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Other Best way to store photos?

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Webcat86

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 7, 2022
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I pay for 200gb of iCloud storage and 50gb of that is being used by photos. 30gb of my phone storage is also photos.

I’m sure there are some I could delete but realistically I want to keep most of them, and the problem is only going to get worse as the quality of photos continues to improve.

I don’t really need them all on my phone, but ideally my Mac would continue to have everything in Photos.

I’m aware that iCloud sync is all or nothing, which is great but also a complication.

What’s the best way to reduce the amount of space photos take up on my phone and cloud storage, but continue to be able to see the photos on my iMac (and preferably within the Photos app on that machine, included in the Time Machine backups)?
 
I agree with @S7N. I use a 500gb flash drive for a full photo backup, in addition to paying $1.99 per month for 100gb of Google Photos cloud storage. Right now I have about 9,300 photos and videos, which use around 35gb of space. On my iPhone 13 (128gb) I keep a small catalogue of important photos - family, events, etc, - in the phone’s memory, but all the other photos are available via the Google Photos app. On my iPad (256gb), which is what I use to sync with Google Photos, I have all of the pictures. So there’s three redundant full baks of my photos.

My 9300 photos and videos (35gb) reflect about 9 years of photos, so it’s gonna be a long long time before the 500gb flash fills up.
 
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I got Apple One family with the 2TB of storage.

No way I’m losing the photos of my wife and kids! Small price to pay. Otherwise, I think Onedrive is cheaper, and Google is probably cheap.

My BIGGEST problem os that I take lots of photos, but never delete the bad ones, or the ones I don’t like. I do for the photos taken with my ricoh GR-3, but not iPhone photos. I have years of garbage backed up on the cloud. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
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I have my iPhone photos copy to my Google Photos, too.
Thus, I do pay for iCloud storage and Google Drive\Photo storage. Every now and then, I delete photos I just don't need...
 
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Why not just plug the phone into your Mac, use Image Capture (built in to MacOS) to download all the photos onto your Mac.
They will be backed up by Time Machine (if you have it running) or any other backup app you are using.
 
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I backup all my iPhone photos to my Synology NAS. They have a nice easy to use app for this. I go back in my phone and delete the oldest photos, usually the whole year or a few.

Not your typical use case but if I didn't have a NAS I would download all the photos to my computer using Photos or Image Capture and back that up someplace.

Rather not depend on an outside service.
 
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orionquest said:
I backup all my iPhone photos to my Synology NAS. They have a nice easy to use app for this. I go back in my phone and delete the oldest photos, usually the whole year or a few.

Not your typical use case but if I didn't have a NAS I would download all the photos to my computer using Photos or Image Capture and back that up someplace.

Rather not depend on an outside service.
Click to expand...
Same here, I use the Synology like my personal cloud..... apps for all devices can access it from anywhere. Use Drive instead of Time Machine. Great piece of kit!
 
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Mark Stone said:
I agree with @S7N. I use a 500gb flash drive for a full photo backup, in addition to paying $1.99 per month for 100gb of Google Photos cloud storage. Right now I have about 9,300 photos and videos, which use around 35gb of space. On my iPhone 13 (128gb) I keep a small catalogue of important photos - family, events, etc, - in the phone’s memory, but all the other photos are available via the Google Photos app. On my iPad (256gb), which is what I use to sync with Google Photos, I have all of the pictures. So there’s three redundant full baks of my photos.

My 9300 photos and videos (35gb) reflect about 9 years of photos, so it’s gonna be a long long time before the 500gb flash fills up.
Click to expand...
I’d like to do this but how are you doing it?

Geoff777 said:
Why not just plug the phone into your Mac, use Image Capture (built in to MacOS) to download all the photos onto your Mac.
Click to expand...
Geoff777 said:
They will be backed up by Time Machine (if you have it running) or any other backup app you are using.
Click to expand...
I didn’t know about image capture. Does it just import the “all photos” library or does it retain albums as well?
 
Webcat86 said:
I didn’t know about image capture. Does it just import the “all photos” library or does it retain albums as well?
Click to expand...
It will download what you select or "Download All". If you want them deleted on your phone after downloading, there's an icon in the menu bar, a circle with 3 dots in it. Click that and choose delete after import.
It doesn't retain whatever albums iPhone sorted the pictures into.

If you want to do that, maybe Photos does, as someone else suggested - that may keep the albums but I'm not sure as I don't use Photos.
 
Geoff777 said:
It will download what you select or "Download All". If you want them deleted on your phone after downloading, there's an icon in the menu bar, a circle with 3 dots in it. Click that and choose delete after import.
It doesn't retain whatever albums iPhone sorted the pictures into.

If you want to do that, maybe Photos does, as someone else suggested - that may keep the albums but I'm not sure as I don't use Photos.
Click to expand...
So I’d have to import 30gb of loose photos and then manually go through them to sort into albums etc? That doesn’t sound like an ideal solution
 
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orionquest said:
I backup all my iPhone photos to my Synology NAS. They have a nice easy to use app for this. I go back in my phone and delete the oldest photos, usually the whole year or a few.

Not your typical use case but if I didn't have a NAS I would download all the photos to my computer using Photos or Image Capture and back that up someplace.

Rather not depend on an outside service.
Click to expand...
Photos on the Mac is included in Time Machine backups
 
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Quick update: I went through my library on the Mac and deleted over a thousand photos, cleared about 15GB of Photos from there. I also exported a few albums that I want to keep on my computer but don't need in Photos (just exported them and saved in a folder in Pictures)

However, when I go to my iPhone, although the same photos are deleted, the same amount of storage is being used. This is also true in iCloud.

And, my iPad is only using about 7gb for Photos. I have "optimise iPhone turned on" as well.

Any reason for this, or is it just taking a while to update the new number?
 
I have given up on this and just put my faith on the cloud overlords.
I used to have hard-drives, then NAS, even tried setting up Windows server. But figuring them out takes too much time for me. Worse when there's an change somewhere along the chain and screw things up. I gave up and simply let all my photos go to OneDrive (part of MS365 with 1TB space).
 
Webcat86 said:
So you just keep all the photos on the phone?
Click to expand...
Yep. I have 256Gb phone and 256Gb iPad and 100Gb of photos so they fit.

That’s over 30 years of photos including scans. And photography is a hobby.

I curate the library very carefully.

Edit: just a warning. Data hoarding is extremely unhealthy. I had to deal with a deceased relative’s 4TB NAS and various external disks. Keep it tidy for your kids’ sake because all they’re going to be able to do is pull some stuff out and nuke the rest.
 
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Danfango said:
Yep. I have 256Gb phone and 256Gb iPad and 100Gb of photos so they fit.

That’s over 30 years of photos including scans. And photography is a hobby.

I curate the library very carefully.

Edit: just a warning. Data hoarding is extremely unhealthy. I had to deal with a deceased relative’s 4TB NAS and various external disks. Keep it tidy for your kids’ sake because all they’re going to be able to do is pull some stuff out and nuke the rest.
Click to expand...
Can you shed any light on why I have iCloud sync on but my iPad is only showing 7gb storage of photos, but my phone has 30gb? I’m not complaining, the iPad is only 64gb, just not sure why it’s doing it that way
 
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