I have a 256GB MacBook Air and a photos library bigger than that. I keep the photos optimized because I don't have enough local space, however I want to download the originals to an external SSD every month. Is there a way to do this besides having to move my photo library to the external drive?
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Back up original photos when using optimized photos?
- Thread starter Fontane
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According to this article, if you are optimising your photos then you have the originals in iCloud. Can you n to download from there?
Optimise storage in Photos on Mac
In Photos on your Mac, set iCloud Photos to optimise storage space on your Mac.
support.apple.com
Will Time Machine download iCloud Photos un full resolution then save them to disk or does it just store what’s currently on your drive? I’m not sure. But that’s the only option I can think of.
If you just grab your photos and put them on disk you’ll loose the Live Photos in their original format I believe. Have you considered Amazon Photos or OneDrive that support Live Photos.
Sorry, I don’t think I ever answered your question.
I think I can download from iCloud (will check), but the problem is I have 15,000 photos. That could a long time give how slow Apple uploads/downloads are. I'm still going to try though to see if it's an option.
EDIT: I finally found the post where I saw this idea, so credit goes to @Kimcha (here) and @rajs (here).
As best I remember, his solution was create another Photos library on the external SSD with "Download Originals to this Mac" turned on. Unfortunately, while Photos.app does let you work with multiple Photos libraries for one Mac account, it doesn't let you set the preferences separately for each library. Therefore, the "Download Originals" library (which will be on the external SSD) must to belong to a separate Mac user account.
A very different approach to backing up your iCloud photos is discussed in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...tos-app-including-people-names-faces.2373154/. It involves using a powerful command-line tool 'osxphotos' to export all of the photos and their metadata to a directory structure on whatever volume you like. However, it does not create a usable Photos library. (In some ways, that's an advantage, though.)
I recently read a thread about this issue. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it right now.
As best I remember, his solution was create another Photos library on the external SSD with "Download Originals to this Mac" turned on. Unfortunately, while Photos.app does let you work with multiple Photos libraries for one Mac account, it doesn't let you set the preferences separately for each library. Therefore, the "Download Originals" library (which will be on the external SSD) must to belong to a separate Mac user account.
- Leave your existing Photos library as is!
- Create a new standard Mac user account (not a new Apple ID). Call it, say "photos-user".
- Log in to "photos-user", and then log in to your existing Apple ID. (It was reported that having two Mac accounts logged into the same Apple ID works fine.)
- Create photos-user's Library on the external SSD: hold down the Option key while opening Photos.app, click Create New, and navigate to the external SSD.
- EDIT: Enable the new external library "Use As System Photo Library" (somewhat of a misnomer, because it applies only to that Mac account).
- In Photos.app, go to Preferences-->iCloud and be sure to select "Download Originals to this Mac".
- Eventually, all the originals should be downloaded on the SSD's Photos library.
- Every month (or so), log into the photos-user account and open Photos. This should cause it to download any new photos to the SSD, thus updating your backup!
A very different approach to backing up your iCloud photos is discussed in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...tos-app-including-people-names-faces.2373154/. It involves using a powerful command-line tool 'osxphotos' to export all of the photos and their metadata to a directory structure on whatever volume you like. However, it does not create a usable Photos library. (In some ways, that's an advantage, though.)
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No it won't download anything. It makes a backup of your Mac, not cloud storage. Follow what @Brian33 suggests.
In addition to what I posted, you might need to login to the "photos-user" account and ensure that the Photos library on the external SSD is designated as the "System Photos Library" I'm not sure about this as I've never done this procedure, but if a Mac account has more than one library, whichever one is designated will be the one that syncs with iCloud Photos. (Any other libraries will not be synced but will remain as is.)
The setting is Photos-->Preferences-->General-->Use As System Photo Library
The setting is Photos-->Preferences-->General-->Use As System Photo Library
The approach recommended by @Brian33 to create an alternate user account works well as long as you remember to login in periodically and let it update. Another solution is to use the iCloud photos downoader command line tool to periodically download everything from iCloud. I'm also the author of the osxphotos tool that @Brian33 mentioned. This tool can backup your Photos (that's a primary use case) and does have an option to download missing originals from iCloud, but in your use case, this probably isn't the best option as you've got limited disk space which could quickly get filled (and cause lots of SSD wear). Time Machine does NOT download originals from iCloud and in fact doesn't even backup the whole database -- it rebuilds the database if needed during restore.
I have one of my Macs set with the photos library on an external disk, and sync non-optimized on that Mac. Then that Mac is backed up both locally (to a different external disk) and via a cloud service. So all my photos are on iClloud, on this Mac, on this Mac’s backup disk, and on the 3rd party cloud service.
If you don’t have a 2nd Mac you can do that with, my advice would be a 2nd user account on your MBA. Set it up with an external Photos library and set that user up to “Download all originals.” Then log into that user once a month or so with that external disk connected, and let it sync up.