More Awesome Than You!

Umm, okay...

 So I've taken my sims on several vacations since I got BV and never really bothered looking for their snapshots in their respective storytelling folders. Just recently I was thinking of using some of my Twikkii pics to make some new wallpapers and, well, they weren't there. I've taken 4 vacations in Pleasantview, 2 in Veronaville, 1 in Strangetown, and 3 and 1 in my two custom neighborhoods. They've all taken numerous pictures (or had tourists or locals take their pictures), and the ones that won't show up all have one thing in common--they were Twikkii vacations.

 All of the Takemizu and Three Lakes pics show up in their respective folders, with all the neighborhood, downtown and uni pics, as well as regular in-game camera pics, including regular camera pics from Twikkii (just the snapshots the sims take themselves won't show up).

 Am I looking in the wrong place? I just assumed that since my Three Lakes and Takemizu pics were with the other pics, that naturally the Twikkii ones would be there too...

No, you're looking in the right place. They start with 'm', mthumbnail, msnapshot and the like. Though if you can see those from the other two vacation 'hoods, you probably already know that. Are you looking at the folder organized by name?

When you say "folder organized by name", do you mean EA Games/Sims 2/Neighborhoods/N001/Storytelling? If so, yes. The ones from Three Lakes and Takemizu vacations that were taken in Pleasantview, for example, are in the above folder, at the top, above the pics sims took at home, and the pics I took with the original camera.

 Did the game mess this up and put the Twikkii ones down farther than the regular pics? They could be way down there as I am a photoholic and have over 5,000 total snapshots and thumbnails in the storytelling folder for one of my neighborhoods.

Yes, that's what I mean.

5,000 photos? You need to clean that crap out. That's a lot of megs of wasted space. Edit, publish, trash. I have 245 right now in Prospect Beach, holding until I get caught up on blogging, and it's taking up 8.09 megabytes. 5,000 is approximately 165 megs.

I have a question.  Can I go into my storytelling folder and delete all the pictures?  I don't take many pictures, but, I have 241 photos in one of my storytelling folders.  I don't want to mess anything up, but, would like to clean up if I can.

ETA: There are also Webentry XML documents in that folder, can I delete them without messing anything up?

I don't know, I've got over 10,000 pics in Pleasantview's storytelling folder, and that's only taking up like 60 megs. Still, it's impossible to sift through them all sometimes.

UPDATE:

Okay, I figured it out! Yay!

In my custom neighborhood Ambrosia's storytelling file, all vacation and household photos taken by sims (except Twikkii ones) are named nsnapshot (then a bunch of random letters and numbers), then nthumbnail, and then plain old snapshots and thumbnails. But wayyyyy down at the bottom, under everything, are the stupid Twikkii pics, called tsnapshots and tthumbnails. Just the sim-taken photos, mind you. The ones taken by pushing "c" end up with the regular old snapshots. Messed up.

 At first I thought, "Oh, T for Twikkii right??" But Three Lakes and Takemizu also start with T so...oh well. EAxis is just plain weird.

 Thanks for everyone's help anyways--thought I'd post this because, well, everyone should know right? And there might be people out there like me who, well, don't know.

Well, that's just stupid. Maxis-stupid, not you-stupid.
Yes to the photos with the following caveat:
If you delete photos that are currently being used in albums (as in, for publishing on the official site) they will obviously be missing now. They won't break the albums, per say, but the reference will have to be removed in order to publish. Basically, click on the blank photo in your album and move it out. Make sure to get the snapshot and the thumbnail.

Those XML documents are your family albums. I keep meaning to try deleting them and seeing if a family respawns an XML. However, I don't publish to the official site anymore, so my motivation has waned. Unless someone else has done it and says it's ok, I wouldn't.

Since I'm now blogging everything, I periodically move my snapshots into a holding folder for editing and delete everything out of the storytelling folder.

It's safe to take the xml files out, generally. The new one that respawns will be blank and have no picture references, of course, but it will work. I archive my pictures and .xml files after each upload to the TS2 official site and if I happen to pop into a family's album after the old xml file has been removed, a new file is waiting the next time I delve into the Storytelling folder to organize my pictures.

Also, every time you do a vacation album or get prints of vacation photos, it also spawns a new xml file. The problem is, this will overwrite your 'story' file if you haven't backed it up elsewhere. However, I believe the xml files are safe to delete once you've got your photoalbums and/or snapshots ordered.

Thanks Zazazu and purplebunny for your replies.  I will delete them now.