Downloading photos from multiple iClouds?

[NeilHD]

I'm sure I can't be the only one who has this setup.

We have a "main" Mac, and both my wife and I have iPhones. The Mac and my phone are on my iCloud account, and my wife's phone is on her iCloud account.

We keep all our pictures centrally on the Mac, and use Picasa to view them.

The problem is that we can't easily download all the pictures from both iClouds onto the computer. I don't really want to use the Photos app (and even if we did, that would only get my photos), so the only kind-of solution I've come across is to use the iCloud website and try and download pictures individually or as a set. Really though, I want to download them all (several thousand in each account).

Any solutions to this?

 

[Brookzy]

I'm sure I can't be the only one who has this setup.

We have a "main" Mac, and both my wife and I have iPhones. The Mac and my phone are on my iCloud account, and my wife's phone is on her iCloud account.

We keep all our pictures centrally on the Mac, and use Picasa to view them.

The problem is that we can't easily download all the pictures from both iClouds onto the computer. I don't really want to use the Photos app (and even if we did, that would only get my photos), so the only kind-of solution I've come across is to use the iCloud website and try and download pictures individually or as a set. Really though, I want to download them all (several thousand in each account).

Any solutions to this?

Are all the photos stored locally on your iPhones, or are you using Optimise Storage?

If the former, you can just import all the photos from each iPhone using image capture.

Alternatively you can make a shared photo library.

 

[Spink10]

Are all the photos stored locally on your iPhones, or are you using Optimise Storage?

If the former, you can just import all the photos from each iPhone using image capture.

Alternatively you can make a shared photo library.

Image capture is great for exporting photos from an iPhone to a Mac.

 

[NeilHD]

Are all the photos stored locally on your iPhones, or are you using Optimise Storage?

If the former, you can just import all the photos from each iPhone using image capture.

Alternatively you can make a shared photo library.

Sorry, should have said - we are using Optimise Storage.

From what I remember of Shared Photo Streams, any picture my wife takes ends up visible on my phone - which I don't really want to happen but maybe I could live with it (she takes a LOT of pictures).

 

[Tech198]

why not just login to each icloud via web browser? login to one, grab photos, log out and login in to the other.

Optimize storage is usually just to save space and while it works on the Mac,, wouldn't u rather have full resolutions on a laptop/desktop instead?

Any time i move photos from iPhone, i use image capture... just select and "import all" done.

 

[Brookzy]

why not just login to each icloud via web browser? login to one, grab photos, log out and login in to the other.

Optimize storage is usually just to save space and while it works on the Mac,, wouldn't u rather have full resolutions on a laptop/desktop instead?

Any time i move photos from iPhone, i use image capture... just select and "import all" done.

Because the web browser doesn't let you download many photos at once, unfortunately.

 

[NeilHD]

why not just login to each icloud via web browser? login to one, grab photos, log out and login in to the other.

Optimize storage is usually just to save space and while it works on the Mac,, wouldn't u rather have full resolutions on a laptop/desktop instead?

Any time i move photos from iPhone, i use image capture... just select and "import all" done.

Yes of course I want the full resolution on the desktop, I didn't even realise the Optimise was a thing on desktop.

As Brookzy said above - the downloading all from iCloud website just doesn't work well. There's no Download All option. If there was - problem solved!

 

[Half Rick]

I'm sure I can't be the only one who has this setup.

We have a "main" Mac, and both my wife and I have iPhones. The Mac and my phone are on my iCloud account, and my wife's phone is on her iCloud account.

We keep all our pictures centrally on the Mac, and use Picasa to view them.

The problem is that we can't easily download all the pictures from both iClouds onto the computer. I don't really want to use the Photos app (and even if we did, that would only get my photos), so the only kind-of solution I've come across is to use the iCloud website and try and download pictures individually or as a set. Really though, I want to download them all (several thousand in each account).

Any solutions to this?

I encountered the same issue. I have decided to return to my old ways - physically importing the photos from each device from time to time, usually Sunday evenings. That also removes all the headaches with stripped and erroneous meta data that comes with downloading stuff from iCloud Photos and not wanting to use Photos.

 

[NeilHD]

I encountered the same issue. I have decided to return to my old ways - physically importing the photos from each device from time to time, usually Sunday evenings. That also removes all the headaches with stripped and erroneous meta data that comes with downloading stuff from iCloud Photos and not wanting to use Photos.

Unfortunately not an option for me as we iCloud store them with Optimise turned on on the phone.

 

[Half Rick]

Unfortunately not an option for me as we iCloud store them with Optimise turned on on the phone.

You can turn it off and have the pictures and videos download to the devices. If the total library/ies is/are too large to fit on the devices you can work around it by importing the photos and videos that are downloaded and then delete them from the devices (and thus the iCloud library) in order to free up space which will allow for "new" pictures and videos to be downloaded. This is what I did, so I know it works

A little bit of a hassle, sure, but less so than any of the other solutions I tried.

Instead of iCloud Photos, I use the free 1 TB account on Flickr as a kind of "online backup" and access to my entire library when I want to look at photos and videos on the go.

 

[NeilHD]

I may have found a solution to this. Slightly convoluted, but...

Using the Amazon Prime Photos app on my phone, it will backup all of my pics from my phone to Amazon Drive (it seems to have done everything on my camera roll - most of which won't actually be on my phone).

Assuming I can do the same on my wife's phone using my Amazon account, then it looks like it will collate them all in one place.

I can then use the Amazon Drive PC app (haven't tried the Mac app yet as I'm at work) to download them all into one place, and then I can import them into Picasa.

The fact that I have to use Amazon software and Amazon's cloud storage to accomplish what should be a single button click within the Apple ecosystem speaks volumes...

 

[Half Rick]

I may have found a solution to this. Slightly convoluted, but...

Using the Amazon Prime Photos app on my phone, it will backup all of my pics from my phone to Amazon Drive (it seems to have done everything on my camera roll - most of which won't actually be on my phone).

Assuming I can do the same on my wife's phone using my Amazon account, then it looks like it will collate them all in one place.

I can then use the Amazon Drive PC app (haven't tried the Mac app yet as I'm at work) to download them all into one place, and then I can import them into Picasa.

The fact that I have to use Amazon software and Amazon's cloud storage to accomplish what should be a single button click within the Apple ecosystem speaks volumes...

I would check, double check and triple check that it really imports the full size pictures from your camera roll, and not only the previews. Intuitively, it sounds odd that an Amazon app would be able to pull the full size videos and pictures from iCloud Photos through your Photo app. But if it works, at least you've found something that works for you

I wonder what the reason for this lack of functionality is.

 

[NeilHD]

I would check, double check and triple check that it really imports the full size pictures from your camera roll, and not only the previews. Intuitively, it sounds odd that an Amazon app would be able to pull the full size videos and pictures from iCloud Photos through your Photo app. But if it works, at least you've found something that works for you

I wonder what the reason for this lack of functionality is.

Good point. A quick check of the same, recent picture (comparing a picture from Amazon compared to iCloud) shows both at about 2MB. I haven't yet downloaded enough of them onto my desktop to see if older ones are the same.