iCloud: Photos Vs. Files for Long-Term Storage?

[purdnost]

I use the Photos app to sync media across all my devices, but I don’t want to use it as for long-term storage. Every year, I move all of my media from my devices to local hard drive storage backups, but I would also like to have the convenience of accessibility.

I’m interested in using the Files app to keep a long-term, accessible wherever backup. With Photos, just having the thumbnails for tens of thousands of images and videos takes up a lot of storage space on my devices. I’m assuming with Files, those thumbnails are temporarily cached? I also like the idea of being able to move media from Photos to Files easily. And with shared folders now in Files, my wife and I would be able to share a unified folder of all our photos and videos.

Would there be any downsides to this that anyone can think of?

 

[chabig]

I would designate one of your machines to keep a library of full resolution photos. Then keep that Mac backed up.

 

[purdnost]

I don’t actually own a computer. I replaced an iMac with the iPad Pro a few years ago. Otherwise, that would be an effective solution.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I think Photos does more than keep thumbnails, but it has a low-res version of each image loaded, at the iPad's native resolution--it may not even load the full-res version unless you zoom. What Files stores is likely quite a bit smaller, since it's just a thumbnail. I've contemplated just using iCloud like a cloud service for photo storage, but I've yet to really try such a thing. I think what you'll lose is the ease of sorting and viewing by dates, albums, faces, searches, etc. That's one benefit to any DAM software--it makes finding a particular type of photo easier. For example, if I search Photos for "butterflies," I'll get all the butterfly shots I've taken. In Files, the hunt is on, unless you are very diligent about tags.

 

[purdnost]

As it turns out, storing my media in Files isn’t a good option for me. image thumbnails only appear if the file is less than 1 MB, and video thumbnails don’t display at all. I have to download the images to my device to see all the thumbnails. Apple Photos optimizes this process so that thumbnails can be displayed without downloading the original file. I would still like a solution that displays all thumbnails as well being able to share the library with my wife.

 

[purdnost]

Looking into Smugmug and Flickr at the moment...

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Flickr has a holiday deal going right now, so you can save a bit there on the Pro plan and get unlimited storage. I imagine most services will be offering good sales, so now's the time to really think about it!

 

[purdnost]

Unfortunately, Flickr doesn’t support RAW files, and Smugmug converts HEIC to JPEG.

 

[purdnost]

Six months later and I think I’m just going to organize everything into folders the Apple Files app. Will support my RAW files, won’t convert my HEIC files, and I’m already paying for iCloud storage.

 

[mrklaw]

Tried onedrive? with an office 365 sub you get 1TB storage, connects to files for easy uploading, and displays photos as thumbnails. You can view info which shows some EXIF data but I don’t know if they support native handling of HEIC as I store as JPEG (export from lightroom on PC as backup)

 

[purdnost]

I suppose my only concern with the Files app is that the thumbnails, when viewing content, take up a ton of space on my nearly full 64GB iPhone. I wonder how iOS handles this.

 

[Haribokart]

Just use iCloud photos Jesus ****ing christ why do you people make life so hard for yourselves.

 

[Clix Pix]

Zenfolio accepts .jpg and RAW files. I'm not sure about HEIF, as that is a fairly new format.

I don't use either Photos or iCloud for my images, so can't offer any help there. I shoot RAW and because the resulting files from my camera are fairly large I need to have a good editing program which will convert the images to .jpg after I've edited them. In addition I need to have both backup/storage at home (external drives) and off-site (one complete set of files goes to my bank safe deposit each month, swapped out regularly, and I use Zenfolio as the other off-site storage but only for edited images, as the site is meant to serve as a gallery for sharing with friends and family.