How to remove photos from a device which have been imported previously in iPhoto?

Question

I have imported all photo's from my phone (Samsung Wave 525) to iPhoto. As I was using iPhoto for the first time, I did not want to delete all photos at the end of importing, preferring to check whether it as done properly first or not. Now that I know that all photos have been properly imported, how do I delete the existing photos from my phone ?

(I've tried importing them again, using "Import All" option - though I get a dialog for what to do with duplicate files, I don't get that dialog which asks me if I wanted to keep the existing photos on the phone or not).

Answer 1

If there aren't many photos, the easiest way to do it is simply delete the photos on the phone. Unfortunately, this means selecting each photo individually as there is no 'select all' option.

To avoid individually selecting photos on the iPhone, you'll want to use the 'delete' option when prompted at the end of importing. Because iPhoto only deletes the photos that were imported at that time, you won't be able to do this with your 'normal' iPhoto library. To get around this, simply create another (throw away) iPhoto library to import the photos. Select 'delete' when prompted at the end of the import to delete the photos from the iPhone. Then you can delete this throw away library on your Mac.

To create a new iPhoto library, hold down the Option ⌥ key when launching iPhoto. This will display a window asking which library you would like to open or create a new library.

Answer 2

It would be faster and possibly easier to connect the phone, open up Image Capture (comes with every mac) and view the photos there to delete them.

Answer 3

Use Image Capture. It comes with OS X. Simply highlight the pictures you want to delete and hit the red-circle-with-a-line-through-it symbol to delete them.

Answer 4

You'll have to delete them on the phone, using whatever options the phone has for that purpose.