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How are you managing iCloud storage and Photos in 2019?

sou1 so1di3r

sou1 so1di3r

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 26, 2008
779
13
Denver, CO
SSIA.... iCloud photos is only taking me so far.

How are you guys managing hard copies of all your photos?

I need an easy way to backup / archive some of my 40GB of iCloud photos to free up space on my account. I have the 50GB iCloud plan. I want to use my old Mac mini as the "server" and have all originals go there, and then replicated to my 4TB time machine backup.

If I try to turn on iCloud storage and download originals to this Mac, it wants me to buy more iCloud storage.

Any ideas?
 
I came from Google Photos. Loving iCloud Photos. I've got 136 GB, over 70,000 videos and photos. The ability to take a photo, have it instantly available on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone is amazing. My Mac backs it up to external media ... beautiful.

I pay for the 2TB because my family utilize more than 200+ GB including my 136 GB photos. I wish I didn't have to pay this, but it's not bad.

------------------

To answer your question, just move the photos library to your external drive, let it download what it needs, then remove from iCloud storage? That's what I would do if I wasn't willing to pay the $9.99/mo for 2TB.
 
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BigMcGuire said:
I came from Google Photos. Loving iCloud Photos. I've got 136 GB, over 70,000 videos and photos. The ability to take a photo, have it instantly available on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone is amazing. My Mac backs it up to external media ... beautiful.

I pay for the 2TB because my family utilize more than 200+ GB including my 136 GB photos. I wish I didn't have to pay this, but it's not bad.

------------------

To answer your question, just move the photos library to your external drive, let it download what it needs, then remove from iCloud storage? That's what I would do if I wasn't willing to pay the $9.99/mo for 2TB.
Click to expand...


I'm happy paying $1 a month for 50GB but I would rather self-manage past that point.

So you think if I pay for 200GB for one month, have my old Mac Mini download ALL originals, then move to external, I would be good to go?

Will that transfer all my videos too?
 
sou1 so1di3r said:
I'm happy paying $1 a month for 50GB but I would rather self-manage past that point.

So you think if I pay for 200GB for one month, have my old Mac Mini download ALL originals, then move to external, I would be good to go?

Will that transfer all my videos too?
Click to expand...

Yeah if they're stored in iCloud. That's how I'd do it if I wasn't going to use iCloud storage space and wanted to get all my data out of iCloud.
 
BigMcGuire said:
Yeah if they're stored in iCloud. That's how I'd do it if I wasn't going to use iCloud storage space and wanted to get all my data out of iCloud.
Click to expand...
I setup a new library on my MacBook Pro and had it download ALL originals. It looks right as I now have 45GB of photos on here.

What is the best way to "clear" space from iCloud photos but still use them for new photos?

I guess I need to change the setting back on my MacBook to turn OFF iCloud photos, then start deleting the oldest photos first (manully, on iCloud.com?)
 
sou1 so1di3r said:
I setup a new library on my MacBook Pro and had it download ALL originals. It looks right as I now have 45GB of photos on here.

What is the best way to "clear" space from iCloud photos but still use them for new photos?

I guess I need to change the setting back on my MacBook to turn OFF iCloud photos, then start deleting the oldest photos first (manully, on iCloud.com?)
Click to expand...


What I did in the past was just delete the photos in iCloud Storage on your iPhone. Once you do this, it puts them in a temporary "30 day" trash --- you can delete again to remove them permanently. Then turn it back on. I haven't done this recently so it may have changed last time I did this (a few years ago).
 
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BeeGood said:
If you don’t mind me asking, why’d you decide to move away from Google Photos? I’ve been using it and wondering if there might be an advantage to going with iCloud photos and paying for extra storage.
Click to expand...

I had a bout of anti google and Facebook behavior about a year ago. Google photos is better I think especially if you don’t have Apple devices. iCloud isn’t bad and works well with Apple devices but google shares a lot better and can be accessed from many devices. Also I can share all my photos with my spouse easily with google. iCloud is nice cuz it puts a physical photo on my iPad and Mac the moment I take it on my iPhone.

Considering using google photos again. I just don’t like the data mining.

I do love my 2tb iCloud that I share with my family.
 
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BigMcGuire said:
I came from Google Photos. Loving iCloud Photos. I've got 136 GB, over 70,000 videos and photos. The ability to take a photo, have it instantly available on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone is amazing.
Click to expand...


My experience was quite different. I'm also a long time user of Google Photos. I decided to try iCloud Photos. I have about 45,000 photos on my iMac organized into a semi-complex folder structure:

The import into iCloud Photos took over a week and constantly crashed. (I supposed this is because I told it to preserve the directory heirarchy. But, why would Photos balk at folders nested two or three deep?)

