Other Best way to store photos?

[Marsikus]

How do you convert screenshots to HEIC?

This is very good Shortcut that was advised to me right on this forum. Here is author’s page: https://sangsara.net/2020/01/27/heifer-ios-shortcut-for-batch-converting-photos-to-heif-heic/ Works both on iPhone and Mac with the Shortcuts app.
Also, on Mac you can go this way:

 

[RhetTbull]

But it exports to jpg doesn’t it ? Is there no way to export the heic+live vidéo ?

I'm the author of a free open source tool, osxphotos, that will export live videos, preserve albums and other metadata, etc. It requires some level of comfort in the command line but it's very powerful and gives you full control over export, file names, directory structure, etc.

 

[RhetTbull]

This is very good Shortcut that was advised to me right on this forum. Here is author’s page: https://sangsara.net/2020/01/27/heifer-ios-shortcut-for-batch-converting-photos-to-heif-heic/ Works both on iPhone and Mac with the Shortcuts app.
Also, on Mac you can go this way:
View attachment 2132713

You can also change the default format for screenshots to HEIC by entering this in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type heic;killall SystemUIServer

 

[BigMcGuire]

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 have been a hobbyist photographer for awhile now. I got rid of my last DSLR quite a few years ago and just shoot on my iPhone these days. Started out with 160k photos on Google Photos back in the day when you could store photos for free. I kept them on my computer via Google Drive app and backed them up to external drives.

When I moved to iPhone I eventually decided I wanted to use iCloud so I spent some serious time getting rid of duplicates and culling my photos - got it down to 40k (yes, there were a LOT of duplicates - this took several years).

Now?

I have my entire library in iCloud Photos 54,664 photos and 1,593 videos. I do use Google Photos as a secondary backup mostly because I have family/friends with Google who like to share albums/photos - extremely convenient and a good backup. iCloud Photos on my Mac is set to download all as well. My iPhone is also set to download all originals.

On my iPad I have optimized photo storage turned on (it barely uses 10GB).

Using iCloud as my primary photo storage has been extremely convenient. I take a photo anywhere and it's instantly available on all my devices. Pretty happy with this setup.

 

[Webcat86]

I have been a hobbyist photographer for awhile now. I got rid of my last DSLR quite a few years ago and just shoot on my iPhone these days. Started out with 160k photos on Google Photos back in the day when you could store photos for free. I kept them on my computer via Google Drive app and backed them up to external drives.

When I moved to iPhone I eventually decided I wanted to use iCloud so I spent some serious time getting rid of duplicates and culling my photos - got it down to 40k (yes, there were a LOT of duplicates - this took several years).

Now?

I have my entire library in iCloud Photos 54,664 photos and 1,593 videos. I do use Google Photos as a secondary backup mostly because I have family/friends with Google who like to share albums/photos - extremely convenient and a good backup. iCloud Photos on my Mac is set to download all as well. My iPhone is also set to download all originals.

View attachment 2133550

On my iPad I have optimized photo storage turned on (it barely uses 10GB).

Using iCloud as my primary photo storage has been extremely convenient. I take a photo anywhere and it's instantly available on all my devices. Pretty happy with this setup.

How much storage does it take up on your phone?

 

[BigMcGuire]

How much storage does it take up on your phone?

iPhone (Optimized Storage Turned Off): 132.25 GB Used (Photos).
iPad (Optimized Storage Turned On): 8.15 GB Used (Photos). 208.42 GB available.
MacBook (Optimized Storage Turned Off): 146.09 GB Used (Photos).

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

I'm the author of a free open source tool, osxphotos, that will export live videos, preserve albums and other metadata, etc. It requires some level of comfort in the command line but it's very powerful and gives you full control over export, file names, directory structure, etc.

I sent my Mac for repair , but ill have a look .

Do you think I could possibly send you a pm for some questions/little.bit of help? It's okay if you don't want

 

[Webcat86]

iPhone (Optimized Storage Turned Off): 132.25 GB Used (Photos).
iPad (Optimized Storage Turned On): 8.15 GB Used (Photos). 208.42 GB available.
MacBook (Optimized Storage Turned Off): 146.09 GB Used (Photos).

Hmm I wonder why my iPhone is using 30gb for photos even though optimised storage is on. My iPad is using 7gb and iCloud 42gb

 

[BigMcGuire]

Hmm I wonder why my iPhone is using 30gb for photos even though optimised storage is on. My iPad is using 7gb and iCloud 42gb

It grows if you look at your photos a lot. Each time you open a photo it downloads a full version to your phone.

I never look at photos on my iPad. If I did, and scrolled through a lot of them, that would grow significantly.

This is how Optimized Storage works.

 

[catfish743]

Then make sure you have a 3-2-1 backup strategy in place. iCloud is not considered a backup service as you lose deleted files after 30 days.

That can be one of the 3 backups.

One copy needs to be saved on some sort of media, such as a hard disk, and stored off-site such as in a bank safe deposit box.

To quote the Mandalorian, "This is the way."

Lots of reasons, for example the limited storage available. My library is too large for iCloud. Backups to off-site storage are more difficult, etc.

