Transfer images and videos from your iPhone to your Mac or PC
Apple devices improve by the year. With iPhone 4S for example there is no need in connecting your device to a Mac or PC to set it up. You can do this sans cables. If you are on iOS 5 you can take advantage of Apple’s iCloud to push images to your other iOS devices. This however is limited to 1000 photos if we’re talking about Photostream.
Then there’s always the risk of losing your device despite having Find My iPhone installed. Losing your device means you losing all your images and personal videos you might have on said device, so it’s a good idea to have them backed up. Having a backup means you can easily restore the images and video files after a reinstall or should you wipe your device clean.
How to transfer images from your iPhone to your Mac
There are a couple of ways to transfer images from your iPhone to your Mac computer. The easiest way is to install iPhoto ($14.99). The app is part of iLife, a pack that comes free with each new Mac. Plugging in your device brings up the screen below.
As you can see, you will be shown the number of images that are available to transfer. Pressing the blue button at the top of the screen will begin transferring your pictures to your Mac computer.
If you don’t see any images when you connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac it means that you have probably already transfered the images to your computer. Whenever you complete a transfer the pp will ask you if it should keep or delete the photos. If you select No as a choice, the images will remain on the device.
Image Capture
There’s a free app called Image Capture that you can use if you don’t have iPhoto installed. It should launch when you connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac computer< if it doesn’t, you can access the application by going to Applications > Image Capture. Your device should be listed on the left side of the main screen. The destination folder you can choose from the lower part of the app window. The default folder images are copied to is Pictures and you can either import all pictures or use command-click to select a few. Image Capture allows you to decide if you want to delete the images after transfer right before you initiate the said transfer. Clicking the Import button will start transferring images to your Mac.
Your iPhone will not be mounted as an USB drive for you to drag and drop images onto it. Instead you must use one of the apps mentioned above.
How to transfer pictures from your iPhone to your PC
Connecting your iPhone for the first time in Windows will give you the option to install the necessary drivers. Next, the Auto play dialog will appear and you will be able to select Import Pictures or View Files. From the same popup windows you can select if you want to always apply the same action to your photos the next time you connect the same device to your Windows 7 or Windows Vista PC.
If you select Import Pictures and Video the PC will search and find the media that hosts these images and video files and initiate a transfer.
There’s an option to tag your image files. This may come in handy if you want to categorize a set of images.
Selecting Import Settings will allow one to set the destination folder for imported image files and videos, set a folder naming convention and enable the option for deletion of image files from the device.
Pressing View Files will display these files just as you’d do with an USB device. Image files will be located in a folder named DCIM. If you want to copy the files to your PC all you have to do is select them then drag and drop the files into a folder on your Desktop.
We would recommend you backup your images this way so that you will have them stored in a safe place. You never know when you accidentally delete these image files or if your device will be lost some day together with your valuable holiday videos.
