Photos question

[TenthDoctor]

Hello. i am a little confused with how to go about doing the following. If someone could help and tell me exactly what to do, that would be appreciated:

1.). I want to have all my pictures on my Mac—including those from my iPad and iPhone.

2.). I want to be able to get the pictures off of iCloud — either some or all. (Again all pictures to go on the Mac)
I also might want to put some of them on an external drive.

3.). I want to eventually delete some or all of the pictures off the phone and iPad after I have a copy of the pictures on my Mac and/or external hard drive.

what do I need to do to make all of this happen?

 

[gilby101]

I completely avoid iCloud for photos, and use PhotoSync to transfer all photos from iPhone to Mac. Subsequent runs, it transfers new photos. The Mac app is free, but you will probably want the Premium upgrade for the iPhone app once you have decided it can work for you. It has, in my view, become somewhat feature bloated - I just use the basic (original) functionality to transfer photos from iPhone to Mac over my home wifi. Totally reliable.

 

[MBAir2010]

i am loading picture i have taken on Photos '11 as i type this with icloud turned off.
last year had under 50GB of photos on the cloud, but took them off by exporting those to a ssd drive in January.
there is a lot of dragging and saving bt worth knowing the pictures are safe on several Macbooks, ssd drives and now in a in-iclouded photo app.

good luck and nice decision!

2.). I want to be able to get the pictures off of iCloud — either some or all. (Again all pictures to go on the Mac)
I also might want to put some of them on an external drive.

 

[splifingate]

what do I need to do to make all of this happen?

iCloud

Once all devices are in-sync, you can do what you want to do, with extreme prejudice

Personally, I sync all my Original Photos (via iCloud) to my Desktop, and place-hold Optimize the same to my iPad/iPhone (each of which have much-more limited storage capacity).

There are probably more than fifty ways to extract the photos off-of your devices, and onto other storage medii.

User > Pictures > Photos Library.photoslibrary is the compound database which holds our individual photos.

I regularly copy this DB to external(s) to preserve the baseline.

AAPL definitely makes it really awkward--and not very granular--to tailor our iCloud subscription . . . if you need more space, you are sometimes required to Sub to Really More, which is often a stiff fist to the gut for someone not in the position to throw monies around 🤷‍♂️

The caveat being is that the monies required are really not that onerous; just rather awkward <smile>

 

[gilby101]

iCloud

There really is no need to use iCloud for photos. Easy sync between all devices may be a nice feature (or not).

 

[TenthDoctor]

iCloud

Once all devices are in-sync, you can do what you want to do, with extreme prejudice

Personally, I sync all my Original Photos (via iCloud) to my Desktop, and place-hold Optimize the same to my iPad/iPhone (each of which have much-more limited storage capacity).

There are probably more than fifty ways to extract the photos off-of your devices, and onto other storage medii.

User > Pictures > Photos Library.photoslibrary is the compound database which holds our individual photos.

I regularly copy this DB to external(s) to preserve the baseline.

AAPL definitely makes it really awkward--and not very granular--to tailor our iCloud subscription . . . if you need more space, you are sometimes required to Sub to Really More, which is often a stiff fist to the gut for someone not in the position to throw monies around 🤷‍♂️

The caveat being is that the monies required are really not that onerous; just rather awkward <smile>

I don’t need all the pictures in iCloud. Some of them can be copied to external hard drives.

I appreciate the answers. The problem is that I already have them in iCloud. I want to take some of them off iCloud—I don’t need many of those photos on iCloud.

I just need to know what I need to do in order to do what I said in the original post.

I know some of you have said you don’t or wouldn’t or there is no need to use iCloud for photos. That’s fine—the problem is I already have photos on it, and I want to get some of them off of it. I don’t want some of them taking up iCloud space, and I don’t need them on all my devices. Some pictures would be nice to have.

I want to know the steps I need to take to do what I said in the original post. Thanks.

 

[960design]

1.). I want to have all my pictures on my Mac—including those from my iPad and iPhone.

Log into iCloud.com using your iPad and iPhone iCloud accounts.
Download pictures to whatever computer you want.

2.). I want to be able to get the pictures off of iCloud — either some or all. (Again all pictures to go on the Mac)
I also might want to put some of them on an external drive.

Copy pictures from whatever computer to external drive.

3.). I want to eventually delete some or all of the pictures off the phone and iPad after I have a copy of the pictures on my Mac and/or external hard drive.

Delete pictures from iCloud.

NOTE: This is not the most efficient or 'Apple' way of doing things. It is however the simplest to describe and thus fulfil your requirements of a step by step process.

REMEMBER: Cloud photos are forever! Everything you copy to your local computer and/or external drive should be considered as lost/unimportant. One flood, fire, tornado, hurricane, robber, ect and photos not backed up to redundant offsite servers are now just memories.

