How does Icloud Photos Work??? (Syncing question)

[triplekg]

I've never used photos on the desktop or I've never syned my photos on icloud.

How exactly does this work? I've basically backed up my photos on an external drive every time I get a new Phone. I want to go through all my old pics and basically chose my favourties (Probably thousands of them) and sync them across all my icloud.

So should I drag all my pics from my external drive to the photos app and then organize ? Will they sync to my phone?

Why do all the pics get stored on one large file under photos? Should I back this one file up after I decide what pics I want to keep?

 

[Shirasaki]

So should I drag all my pics from my external drive to the photos app and then organize ? Will they sync to my phone?

No. You just need to drag what you like most to the photos app. Cause if you drag all, your iPhone will have all of those photos. You will be able to preview photos easier on Mac than on iPhone, so does management.

Why do all the pics get stored on one large file under photos? Should I back this one file up after I decide what pics I want to keep?

Apple treats it as a "library", not just a collection of photos files. They store it in a single file so if you want to backup, backup that file only and everything will be there. Once you choose your favourite, you can also backup that file so that your choice will be preserved.

 

[Mefisto]

Just to add, you can have at least two (probably more) libraries in the Photos app. It's just that you have to designate one of them to be the default one, and this is the one that will be synced to iCloud.

Google will educate you further, and better than I can.