There are tradeoffs with everything. Keeping pictures in Lightroom, which is by reference, it is very easy to implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy with off-site storage, at the cost of losing device integration.

There are unlimited cloud backup solutions that are available for a reasonable price such as Backblaze and Crashplan Business. I backup ~62 TB (not all pictures) of data on Backblaze which costs ~$70 a year. Default retention is for a year of snapshots but for a small extra charge you can get forever snapshots.

Seeing that number makes me feel better. I would love to hear more about the specifics of your setup/workflow. Lightroom appealed to me but then I became not a college student with a discount and the price didn't feel worth it. It's starting to appeal to me again, but I do hate being locked into any proprietary setup (apple included). I've been using Affinity for editing but they don't have a Lightroom alternative.

how can you do this tho ? ios and macOS are pretty locked down, i havent figure how to export pics

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

There is an export option. Select the photos you want to export, and then you can choose how they get exported, the quality, even the subfolder structures etc. It's in Photos > File > Export

My question isn't so much a good way of storing photos, more about how to balance the space as the better cameras mean they take up more space and I don't want to be perpetually upgrading iCloud to hold them

Sadly this is the curse of liking photography. Specifically in my instance, I went from a 1Div to an R5 and the RAW file size basically doubled. I started using up my remaining space twice as quickly, which is when i outgrew 2TB icloud. Honestly though I wouldn't put all my eggs in 1 icloud basket though.

Nice collection. How are you able to obtain 4TB of iCloud? I thought the maximum Apple offers is 2TB of iCloud.

As someone mentioned before I think, it's the combo Apple One with an additional 2TB. Until I figure something else out, it's a necessity.

I have a 2TB iCloud account with 33,000 photos and videos. They also get saved on an external SSD off my iMac.

Sure iCloud isn’t the cheapest but I trust Apple and it’s handy to access photos immediately on any device.

I do have to agree about the handiness. That and Faces in Photos are two of the reasons why I will always want at least one of my copies to be a Photos library.

 

[Marsikus]

You can also change the default format for screenshots to HEIC by entering this in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type heic;killall SystemUIServer

Good if iPhone could do the same. AFAIK, PNG format is the defining criteria for Shortcuts and Photos to categorise picture as a screenshot.

 

[HDFan]

I would love to hear more about the specifics of your setup/workflow.

A professional photographer that I know at the end of the day downloads all of the photos from that day's shoot into a new folder which is titled with the name of the shoot. During the import he uses the Lightroom import file rename option: "Mike and Julia's Wedding img67.cr3" so they can be easily found both in Lightroom and the finder.

With my iPhone I often am taking single photos of different subjects over multiple days. As such I import them into an input folder. When I get to it I rename the files as above using the finder rename function as Adobe's rename is only useful with bulk imports having the same name. I keep the original file index number as it sometimes helps. After the renames I then import the input folder into Lightroom. At that point I can go into the folder in Lightroom and move the photos to the correct folder (landscapes, local birds). Lightroom shows the finder folders and when you move a file in lightroom it also moves it on disk.

 

[flipland]

This is very good Shortcut that was advised to me right on this forum. Here is author’s page: https://sangsara.net/2020/01/27/heifer-ios-shortcut-for-batch-converting-photos-to-heif-heic/ Works both on iPhone and Mac with the Shortcuts app.
Also, on Mac you can go this way:
View attachment 2132713

Hello, Since a week, I'm looking to something that will convert my .jpg and .jpeg files from my apple photo library and found your shortcut and tried it. Unfortunately, most of my GPS location and faces identification are lost. That happend to original and edited files. Did you saw that problem in your case ? I tried other way, but very complicate and too much handling....

 

[Marsikus]

Hello, Since a week, I'm looking to something that will convert my .jpg and .jpeg files from my apple photo library and found your shortcut and tried it. Unfortunately, most of my GPS location and faces identification are lost. That happend to original and edited files. Did you saw that problem in your case ? I tried other way, but very complicate and too much handling....

I didn't try to work in this direction. I am converting from PNG to HEIC only.

 

[Fred Zed]

I have been a hobbyist photographer for awhile now. I got rid of my last DSLR quite a few years ago and just shoot on my iPhone these days. Started out with 160k photos on Google Photos back in the day when you could store photos for free. I kept them on my computer via Google Drive app and backed them up to external drives.

When I moved to iPhone I eventually decided I wanted to use iCloud so I spent some serious time getting rid of duplicates and culling my photos - got it down to 40k (yes, there were a LOT of duplicates - this took several years).

Now?

I have my entire library in iCloud Photos 54,664 photos and 1,593 videos. I do use Google Photos as a secondary backup mostly because I have family/friends with Google who like to share albums/photos - extremely convenient and a good backup. iCloud Photos on my Mac is set to download all as well. My iPhone is also set to download all originals.

View attachment 2133550

On my iPad I have optimized photo storage turned on (it barely uses 10GB).

Using iCloud as my primary photo storage has been extremely convenient. I take a photo anywhere and it's instantly available on all my devices. Pretty happy with this setup.

I reached your level one so far. Moved all the google photos to iCloud about a year or so ago. Still the laborious task of culling duplicates awaits 😭🤣👍🏼