My first Mac - photos help

[Slartibart]

You risk at any time to lose all your cloud photos and videos since Apple may remove them for any reason.

”Apple reserves the right at all times to determine whether Content is appropriate and in compliance with this Agreement, and may prescreen, move, refuse, modify and/or remove Content at any time, without prior notice and in its sole discretion, if such Content is found to be in violation of this Agreement or is otherwise objectionable.”

Legal - iCloud - Apple

Terms

www.apple.com

It is still ONE valid option to store your files, isn’t? I have not checked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the EULA for OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon Photos, pCloud, etc. is very similar. Otherwise, as others pointed out: if e.g. your photos are important to you, you should have local duplicates/backups of them.

 

[AlixSPQR]

It is still ONE valid option to store your files, isn’t?

Yes, but OP wants to know if it is sufficient, which it isn't.

 

[JamesMay82]

Yes, but OP wants to know if it is sufficient, which it isn't.

A Very good point. I use iCloud but I also keep local back ups via finder for this very reason. It is very time consuming but its the safest way.

I know its very unlikely to happen but I just wouldn’t risk our family photos like that.

At present my large library wont fit on the internal so it has to live on an external, with photos in iCloud, but then I also back up the photo library via Time Machine to a another external hard drive and then I have another hard drive with backed up as well. On each hard drive I also have a version of my photos in finder photos by a year and month structure. I do this in case the photos library became corrupted somehow.

@Fravin your suggestions in this thread of keeping optimised media on the mac but then exporting originals monthly to an external in finder are very good! One thing about my strategy that I hate is being reliant on the external drive to view my photos as its a pain to carry round. More so if browsing photos on the couch in the living room when the hard drive is upstairs in the office.. I think I might do your method. I suppose i could then keep optimised on my mac. And then open the photos library i currently have on an external once a month to let it download the originals? And then i can use that photo library to export to my finder back up as well in the year and month Structure. That should work right?

 

[JamesMay82]

A Very good point. I use iCloud but I also keep local back ups via finder for this very reason. It is very time consuming but its the safest way.

I know its very unlikely to happen but I just wouldn’t risk our family photos like that.

At present my large library wont fit on the internal so it has to live on an external, with photos in iCloud, but then I also back up the photo library via Time Machine to a another external hard drive and then I have another hard drive with backed up as well. On each hard drive I also have a version of my photos in finder photos by a year and month structure. I do this in case the photos library became corrupted somehow.

@Fravin your suggestions in this thread of keeping optimised media on the mac but then exporting originals monthly to an external in finder are very good! One thing about my strategy that I hate is being reliant on the external drive to view my photos as its a pain to carry round. More so if browsing photos on the couch in the living room when the hard drive is upstairs in the office.. I think I might do your method. I suppose i could then keep optimised on my mac. And then open the photos library i currently have on an external once a month to let it download the originals? And then i can use that photo library to export to my finder back up as well in the year and month Structure. That should work right?

@Fravin I just tried it and it only lets you have one iCloud library on the computer due to permissions. I suppose was bit over the top so I'll just keep the optimised versions on the Mac and then just export photos a my photos in my finder folder structure.

 

[TracerAnalog]

Hello,

I’ve had a iPhone for years and I’ve just got my first Macbook which is a 15 inch Air with 256GB And 8 gig of ram. I’ve been syncing all my photos and videos to the iCloud on the phone which it says its using 217GB. With the photos and now my other computer files etc it won’t let me download the original photos and videos on my new MacBook Air because I don’t have enough space.

My question… Is is safe enough to just let my photos and videos get stored in iCloud or should I be returning the MacBook Air and get one with a larger hard drive So I can keep them stored locally in full resolution?

Thanks

iCloud is relatively safe. I would buy an external drive and save a copy of your photos on there. Keep it safe, store it away and update it once a year or so. Finally download a critical selection of your photos on your Macbook (your favorites for example).

