If I move iPhone photos to albums, can I delete originals?

[Fushia123]

I had loads and loads of family photos on my iPhone. I’ve recently started to put them into albums.
Once moved to an album, can I delete them from my photo store?
I have started to organise them into folders, but am not sure that if I delete them from my photos they will be gone forever!?
Advice from tech savvy Mumsnet folk gratefully received. X

I’m not sure but I don’t think ‘putting in an album’ really moves the photos, it seems to me it’s more like a tag to help you find things. You can put the same photo into more than one album, I don’t think it copies it.

So no, I don’t think you can ‘delete the original’, I think it is still the one that’s ‘in’ the album. As I said, I’m not sure! Maybe try it - take a photo, put it in an album and then see what happens when you delete the ‘original’.

No you can’t. I tried it and lost some photos. It’s frankly ridiculous and something that Apple should address! Anyway, definitely don’t delete them!

I fell into that trap by moving photos and videos into favourites and thinking that I could delete them off yeh camera roll. Lost my “favourite” pictures and videos this way, very frustrating

No you can't, it is in your cameras roll . Putting it 'in a folder' is really just a link to the photo in the camera roll.

its really annoying.

You definitely can’t - putting them in albums doesn’t make another copy, it just links the originals in a group.

Doesn’t help with your storage space, but make sure you’re using the “people and pets” option to enable it to identify different people, it’s a hugely helpful way of finding photos in your stock. Eg you can search for the names of several people, once you’ve set it up, and it brings up all the photos with those people in together.

I like it, some photos fall into more than one category so it avoids duplication.

No can do. Hugely frustrating when trying to compile a secret gift album and a little person sees it 🤨

I have 20,000 photos on the camera roll which is enough to put me off ever sorting them out ! I do wish Apple would make it so we could save to an album then delete from main camera roll

I use Google photos to store mine. You can click on to remove the originals from your phone freeing up storage

No

Google photos is good. My photos automatically transfer to google photos. I then sort albums and the photos delete from my camera roll. There is a free package with google but I pay £1.70 a month as I have thousands.

Same. You described it much better than me 😂

Those saying they’ve lost stuff through trying to store in an album and then delete from the camera roll, you should be able to retrieve them from the bin for 30 days, I think?
I tried it as an experiment with some pictures I wasn’t fussed about and got them back.

My other peeve is that deleting from iphone automatically deletes from iCloud too. How daft is that? So I have to back up my photos to home PC to ensure they’re safe, before I can delete from phone.

To really move photos from the camera roll to folders, so that the photos get removed from the camera roll and put in the folder, you will need a third-party app. I am using the Utiful photo organizer app for more than 5 years already and have my folder and subfolder structure in it, so I can sort things properly. I basically keep only my vacation photos in the Photos app and everything else goes to Utiful, so I can find things fast in the respective folder when I need them. This way of organizing photos is actually a win-win for me because I not only have my organized folders in Utiful but I also have my vacation photos without any clutter in the Photos app.