Amazon photos to replace iCloud questions.

[macOS Lynx]

They're adding a capability to remotely access files on the iPhone. That's not speculation but fact.

This is so incredibly wrong and inaccurate.

you have the right to distrust Apple and leave their services behind to “stick it” to them, but at least understand the technology.

Nothing Apple is adding in iOS 15 allows them to remotely access files on your phone. Not a single system Apple has added gives them that capability.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Not quite that many. I have "only" a little over 10k photos. I just want to make sure I have some type of backup that preserves the original quality photo. I bet if I go through them I could delete 1k because of old screenshots and memes. I used to be a hobbyist photographer in the 35mm days but the phone camera just doesn't feel the same to me when it comes to a hobby.

I had a Canon 40d that I used extensively for many years. But I haven't used that for a good 5+ years and even sold it on eBay this year (with my Tamron 18-250mm lens). I miss my days of going out, walking around and coming home with a ton of pictures to edit and post on Flickr. lol.

Now, I shoot on my iPhone primarily.

When I moved from Google Photos to iCloud a few years ago, there were like 160,000 photos (mostly duplicates) - over the next year or so I cleaned up duplicates, got rid of photos I didn't want (screenshots, etc), and got it down to about 40k or so.

Right now I am just using iCloud - and I have originals downloaded to my iPhone and my MacBook Pro.

I highly recommend you try out the services before you commit to moving. Use it for a week, then slowly prepare a move plan. 10k photos should be pretty great to move even with slow cable upload speeds. Do a "mock" move and give it a try for a week or two, see if you like it, then try a few other services to see which one you like best. Try out their web interface, desktop interface (if they have one), and their mobile interface. See how their automated backups work, see how taking photos out of their service is, etc. It's worth it doing the homework on this.

I've used Dropbox, Amazon, Google, OneDrive, iCloud, and many others. I rank Google the very clear leader in features, accessibility, and photo management ease of use. OneDrive has really come up recently and Amazon is a very distant third. (I am not ranking iCloud because you are moving away from it). I went with iCloud because of iCloud Family plans. But I miss Google's features and sharing. MOST of everyone I know uses Google - so whenever I do anything, we always make shared Google photo albums.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Photos and cloud storage are a hobby of mine, very interested to see how your move goes and what you think of it.

 

[Jayson A]

If you have Amazon Prime, they have unlimited photo storage.

 

[Jayson A]

I had a Canon 40d that I used extensively for many years. But I haven't used that for a good 5+ years and even sold it on eBay this year (with my Tamron 18-250mm lens). I miss my days of going out, walking around and coming home with a ton of pictures to edit and post on Flickr. lol.

Now, I shoot on my iPhone primarily.

While the iPhone cameras are decent, it still doesn't replace a real DSLR. Even a 40D should be able to take way better photos than any iPhone camera can.

The one upside to shooting on iPhone is the photos are processed in real time and give you the best possible output without having to do much, but I prefer shooting with my DSLR and editing them in Adobe Camera Raw to control exactly what my photos should look like. There's also just something much more magical about holding a real DSLR. Shooting on an iPhone feels so... cheesy. Like when I take a photo with my iPhone, it's never some serious photo. It's usually something like... oh, wow the sky looks cool over there, or my cat looks cute sleeping. When I go out to do an actual photo shoot, I bring my serious gear.

 

[achappy]

The main thing other services can't compete with is edit syncing. You can edit a photo on any device, and the edits will sync to every other device. And they sync as the individual non-destructive edits, so you can crop a photo on one device, adjust the brightness on a second device, then adjust the crop on a third device, and all three devices will show the edits as you made them.

When you sync to third party services, you can't use the awesome built in editing on your phone if you want it to sync; you have to use the editing on the third party services, which tends to not be as good as Apple's.

So yeah, I'm going to keep using iCloud Photos.

Exactly, and don't forget the syncing of all on device recognized people, places, objects, etc. I have "People" albums of my family members and being able to search across any device for my "son" + "niece" + "soccer" to pull up all the photos that my son and niece appear in at soccer games, can't be beat.

