Q: I uploaded photos onto my iPod classic from a folder on my iMac. However I cannot find a photo folder on my iPod into which the photos have been placed. They are obviously on the iPod as I am able to view them from the iPod itself, but when I open my iPod in iTunes, I cannot get to the photos because there is no photo folder in iTunes and the files are not visible. Why does my iPod not create a folder for the photos? how can I do this myself?
– Joy
A: Actually, you would not normally see a “Photos” folder on your iPod via iTunes itself. iTunes doesn’t really provide any way to manage or view your photos—it merely synchronizes them to your iPod from a specified folder.
To access the photos folder on your iPod, you need to select the option to “Enable Disk Use” for your iPod and access it through the Finder simply as an external hard drive. To do this, connect your iPod, and then select it in the source list on the left-hand side in iTunes, and choose “Enable Disk Use” from the “Summary” tab and click the “Apply” button.
You should then see your iPod appear in Finder as a removable drive. When you select it, you should see the “Photos” folder listed there:
Keep in mind that unless you have selected the option in iTunes to “Store Full Resolution photos” this folder will not contain any particularly useful information, since iTunes stores the images for viewing on your iPod in its own optimized format. Not only are these images inaccessible as normal photo files, but they have been resized into iPod-specific resolutions, which are generally much lower than the resolution of the original photos (the maximum resolution stored by the iPod is approximately 720×480). You can access these photo libraries using third-party software, but since the resolution is so low, you’re far better off to simply opt to store the full resolution photos from iTunes in the first place, in which case iTunes will make a copy of each original photo and store it in a “Full Resolution” folder under the “Photos” folder.
You can find more information on how this all works in our Complete Guide to Displaying Photos on iPod + iPhone.