Confusion with image locations

[JMak]

Hello,
I've just purchased a new galaxy S2 tablet that I love a lot.
I have a question regarding moving and storing image files on the tablet.
I downloaded some of my photos from my laptop to the tablet. Then, I moved them to my sd card. It turned out that after moving the images, they still remained in the image folder. It seems, that the moving in fact duplicates the photos.
After, I deleted the photos from the image folder and for may surprise, it also deleted them from the sd card. It seems that these duplicates are linked.
I've never experienced anything like that before.
Is this a normal behavior or some bug in the system.
The tablet otherwise works fine. This duplication of files seems to affect only image files. With .pdf files it works fine - no duplications.
Then, my dismay I also noticed that the very same images also got duplicated in the Gallery folder and google photos. Where are my actual images now? In all 4 places? If I want to edit them what location should I edit them?
Can anyone enlighten me on this? Or point me to some tutorials that explaines how android handles images?
Thanks

 

[lunatic59]

It's not so much how Android handles the files but the gallery apps. So you have a picture, let's call it photo1.jpg, and you copy it to internal storage. This might be a folder called /sdcard/media/images. (yes, /sdcard is internal storage ... your physical SD card might be mounted at something like /sdcard/external) You open the gallery or Google Photos and there it is displayed under images. Fine.

Now you move it to your SD card into a folder called "pictures" (or "aunt Martha in her swimsuit" ) but when you look at it int he gallery, it's showing up in images and pictures. What you're missing is that photo1.jpg is an image and therefore showing up under images not as a location but as a type. There is only one file and it's on your SD card. Deleting that file from either location will delete the one and only image on your device.

Google Photos links to your cloud account so it will show both local and cloud based imaged. You can tell it to display only sync'ed files but I think that's off by default. And, if you want to display local images with Photos, it will prompt you to sync them to the cloud at least once.

If you do sync them, deleting them locally will also delete them from your cloud account and if you delete the cloud image, it will remove it from the device the next time it sync's (unless you tell it not to.)

 

[JMak]

It's not so much how Android handles the files but the gallery apps. So you have a picture, let's call it photo1.jpg, and you copy it to internal storage. This might be a folder called /sdcard/media/images. (yes, /sdcard is internal storage ... your physical SD card might be mounted at something like /sdcard/external) You open the gallery or Google Photos and there it is displayed under images. Fine.

Now you move it to your SD card into a folder called "pictures" (or "aunt Martha in her swimsuit" ) but when you look at it int he gallery, it's showing up in images and pictures. What you're missing is that photo1.jpg is an image and therefore showing up under images not as a location but as a type. There is only one file and it's on your SD card. Deleting that file from either location will delete the one and only image on your device.

Google Photos links to your cloud account so it will show both local and cloud based imaged. You can tell it to display only sync'ed files but I think that's off by default. And, if you want to display local images with Photos, it will prompt you to sync them to the cloud at least once.

If you do sync them, deleting them locally will also delete them from your cloud account and if you delete the cloud image, it will remove it from the device the next time it sync's (unless you tell it not to.)

Thank you for the reply.
So if I understand it well the "images" folder in "my files" manager in not a location. I don't have to worry about taking place from the internal harddrive. Because I have many gigabytes of photos on my laptop that I want to move to the tablet's sd card. I was concerned, if I move all those photos on the tablet and it will be saved on both the internal and external harddrive then it will run out of space on the internal harddrive. But this is not the case as you said. The photo exists only on the sd card where I moved them. And the "images" folder is just a pointer to the sd card - do I understand it well? And when I edit the images I always have to open the image where it actually resides (the sd card) and not from the image folder or gallery. Do I understand it well?
So what is the use of the image folder and the gallery if I work on the images where they actually located (sd card)?

 

[lunatic59]

Pretty much. Just be careful that you understand your file locations. As I stated, the mount point /sdcard on most devices is INTERNAL even though it says 'sdcard'. Your physical SD card is mounted at a different location. Gallery or photo apps will find the images on any mounted file partition.

The easiest way to get the images from your laptop to your SD card is to remove the card from your phone and use a card reader to copy them from your laptop. That way you are sure they are only on your card and not in the phone's internal memory.

 

[JMak]

Pretty much. Just be careful that you understand your file locations. As I stated, the mount point /sdcard on most devices is INTERNAL even though it says 'sdcard'. Your physical SD card is mounted at a different location. Gallery or photo apps will find the images on any mounted file partition.

The easiest way to get the images from your laptop to your SD card is to remove the card from your phone and use a card reader to copy them from your laptop. That way you are sure they are only on your card and not in the phone's internal memory.

Thanks a lot.

Now, I understand.