 

[keeper]

You can with Synology Photos, access anywhere with geolocation and filter on people or any other tags albums etc.

Exactly, and don't forget the syncing of all on device recognized people, places, objects, etc. I have "People" albums of my family members and being able to search across any device for my "son" + "niece" + "soccer" to pull up all the photos that my son and niece appear in at soccer games, can't be beat.

 

[russell_314]

I had a Canon 40d that I used extensively for many years. But I haven't used that for a good 5+ years and even sold it on eBay this year (with my Tamron 18-250mm lens). I miss my days of going out, walking around and coming home with a ton of pictures to edit and post on Flickr. lol.

Now, I shoot on my iPhone primarily.

When I moved from Google Photos to iCloud a few years ago, there were like 160,000 photos (mostly duplicates) - over the next year or so I cleaned up duplicates, got rid of photos I didn't want (screenshots, etc), and got it down to about 40k or so.

Right now I am just using iCloud - and I have originals downloaded to my iPhone and my MacBook Pro.

I highly recommend you try out the services before you commit to moving. Use it for a week, then slowly prepare a move plan. 10k photos should be pretty great to move even with slow cable upload speeds. Do a "mock" move and give it a try for a week or two, see if you like it, then try a few other services to see which one you like best. Try out their web interface, desktop interface (if they have one), and their mobile interface. See how their automated backups work, see how taking photos out of their service is, etc. It's worth it doing the homework on this.

I've used Dropbox, Amazon, Google, OneDrive, iCloud, and many others. I rank Google the very clear leader in features, accessibility, and photo management ease of use. OneDrive has really come up recently and Amazon is a very distant third. (I am not ranking iCloud because you are moving away from it). I went with iCloud because of iCloud Family plans. But I miss Google's features and sharing. MOST of everyone I know uses Google - so whenever I do anything, we always make shared Google photo albums.

I just want to make sure it does a backup without reducing the resolution or changing the file type. I heard Google doesn't keep the native iPhone file format anymore and TBH with how Google is fickle with keeping their projects active I don't know if I want to use them. They're like a child where they focus on a new toy but quickly abandon it.

What I also need to do is make a local backup because it's something I don't have now. I plan to keep the minimum storage I need on iCloud active till I have a fully working replacement going. I don't want to chance losing anything although most of my photographs aren't that serious or important. It's probably less than ten percent that are of family and friends that are important.

 

[russell_314]

If you have Amazon Prime, they have unlimited photo storage.

Weird. When I signed on with my account it mentioned different tiers like in the screenshot.

 

[Jayson A]

Weird. When I signed on with my account it mentioned different tiers like in the screenshot.

Certain photo formats are not supported and they go into the "video" category thus requiring more storage. Like the .CR3 files for my DLSR are not supported sadly.

 

[KittyKatta]

So I started in this thread thinking "Leaving Apple Photos is blasphemy". But in trying out both Google and Amazon photos I have to say... Apple Photos isn’t that good.

Apple Photos
+ Sync between devices
+ Non-destructive editing


- No family sharing (Both Google and Amazon have it)
- Slow Face Recognition (Needs to be done per device so lots of untagged faces)
- Bad memories (Google had a surprisingly good memory choices)
- Bad app (Not that Google is good but still. Its Apple)
- Horrible web interface
- Price
- Slow compared to others

So, Im not leaving Apple Photos (yet) but the advantages really werent as huge as I thought. I hate to say it but Apple Photos just isn’t quality software and Apple really needs to modernize and start caring about their products (and their customers).

 

[BigMcGuire]

So I started in this thread thinking "Leaving Apple Photos is blasphemy". But in trying out both Google and Amazon photos I have to say... Apple Photos isn’t that good.

Apple Photos
+ Sync between devices
+ Non-destructive editing


- No family sharing (Both Google and Amazon have it)
- Slow Face Recognition (Needs to be done per device so lots of untagged faces)
- Bad memories (Google had a surprisingly good memory choices)
- Bad app (Not that Google is good but still. Its Apple)
- Horrible web interface
- Price
- Slow compared to others

So, Im not leaving Apple Photos (yet) but the advantages really werent as huge as I thought. I hate to say it but Apple Photos just isn’t quality software and Apple really needs to modernize and start caring about their products (and their customers).

