I need help "saving" my photo collection.

[swarmofbees]

Hey guys!

Hopefully someone can help me with this.

So for the last couple of years with the surge of cloud services, I started using Google Photos. Also, it was "free".

Recently I decided to start a good old sweep through my photos and videos and... damn. I have a lot of trash I'm getting rid of. But also, I have tons of videos with awful quality, pictures taken with my iphones with live mode on that apparently when transfered to my iphone turn out to be a black picture, with nothing on it. I don't get it.

Well, with Google Photos limiting space, I decided it was time to "upgrade" to iCloud photos. Which I've honestly never properly used. But I have a ton of questions about how to proceed from here.

Firstly it's important to notice that I do not own a Mac, or any other Apple device besides my iPhone 12. I have a windows laptop. I don't really care for having the photos available properly on the laptop, since I view them mostly on my iphone.

I'm still in the process of cleaning my collection and reducing it removing duplicates, screenshots and so on. I'm down to 12k photos.

I'm wondering, when finishing this, should I download all of the photos from Google Photos to my laptop, and then do what?
To get them to icloud and my iphone?

Thank you all for your help. I have very important photos there, from my deceased grandparents, my first date with my wife and so on.

 

[Slartibart]

you will find the instructions on how to download your photos and videos from Google Photos here (or you follow the description by Google).

while I recommend after downloading to keep the photos as a second backup on your Laptop too (as well as a copy of them on a USB-stick) - you can then easily connect via browser from your windows machine to iCloud.com. Login using your Apple-ID, switch to photos and upload. Due to technical restrictions (band width, time outs, etc.) it might be wise to upload your photos in batches, I suggest to start with 100 to get a feeling how it goes.

EDIT: while cleaning out duplicates etc. might be useful, you can additionally still keep your existing photos on Google Photos - the details are given by Google here.

 

[swarmofbees]

you will find the instructions on how to download your photos and videos from Google Photos here (or you follow the description by Google).

while I recommend after downloading to keep the photos as a second backup on your Laptop too (as well as a copy of them on a USB-stick) - you can then easily connect via browser from your windows machine to iCloud.com. Login using your Apple-ID, switch to photos and upload. Due to technical restrictions (band width, time outs, etc.) it might be wise to upload your photos in batches, I suggest to start with 100 to get a feeling how it goes.

EDIT: while cleaning out duplicates etc. might be useful, you can additionally still keep your existing photos on Google Photos - the details are given by Google here.

Thank you. Since there's a limitation with the iCloud in windows, I was wondering: Could I just connect my iphone to my PC, and store all my photos on my iPhone, and THEN activate the photo sync on the iphone?

This way would I have all the photos locally on the iphone but also saved on icloud as well?

 

[HDFan]

If you care about your photos be sure to implement a 3-2-2 backup strategy.

 

[johaen8]

Apple has a iCloud for Windows plugin/application. I use a Mac, so I don't know how it works (or how well it works), but it looks like once you get all your photos saved to your laptop, you would simply drag (or copy/paste) them to the iCloud Photos folder and it will then upload them into iCloud Photo library, which will then sync to your phone.

Here's instructions on how to use iCloud Photos on Windows: Set up and use iCloud Photos on your Windows PC
And here's where to download iCloud for Windows: Download iCloud for Windows