But, what really bothered me was that all the photos on my iPhone and iPad were "optimized"; even though both devices had about 32GB available storage when I turned iCloud Photos on. This meant that every photo I took was immediately stored in iCloud and my phone and pad had only icons and/or low resolution versions.

So, I'm on an airplane coming home from a dive trip. I'd like to kill the flying time by editing a few photos. Sorry. Can't do it. All the photos are "optimized" and you have no Internet, so no way to edit.

Another annoying scenario: I'm in line at a coffee shop. I snap a pic for later upload to Instagram. I place my order and sit down. Let's edit that photo. Sorry, it's already been optimized so you have to wait until it downloads to edit. Edit the photo and go pick up my coffee. Ready to upload to Instagram. Sorry, you have wait again until the photo downloads from iCloud so you can upload it to Instagram.

To me, this seemed like horrible cloud storage management. Why not leave full resolution versions on the phone for a while. Let the user choose. Leave the most recent 1000? Leave the photos I've taken in the last two weeks? Leave all until they've consumed 10 GB of space? Anything but optimize them all.

So, I turned iCloud Photos off. And, yeah, all the photos were gone. Fine. Instead I was left with hundreds and hundreds of empty folders in the Photos app all of which have to be deleted individually.

So, I use My Photo Stream instead. It does what I want which is keep full resolution versions of recent photos on both my iPhone and iPad. I use DropBox Camera Uploads to automatically save full resolution versions to my iMac. I use Google Photos as sort of a last-resort backup and in case I want to look at an old photo when I'm out and about.

Of course, YMMV.
 
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Buadhai said:
Anything but optimize them all.
Click to expand...

I've been longing for this for a while - why can't we set a storage limit, the same way we can for music? Keep the most recent 1GB/2GB/5GB/10GB of photos or whatever. Options to always keep favourites on the device.
 
nicho said:
I've been longing for this for a while - why can't we set a storage limit, the same way we can for music? Keep the most recent 1GB/2GB/5GB/10GB of photos or whatever. Options to always keep favourites on the device.
Click to expand...

Right. Apple Music is a good example of decent cloud storage management. The amount of local storage is under user control and Apple's algorithms seem to do a really good job of offloading stuff to the cloud that isn't often used. Why couldn't they do the same with Photos?
 
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Buadhai said:

My experience was quite different. I'm also a long time user of Google Photos. I decided to try iCloud Photos. I have about 45,000 photos on my iMac organized into a semi-complex folder structure:

The import into iCloud Photos took over a week and constantly crashed. (I supposed this is because I told it to preserve the directory heirarchy. But, why would Photos balk at folders nested two or three deep?)

But, what really bothered me was that all the photos on my iPhone and iPad were "optimized"; even though both devices had about 32GB available storage when I turned iCloud Photos on. This meant that every photo I took was immediately stored in iCloud and my phone and pad had only icons and/or low resolution versions.

So, I'm on an airplane coming home from a dive trip. I'd like to kill the flying time by editing a few photos. Sorry. Can't do it. All the photos are "optimized" and you have no Internet, so no way to edit.

Another annoying scenario: I'm in line at a coffee shop. I snap a pic for later upload to Instagram. I place my order and sit down. Let's edit that photo. Sorry, it's already been optimized so you have to wait until it downloads to edit. Edit the photo and go pick up my coffee. Ready to upload to Instagram. Sorry, you have wait again until the photo downloads from iCloud so you can upload it to Instagram.

To me, this seemed like horrible cloud storage management. Why not leave full resolution versions on the phone for a while. Let the user choose. Leave the most recent 1000? Leave the photos I've taken in the last two weeks? Leave all until they've consumed 10 GB of space? Anything but optimize them all.

So, I turned iCloud Photos off. And, yeah, all the photos were gone. Fine. Instead I was left with hundreds and hundreds of empty folders in the Photos app all of which have to be deleted individually.

So, I use My Photo Stream instead. It does what I want which is keep full resolution versions of recent photos on both my iPhone and iPad. I use DropBox Camera Uploads to automatically save full resolution versions to my iMac. I use Google Photos as sort of a last-resort backup and in case I want to look at an old photo when I'm out and about.

Of course, YMMV.
Click to expand...

Up until recently, all my devices had full iCloud download. I sold my iPad Pro to my sister who needed it for college and got a 64 GB iPad Air - so I'm using "optimize" storage. I don't do much on my Air - my MacBook Pro and iPhone both have download originals. So I don't have a lot of experience with optimize storage.

But yeah, I could see how that would frustrate you - it would me. I remember Photo Stream - used to use that all the time. :)
 
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