how do I transfer photos from my s4 to my laptop and keep the albums intact

[Shelley_14]

It will only group them by date and time.

 

[Alabalcho]

It depends what do you call "Album". If it is something built into S4' photo app, this information is not present in the photos itself, so there's no way for your PC to know which album particular photo belongs to (and one photo may belong to several albums).

You may try assigning tags to your photos, corresponding to album names, and they using Windows to re-create albums based on the tags.

 

[Shelley_14]

It depends what do you call "Album". If it is something built into S4' photo app, this information is not present in the photos itself, so there's no way for your PC to know which album particular photo belongs to (and one photo may belong to several albums).

You may try assigning tags to your photos, corresponding to album names, and they using Windows to re-create albums based on the tags.

 

[Shelley_14]

Thanks, that seems like what's happening. Going to have to do it the hard way I guess.
Anyone know if there are other phones with better photo management tools?

 

[Alabalcho]

As I said, it is not the phone - the photos inside do not carry information about "Album". The photo format carries "tags", "caption", camera make, resolution, date/time, etc.

You might try to find alternative photo management app with has PC counterpart and can transfer over this information. But you'll be limited to that app on your PC as well, for the same reason - "Album" is not stored inside the photo file.

If you keep your phone in sync with your Google account, albums created in the phone will appear as albums in Google Photos, but again - when copied to the PC, this information is lost.