A more efficient way to manage photos/videos between computer and iPhone How can I manage photos on my iPhone 4S such that I can sync the photos to my computer, leave them on my computer and yet selectively remove photos from and leave photos on my iPhone? Simply said, What options exist for heavy duty (12 GB photo library to start with room to grow) and more efficient way to manage photos and videos between my computer and an iPhone.

I am asking this because recently, my iPhone is complaining to me that I have no more storage space. I have a lot of photos and videos shot on my iPhone and I usually leave them on my iPhone. I back up my precious photos and videos via the back-up feature in iTunes and that's all. But iTunes doesn't allow me to view the photos that it has backed up and removing any image from my iPhone is going to do the same to the back-up copy. I have depleted the storage space, I need to clear some of the photos from my iPhone. 

I could back up the photos by copying them from the iPhone icon under My Computer. However, this method gets confusing in the long run, especially when I am selectively removing photos over time and putting them back. 

So I'm starting to ask myself if everyone else does it this way (the confusing method). What is a way to manage photos and videos more efficiently between my computer and iPhone, such that my computer is the main library of all the photos and videos -- that's deleting items from iPhone when sync'ed with computer does not remove the copy on my computer and new items on my iPhone gets transferred to the computer? 

The leading solution of using a Cloud service may be too expensive. It would be great if I could transfer between just an external hard drive and my iPhone.
When importing new photos and videos from my iPhone, I always click to delete them on my iPhone, so the master copy moves to the iPhoto library.
The only photos &amp; vides I keep on my iPhone are those I explicitely synch to it: I use a smart album of last 12 (or whatever) months plus whatever hand picked photos and albums I want.


This works of course because I use a Mac. Since you tagged your question "Windows" and you speak of "My Computer" icons, I suppose you're on a PC and this answer will not be very useful to you. But I am still posting it in hope that it maybe inspires you to find a solution that works for you.