 

[splifingate]

There really is no need to use iCloud for photos. Easy sync between all devices may be a nice feature (or not).

If I may be so bold: there is no real need for ice cream, but . . .

I find the (easy) sync of my photos between connected devices one of the singular (if-not the foremost) highlights of how lovely Mac systems are.

I am finding little evidence supporting the thesis for entertaining any other tech.

 

[splifingate]

I don’t need all the pictures in iCloud. Some of them can be copied to external hard drives.

I appreciate the answers. The problem is that I already have them in iCloud. I want to take some of them off iCloud—I don’t need many of those photos on iCloud.

I just need to know what I need to do in order to do what I said in the original post.

I know some of you have said you don’t or wouldn’t or there is no need to use iCloud for photos. That’s fine—the problem is I already have photos on it, and I want to get some of them off of it. I don’t want some of them taking up iCloud space, and I don’t need them on all my devices. Some pictures would be nice to have.

I want to know the steps I need to take to do what I said in the original post. Thanks.

You can always Export any photo you want, then delete the Original (which would remove it from all enrolled devices).

Photos Curation is, intimately, a personal decision; as such, I appreciate the laborious process.

If you want to do the "Nuke it for Morbid" process, copy your *.photoslibrary to an external, and delete the original.

My photos library has 16,750+ photos, and 1,400+ videos . . . curation is a rather complicated process, and falls into the "till-a-rainy-day" category.

 

[JamesMay82]

I've done the exact thing you've done and unfortunately its a long process.

First I downloaded them all locally to my computer from iCloud within the apple photos app.. Once downloaded I then exported them in batches into individual folders on my finder.

**** don't download pictures from iCloud.com as it doesn't preserve the file sizes as it coverts them all to JPEGS***

I use this file structure in finder - Year, Month and Date or sometimes if it was key event or holiday.

After you've done that and its backed up into finder and the ideally backed up to an external drive you can then start deleting them from the photos app which will in turn remove them from I cloud.

 

[adrianlondon]

One option:

Create a new Photos library on your Mac (opt-click the Photos icon in your dock, although I assume there are other ways) and use this new one for local (to your Mac) photos.

Export all your photos from the original iCloud-synchronised library to disk somewhere - ideally nicely organised into a folder structure to mimic albums, then switch Photos library to the new one and import them there.

Note that any edits you've made to the photo become permanent - the edited version gets exported (jpeg) and hence you can't undo them. Best to save all editing/cropping until they're in your local library.

 

[DCIFRTHS]

One option:

Create a new Photos library on your Mac (opt-click the Photos icon in your dock, although I assume there are other ways) and use this new one for local (to your Mac) photos.

Export all your photos from the original iCloud-synchronised library to disk somewhere - ideally nicely organised into a folder structure to mimic albums, then switch Photos library to the new one and import them there.

Note that any edits you've made to the photo become permanent - the edited version gets exported (jpeg) and hence you can't undo them. Best to save all editing/cropping until they're in your local library.

If a second photos library is created, does it sink with iCloud, or is only one photos database allowed to sync?

 

[adrianlondon]

If a second photos library is created, does it sink with iCloud, or is only one photos database allowed to sync?

Only one can sync. That's the beauty of it!

 

[DCIFRTHS]

Only one can sync. That's the beauty of it!

Thanks!

 

[winxmac]

Make sure that the Original copies are stored on your iPhone, iPad and Mac...

Stop synching photos to iCloud - go to iCloud settings on each device to do so...

Since you want the Mac to have all the photos and videos, AirDrop from iPhone and iPad all the ones that are not yet saved on the Mac, AirDrop to Mac from iPhone and iPad...

Once you have everything you need on your Mac, and you no longer need them saved on iPhone and iPad, you can go ahead and delete them...

For those photos and videos stored in iCloud, you can log in to the browser and download them or use the iCloud app to download them, although if it were me, I would log in to iCloud.com through the browser and perform the download...

Once you have downloaded everything from iCloud, you can delete them and wait 30 days to be completely removed from iCloud or you can delete them from the Recently Deleted...

Now, after you have consolidated everything and saved to your Mac, you can create copies to be saved on external storage and you can also use a different cloud storage as another backup...

iCloud cannot be considered as complete backup since so long as you sync locally stored photos and videos to iCloud, once you make changes or delete them from your devices, they will also get deleted in iCloud, and other devices will also lose those deleted photos and videos...

 

[BotchQue]

Gary's daily Macmost video today is about exporting photos, it clarified a few things for me and may be of help:

EDIT: The "Watch on EweTube" link in the box above does work

 

[JamesMay82]

For those photos and videos stored in iCloud, you can log in to the browser and download them or use the iCloud app to download them, although if it were me, I would log in to iCloud.com through the browser and perform the download...

Downloading from iCloud website doesn’t download in the full resolution though so it’s better to download within the photos app.