iCloud Photos questions

[Armen]

I currently use Google Photos for backing up my photos.

1. Unlimited photos backed up
2. "Free up space" feature can delete photos/videos that are already backed up from your camera roll to free up space.

I was considering using iCloud photos because $1.99/month for 250GB family shared space seemed fine until I came across something that left me scratching my head. any photos you delete from your device get erased from iCloud. How does this make sense? So if I happen to have a 16GB iPhone (for example) I can only backup 16GB of photos?

 

[MEJHarrison]

Yes, it's not an archive, just a copy of what is one your phone. If you delete from your phone, it deletes from the cloud.

As for space, don't forget about the Optimize Photos option. I have that turned on in my iPhone settings. So my phone doesn't have the full photo. But typically, I can't tell much difference. It looks pretty great and downloads the full copy from the cloud when needed. The photo library on my Mac is around 128GB (roughly 34,000 photos and 500 videos). The same library on my phone takes up about 6GB.

 

[charlituna]

I currently use Google Photos for backing up my photos.

1. Unlimited photos backed up
2. "Free up space" feature can delete photos/videos that are already backed up from your camera roll to free up space.

I was considering using iCloud photos because $1.99/month for 250GB family shared space seemed fine until I came across something that left me scratching my head. any photos you delete from your device get erased from iCloud. How does this make sense? So if I happen to have a 16GB iPhone (for example) I can only backup 16GB of photos?

iCloud is NOT a backup service but a syncing service. that's why what you delete is gone everywhere .

as for how many photos, there is a feature where smaller thumbnails can live on your phone but the full sized file is on the cloud. cause the photos you take are actually way too high quality for the phone in terms of what it really needs, especially for scrolling etc. so you could conceivably have 8GB used in photos on your phone but at full size it's more like 24GB or whatever of photos

 

[Armen]

iCloud is NOT a backup service but a syncing service. that's why what you delete is gone everywhere .

as for how many photos, there is a feature where smaller thumbnails can live on your phone but the full sized file is on the cloud. cause the photos you take are actually way too high quality for the phone in terms of what it really needs, especially for scrolling etc. so you could conceivably have 8GB used in photos on your phone but at full size it's more like 24GB or whatever of photos

iCloud backup mentions photos. So photos are backed up with iCloud backup but iCloud photos is a sync service? That makes no sense.

 

[charlituna]

iCloud backup mentions photos. So photos are backed up with iCloud backup but iCloud photos is a sync service? That makes no sense.

sorry i should have said iCloud photos is not a backup. if you do a iCloud backup and iCloud photos is not on, the camera roll will backup but its not something you can access. you would literally have to wipe your device and load the whole backup to get the photos

 

[Armen]

sorry i should have said iCloud photos is not a backup. if you do a iCloud backup and iCloud photos is not on, the camera roll will backup but its not something you can access. you would literally have to wipe your device and load the whole backup to get the photos

It's just a missed opportunity on Apple's part. I'd rather not have my family photos on Google Photos but they just offer more features.

 

[TwoBytes]

I don't understand icloud photos. My library is nearly 1TB and growing so it means I can never use icloud for photos Please correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[TimFL1]

I don't understand icloud photos. My library is nearly 1TB and growing so it means I can never use icloud for photos Please correct me if i'm wrong.

You can, you just need the 2TB iCloud tier and optimize storage turned on on any device that does not have 1TB of storage.

 

[akash.nu]

iCloud is just the name for apple’s cloud platform. It has 2 distinct features -
- backup
- sync across multiple apple devices, this also supports features like handover etc.

If you initiate a backup then the devices get backed up to iCloud as a whole if cloud sync for photos is turned off.

If you turn on cloud sync and optimised storage then iOS automatically uploads any new picture from the camera roll to iCloud for it to be available across all of your other Apple devices. Therefore this can also be counted as kind of a backup because it will live on the cloud. The goal is to ensure your entire photo library is available to you on any device all the time.

Why do you want to delete a photo but still keep in your backup?! Isn’t that contradicting the whole point?