Help with saving my small photo journey

[swarmofbees]

Hey guys!

Hopefully someone can help me with this.

So for the last couple of years with the surge of cloud services, I started using Google Photos. Also, it was "free".

Recently I decided to start a good old sweep through my photos and videos and... damn. I have a lot of trash I'm getting rid of. But also, I have tons of videos with awful quality, pictures taken with my iphones with live mode on that apparently when transfered to my iphone turn out to be a black picture, with nothing on it. I don't get it.

Well, with Google Photos limiting space, I decided it was time to "upgrade" to iCloud photos. Which I've honestly never properly used. But I have a ton of questions about how to proceed from here.

Firstly it's important to notice that I do not own a Mac, or any other Apple device besides my iPhone 12. I have a windows laptop. I don't really care for having the photos available properly on the laptop, since I view them mostly on my iphone.

I'm still in the process of cleaning my collection and reducing it removing duplicates, screenshots and so on. I'm down to 12k photos.

I'm wondering, when finishing this, should I download all of the photos from Google Photos to my laptop, and then do what?
To get them to icloud and my iphone?

Thank you all for your help. I have very important photos there, from my deceased grandparents, my first date with my wife and so on.

 

[deep diver]

The overwhelming majority of us have some backup copy of our images that are under our control. Some use cloud based services and keep a local backup. Some keep everything on their computers with a separate backup copy. There are a lot of different systems people prefer. You'll get a lot of feedback here. The bottom line will be that you should have a copy that is in your control of all of the images you care about, whether you continue to use a cloud based service or not. An external SSD would be the easiest and least expensive way to go.
You asked "and then do what?" And then rest assured that your memories are safe.

 

[swarmofbees]

The overwhelming majority of us have some backup copy of our images that are under our control. Some use cloud based services and keep a local backup. Some keep everything on their computers with a separate backup copy. There are a lot of different systems people prefer. You'll get a lot of feedback here. The bottom line will be that you should have a copy that is in your control of all of the images you care about, whether you continue to use a cloud based service or not. An external SSD would be the easiest and least expensive way to go.
You asked "and then do what?" And then rest assured that your memories are safe.

Thank you.

The main ideia for me is:

Create a local backup to an external SSD. That I know how to do after downloading all my photos from Google Photos.

My current doubt is regarding iCloud, since I never synced my photos with it.

I was wondering if I can transfer all my photos to my iPhone (I have a lot of storage available on it) and then activate the icloud sync on the iPhone, would all those photos stay backed up on iCloud?

 

[MBAir2010]

you can chose what photos you can save on the icloud while keeping other photos on a PC notebook or iPhone.
this is by selecting a certain folder you can create and then allowing iCloud to use that folder only.
i hope this made sense and is clear.

 

[swarmofbees]

you can chose what photos you can save on the icloud while keeping other photos on a PC notebook or iPhone.
this is by selecting a certain folder you can create and then allowing iCloud to use that folder only.
i hope this made sense and is clear.

Sorry, I got even more confused. I'll make it easier by saying:

I want all my photos in one place. Currently I have a lot of albums on Google Photos but they are a mess. I will delete the albums and store the photos all together, and when I have them all on my iPhone I will create new albums.

 

[deep diver]

Sorry, I got even more confused. I'll make it easier by saying:

I want all my photos in one place. Currently I have a lot of albums on Google Photos but they are a mess. I will delete the albums and store the photos all together, and when I have them all on my iPhone I will create new albums.

I don't use iCloud (nor Apple mobile devices) so I might be off target with this. I wonder if it might be easier to put all of your pictures on your computer first, get them organized the way you want, and then upload them to iCloud and the phone. The folders you make to organize the pictures on the computer would then become the albums. I've always found it's better to work with large numbers of files if I have multiple Finder or File Manager windows open. It just makes it easier to move stuff around in more organized and less confusing ways.
I would not delete the existing albums. I would use them as the starting point for the reorganization so that I wouldn't have to redo what is at least partially done already.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Agreed that initial re-organization would be much easier on the computer and working with a decent sized monitor.

 

[MBAir2010]

how much space on your icloud account is important, we just dont know.
Apple does have a generous 50GB storage plan for under a US dollar per month which is a great deal.
.

 

[laz232]

TLDR: keep in mind that any device you own may die, break, get stolen or burnt - and a cloud copy may then be "locked" away without a way of getting to it.

Buy an additional portable HDD, and store your important photos at a third location - even if you only update that copy once a year - you at least have access to something...

 

[jaymc]

If you have Amazon Prime, I'd suggest using their Cloud Photo service - photos are unlimited and uncompressed to the cloud and videos have a 5G limit.

 

[ericgtr12]

how much space on your icloud account is important, we just dont know.
Apple does have a generous 50GB storage plan for under a US dollar per month which is a great deal.
.

And Google has 100GB for $2.99 per month so it sounds comparable. IMO it's cheap storage and under the circumstances for the OP it seems like a much more involved task to move them off. I have used both over the years and IMO Google is way easier and user friendly than iCould photos.

 

[kallisti]

I can’t comment on your specific use case (sorry).

The easiest solution if you owned a Mac would be to use Photos as it syncs between an iPhone, Mac, and iCloud without issues. So you can have local copies on your Mac, iPhone, and in the cloud. If any one device fails you can recover from another device or iCloud.

But that’s not your situation.

Lots of good advice in the above posts. I would *always* recommend having at least one backup of any data that is vital to you (photos, video, documents, etc.). Ideally a second backup off site (either in a different physical location or in the cloud).

Devices fail and it can be expensive (or in some cases impossible) to recover data from them. A local clone/copy of the data is a very good form of insurance. Having an off site copy of important data (whether with a physical copy or in the cloud) is insurance against a catastrophic local incident (house burns down, house floods, house gets hit by a tornado, thieves steal your main computer and your local backups, etc.).

Like any insurance, it can seem like a waste of time and money. Until the unthinkable happens to you. And then you will be *very* happy that your irreplaceable files can be recovered .

 

[jaymc]

Another option are SSD hard drives ... amazon has this on sale today.

 

[ericgtr12]

Another option are SSD hard drives ... amazon has this on sale today.

Wow, that's actually a really good deal.

 

[jaymc]

Wow, that's actually a really good deal.

SSDs are great cause they are much faster to use than regular HDs and the prices are starting to come down. if Looking at cloud options, do shop around - prices vary widely and some don’t save the original full file size of your pic.