 

[Fravin]

@Fravin I just tried it and it only lets you have one iCloud library on the computer due to permissions. I suppose was bit over the top so I'll just keep the optimised versions on the Mac and then just export photos a my photos in my finder folder structure.

Yes, I do that. I export the originals to separate folders in my external hdd. That’s what I do:

• Apple Photos organizes the pictures in albums regarding the date shot, geo localization and so.
• I open each of this new albums, select all photos in it and export them to a single folder in my External HDD. I prefer using the date which pictures were shot to name the folder.
• After all the new albums were stored in my hdd, I upload them overnight to OneDrive.

 

[Fravin]

”Apple reserves the right at all times to determine whether Content is appropriate and in compliance with this Agreement, and may prescreen, move, refuse, modify and/or remove Content at any time, without prior notice and in its sole discretion, if such Content is found to be in violation of this Agreement or is otherwise objectionable.”

Legal - iCloud - Apple

Terms

www.apple.com

This is a legal stuff added after digital platforms have been used to store sensitive content regarding terrorist attacks or lone wolf acts. It’s sad, but it‘s needed, I though.

As long as I know, it is due a federal law.

 

[Slartibart]

iCloud.com won't download RAW files into RAW format, no matter what you do.

It shows RAW files as JPEG. Don't know why.

Try it.

View attachment 2235518

According to Apple you should be able to download the RAWs to a Mac - I am currently away from mine and my little trial using an iPP ended in JPGs, I was absolutely not aware of that. Silly enough download to a Mac seems the only option for that, not even any other desktop OS 🤣😂🤪

 

[ForkHandles]

217Gb !!!!!! You don't have enough room in your iiPhone to store originals either an that never worried you, I would consider not worrying too much about it.

I have to say the 217GB is one huge library. Around 50,000 photos perhaps. Or an awful lot of video files.

You could set up a Smart Folder for different images photo vs video, different years, different file types. Then export the contents to the hard drive for each folder which will force a download of the originals one batch at a time.

And then either curate your collection, or get a bigger laptop.

"I also noticed that the photos library is in what they call a packedaged container. I’m not sure how easy that could corrupt but that’s another reason to keep local back up in a traditional folder structure"

If you right-Click and select Show Package, you will see all of your images in a traditional file structure. There is no benefit in making a copy of this.

 

[0339327]

Hello,

I’ve had a iPhone for years and I’ve just got my first Macbook which is a 15 inch Air with 256GB And 8 gig of ram. I’ve been syncing all my photos and videos to the iCloud on the phone which it says its using 217GB. With the photos and now my other computer files etc it won’t let me download the original photos and videos on my new MacBook Air because I don’t have enough space.

My question… Is is safe enough to just let my photos and videos get stored in iCloud or should I be returning the MacBook Air and get one with a larger hard drive So I can keep them stored locally in full resolution?

Thanks

Your hard drive is too small. This is why I’m unhappy with Apple even selling this model: 256 and 8 of ram isn’t enough anymore.

Yes, you can store your pictures in the cloud, and you’ll be paying for that too, aside from having only jpeg or other, unoriginal formats.

My recommendation is that you return that and get a proper machine with 512 or even 1 tb of space and 16 gb of ram.

 

[Ruggy]

You can leave the photos in the cloud and they will be there to view on the mac any time you want, but it's a good idea to get a back up of them and the cheapest, easiest way to back them up is to an SD card or an external SSD, whichever you prefer. If you want to back up about 250gb then an SSD will be cheapest.
250gb is about $30 and 500gb is about $40 at the moment.

Not such a good idea to download everything to the mac as backup as that's the most expensive way and you'll probably make the mac sluggish or not have enough room for other files

It will still quite a long time to back them up though as that's a lot of data. It isn't going to be minutes.
It depends on your internet connection of course but you'll probably have to run it overnight. Don't be surprised if it isn't finished in the morning.