Just like with their pages/numbers online - so far behind industry standard imo. I really wish Apple would put some effort into making iCloud more like OneDrive/Google Docs and Photos more like Google Photos, especially when it comes to sharing and web access! They are way behind in these areas. I imagine the incentive isn't all that great because of the $ they're making.

Interesting how just those few positive factors are why a lot of people end up going with iCloud. Major convenience factor. I'd add + Built into OS so easy to turn on vs setup.

 

[psik]

We all have opinions. I’m not going to turn into an apple hater because I understand why they did this but as a consumer I’m going to express my likes and dislikes with my wallet. All consumers should do this. I think most people think well all my information is out there so it doesn’t matter. Even with some of those people this has hurt Apple because some people felt Apple was superior when it comes to privacy but I don’t think they feel that way anymore. They’ve lost their golden child status.

The problem is Apple decided to champion the privacy cause when they realized it was a strong selling point. People believed them after a while because their actions we’re really privacy focused. I’m fairly certain that this was in response to a government(s) who told him either you’re going to do this or we’re going to take action against you. There’s no way Apple planned this because they would’ve never put that stupid billboard out there.

yes - next thing is checking your text messages to see if you are a drug dealer aka have ‘disgusting messages’ - you are grasping the laws of physics very well, good for you =) oh but: Epstein laughs out loud from his grave

 

[Feyl]

I can't imagine ever going back to local storage - I like that when I'm out and about taking photos of important events, it's being instantly backed up so that if my iPhone is stolen or decides to randomly crap out, those photos won't be lost. Or say if I'm out on vacation or what not - no need to wait till I go home to store my photos.

You can turn automatic backup of your photos with Synology too.

 

[achappy]

So I started in this thread thinking "Leaving Apple Photos is blasphemy". But in trying out both Google and Amazon photos I have to say... Apple Photos isn’t that good.

Apple Photos
+ Sync between devices
+ Non-destructive editing


- No family sharing (Both Google and Amazon have it)
- Slow Face Recognition (Needs to be done per device so lots of untagged faces)
- Bad memories (Google had a surprisingly good memory choices)
- Bad app (Not that Google is good but still. Its Apple)
- Horrible web interface
- Price
- Slow compared to others

So, Im not leaving Apple Photos (yet) but the advantages really werent as huge as I thought. I hate to say it but Apple Photos just isn’t quality software and Apple really needs to modernize and start caring about their products (and their customers).

- I share albums all the time with Family Members. I create albums and invite them to the album and then share pics to that album. If the family member is a non-iphone user then I can link to the album via a public link. Unless you are talking about something else
- Object/Face identification can happen on one device and syncs across devices.
- Maybe because I use the "love" option but my memories are great. Events, locations, people etc always show up.

 

[dk001]

So I started in this thread thinking "Leaving Apple Photos is blasphemy". But in trying out both Google and Amazon photos I have to say... Apple Photos isn’t that good.

Apple Photos
+ Sync between devices
+ Non-destructive editing


- No family sharing (Both Google and Amazon have it)
- Slow Face Recognition (Needs to be done per device so lots of untagged faces)
- Bad memories (Google had a surprisingly good memory choices)
- Bad app (Not that Google is good but still. Its Apple)
- Horrible web interface
- Price
- Slow compared to others

So, Im not leaving Apple Photos (yet) but the advantages really werent as huge as I thought. I hate to say it but Apple Photos just isn’t quality software and Apple really needs to modernize and start caring about their products (and their customers).

After iCloud Photos totally trashed my library (this was a few years back), I switched to Google Photos. Never had an issue with Google.

Still, over time I have setup and keep a personal SSD with all my pics. A copy is on iDrive.
For out and about, I have a dongle with a 512gb card If needed.
I still use Google for sharing.
I actually take more photos on my Android these days so iCloud would not even be in the picture for most shots.

As an Original Prime member (WOW 😮) , I’ve tried Amazon for photos but for some reason (can’t remember why) I stopped using them a few years back.