Photos: Digital Storage / Apple, iCloud

[Kyle 207]

Anyone willing to help a Luddite use / master iCloud and online storage? I'm clearly kind of a technology idiot and have never clicked with Apple's philosophy: I get Apple thinks by forcing me into its workflow it is helping, but I'm just wired to the "I want to work the way I want to work" philosophy. But we  have a bunch of Apple crap.

Short answer - looking to store / organize our family photos:

- Had an old Mac with iPhoto

- Family iPhones

- Storage: have iCloud and Amazon Photos (Drive)

Here's what I cannot seem to master:

- Getting old photos out of iPhoto

- Getting those photos or others into Apple Photos

- Getting Photos to be consistent / shared across devices

Yes, I have restarted the computer.  And am using the same Apple ID across the Mac and phone. 

Thanks in advance. 

 

 

[TwiceHorn 31495]

Here I think is the basic rundown.  Icloud is not generally accessible itself.  It is a cloud backstop to individual apps like Mail or Photos or what have you.  In theory, what you see in an app is what is contained in iCloud.  This, however, is dependent on the app being signed into the appropriate iCloud account and that both devices have synced to the account.  The default iCloud account is defined in your system preferences.  Anything signed into that account (Macbook and iPhone) should show the same thing in their respective apps.  A device signed into a different account will not show the same things and an app that isn't actually signed into the iCloud account won't be synced.

If devices with the same default iCloud account/Apple ID show different things, then there would seem to either be a connectivity issue preventing sync, or the app isn't actually signed into iCloud.  You can have an iCloud account that your are signed into, but have fewer than all the apps syncing to it.  Check your system preferences and the app individually to see that it is actually signed into the correct account.

https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/how-to-transfer-photos-from-iphoto-to-photos/

Edited February 22, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[Lobwedgephil 1139]

You should have the exact same photos on you Mac and phone assuming you are using iCloud and apple's photos apps with the same Apple ID. Getting photos out of iPhoto is as simple as drag and drop them where you want them. Are you running old software? 

[Kyle 207]

1 hour ago, Lobwedgephil said:

You should have the exact same photos on you Mac and phone assuming you are using iCloud and apple's photos apps with the same Apple ID. Getting photos out of iPhoto is as simple as drag and drop them where you want them. Are you running old software? 

Thanks to both of you guys.

The iPhoto is on a very old machine (relative). When I drag and drop - videos for example - I get just the (don't even know what to call it) 200KB thumbnail vs. the full file. I have exported, but I have struggled to do that in bulk. As best I can tell - there are some images in iPhoto as a thumbnail but the full file must not exist. Because batch exporting stops and inevitably when I click on the last exported, the next one returns the "!" when I click on the thumbnail in iPhoto. This means I try and export 100 files, and one stops so I have to track it down and then export 80 ... and so on.

I also get this weird message trying to import to Photos / iCloud of "file format not supported." These are videos exported from iPhoto.

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

Been there, done this.

I gave up in 2016 or so and started to get this organized.

Prepare to spend a lot of time and energy planning, preparing and undertaking this.  Originally, I had every digital picture from my first digi cam in 2001 until that time scattered over a bunch of places.  What I did was (we are an all Apple house) read up on iCloud photo library as much as I could, then made sure I had backups of backups, and then got all my wife's pics she had taken over the years and wanted backed up and set aside, and then took the leap.

Once you have all this done, work with one device only.  I cannot stress this enough.  Don't start this project on a Mac, then slip over to a iPhone or whatever and pick up.  Get everything how you want it on a Mac (for example) before you ever turn on icloud photo library on a second (or third) device.  Here's a great resource for you on your journey:

https://www.imore.com/icloud-photo-library

 

What I did:

-On an iMac in our home, deleted every picture from Photos.  Gave myself a blank slate to work with.

-Created a new Photo library, and turned on iCloud photo library on the iMac.

-Then started with my earliest photos from 2001.  Once that was done, then move to 2002.  And so on.  I would copy photos from my iPhone over to the Mac, then add these to the Photo library.  Once that was done, I deleted all the photos from my phone, so it was a blank slate as well.

-Once that was done, then started adding photos my wife had taken over the years.

-Once all this was done, I had a large (160GB or so) Photos library.  THEN I turned on iCloud photo library on my iphone, and the photos started appearing.  Like magic.

 

Pro Tip.  After you have all your photos in one library, for organization purposes, I simply created a shared album for each year (2001, 2002, so on) then copied all the photos taken in 2001 to that album.  Makes sharing and finding a photo really easy.

 

Oh, one last thing,  I exported every photo from my new album and imported them to a Google Photos album.  Unlimited storage if you can live with a limit on megapixels to 16 or so per photo.    I also put all of these exported photos onto an external USB drive.