

[twerppoet]

Most of the photo albums you mentioned are automatic, created by the Photos app when you take a picture that fits the catagory: selfies, videos, camera roll, and panoramic are examples. These folders are intended to be a quick way to find certain types of photos, and can not be deleted unless you delete every photo in that album (which is the same as deleting it from the app).

Some apps create their own folder when you export or save photos from within those apps. This will usually have the same name as the app that created them. They can be deleted without deleting the photos, but will be recreated the next time you save a photo from that app (unless there is an option in that app that stops it from creating a folder).

Syncing from a computer and iTunes creates an other kind of album. If you sync a folder with subfolders (and have the feature enabled) in iTunes' Photo sync settings you will get an album for each subfolder (but only one level deep). These can only be deleted by changing your iTunes photo syncing settings and re-syncing. I never use this method anymore. I'ts easier, more managable, to import the picture straight into the Photos app; in the long run if not in the short.

Then again I've been using iCloud Photo Library on both my iPad and iMac for quite a while, so I haven't been keeping up to date with the other methods.

 

[Vagulus]

Thanks for that. Strangely, I just checked again. I did have the iPad plugged in to my PC this afternoon and it synced while it was there. Basically, it has cleaned up the mess. The duplicated folders are gone and there are only a couple of automatic ones. Seems to have cured itself.

Cheers

 

[twerppoet]

Good to hear.