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iCloud Photo Library?
- Thread starter samkim4415
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Frankly, I can't live without it now.
Saves all my pics to iCloud and has them show up on all devices. Biggest thing for me is I can sort them into folders and I don't need to back them up all the time and batch rename them etc. iCloud photos is seamless and can potentially save you time and space.
One question that has been bothering me as of late with iCloud. If I erase my photos on my phone, do they automatically erase on my iPhoto library on my mac? Like let's say I don't wanna keep a huge movie on my phone, does it automatically erase it completely on the cloud / mac?
Yes it will if you have it set to 'upload my photo stream' like in the screenshot below. See the second screenshot for what happens when you delete a photo or video.
You can tick optimise storage and they will keep most of your stuff in the cloud but you can still view them when needed. You can have optimise storage on your phone but not on your Mac, you can have different setting within iCloud setting on each device.
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I don't use it.
I have my phones/devices for different purposes. I don't need the stuff I have on one device pushed to another. I stopped using it before Apple changed it to how it is now.
Since all my devices are hooked into Dropbox I just use that. Anything I value can then be retrieved from any device and placed accordingly. Additionally, none of what's in Dropbox actually gets store on any of my iDevices.
I have my phones/devices for different purposes. I don't need the stuff I have on one device pushed to another. I stopped using it before Apple changed it to how it is now.
Since all my devices are hooked into Dropbox I just use that. Anything I value can then be retrieved from any device and placed accordingly. Additionally, none of what's in Dropbox actually gets store on any of my iDevices.
Pros:
- All your photos are on all your devices and accessible.
- You have a "sort-of" backup of all your photos. (see below)
- You don't have to maintain a separate photo library on each device.
Cons:
- It uses your available iCloud storage space, so you have to pay if your library is > 5GB.
- EVERY photo and video you take has to upload. If you have crappy upload speed on your home WiFi network, this can take a long time.
- Deleting a photo on any device deletes it on all of them, making it easy to lose data accidentally.
I said "sort-of" backup above because of this issue. It's very easy to accidentally delete photos and have them get deleted on all your devices. They'll stick around in "Recently deleted" for a while, but if you delete without noticing they will eventually be gone forever. Therefore it is important, if you use iCloud Photo Library, to have at least one Mac which is NOT set to optimize storage (IE, it downloads ALL your original photos) and have regular Time Machine backup of that Mac so you can go back in time to recover photos in case of data loss.
Since "the cloud" copy is authoritative, you end up having to trust iCloud quite a bit when you use this. So back your stuff up separately too.
Other than that, the convenience for outweighs the pitfalls for me.
- All your photos are on all your devices and accessible.
- You have a "sort-of" backup of all your photos. (see below)
- You don't have to maintain a separate photo library on each device.
Cons:
- It uses your available iCloud storage space, so you have to pay if your library is > 5GB.
- EVERY photo and video you take has to upload. If you have crappy upload speed on your home WiFi network, this can take a long time.
- Deleting a photo on any device deletes it on all of them, making it easy to lose data accidentally.
I said "sort-of" backup above because of this issue. It's very easy to accidentally delete photos and have them get deleted on all your devices. They'll stick around in "Recently deleted" for a while, but if you delete without noticing they will eventually be gone forever. Therefore it is important, if you use iCloud Photo Library, to have at least one Mac which is NOT set to optimize storage (IE, it downloads ALL your original photos) and have regular Time Machine backup of that Mac so you can go back in time to recover photos in case of data loss.
Since "the cloud" copy is authoritative, you end up having to trust iCloud quite a bit when you use this. So back your stuff up separately too.
Other than that, the convenience for outweighs the pitfalls for me.
I just use Google photos. Syncs to all my devices, and it's free and unlimited if you choose to upload at High Quality, which only compresses them if over 16MP, which obviously no iOS device needs to worry about.
I love iCloud Photo Library. I love that as soon as I put photos from my DSLR on my MacBook, they automatically appear on my iPad and iPhone. I love that when I take pictures on my phone, they automatically show up everywhere else. If I make changes to photos, those changes are everywhere. I don't have to think about it, it just works.
That's not true. You can also use Optimize Storage on your mac.
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True, but it's $0.99/month for 50GB.
"Easy"? Not really, and then you have 30 days to rescue them from the trash bin.
Free Google Photos recompress your pictures even if they are less than 16MP.
This is true - but the difference is basically indistinguishable. I use Google Photos since it is unlimited storage for free. I have 80GB of photos / videos stored for 0 cost - I also have a copy on my hard drive as well (and on OneDrive).
I find iCloud Photos difficult to use because I already use Google Photos. Turning on Optimize Photos causes a ton of thumbnails to be backed up to my Google Photos (because the Google Photos app thinks they're new photos) resulting in tons of duplicates.
With Google Photos, I can have nothing stored locally and yet have access to my entire 80GB of photos/videos. It's more of a true cloud backup solution. I have OneDrive on my phone also backing up photos (but it doesn't do Live Photos like Google Photos does) so I have my photos backed up in several locations.
iCloud Photos is not bad for a simple syncing solution. But for people with massive libraries of photos it's not ideal, in my opinion. It needs to have the ability to store photos in the cloud but not need to sync them to your phone for it to be viable in my opinion.
Flickr, 1TB, free, no recompressing BS.This is true - but the difference is basically indistinguishable. I use Google Photos since it is unlimited storage for free. I have 80GB of photos / videos stored for 0 cost - I also have a copy on my hard drive as well (and on OneDrive).
I find iCloud Photos difficult to use because I already use Google Photos. Turning on Optimize Photos causes a ton of thumbnails to be backed up to my Google Photos (because the Google Photos app thinks they're new photos) resulting in tons of duplicates.
With Google Photos, I can have nothing stored locally and yet have access to my entire 80GB of photos/videos. It's more of a true cloud backup solution. I have OneDrive on my phone also backing up photos (but it doesn't do Live Photos like Google Photos does) so I have my photos backed up in several locations.
iCloud Photos is not bad for a simple syncing solution. But for people with massive libraries of photos it's not ideal, in my opinion. It needs to have the ability to store photos in the cloud but not need to sync them to your phone for it to be viable in my opinion.
Free Google Photos != backup. The idea of a backup is that I will get the exact file I uploaded, not a significantly reduced version of the file. Sure, it might look "fine," but it's not a backup/archive, and any further edits on the file will reduce the quality further.
The biggest downside for me is that I quickly went over 200GB ($2.99), especially after I got 4K in my iPhone 6s/7. So I had to go from that to 1TB ($9.99). They used to offer a 500GB option for $4.99, and I'm upset that they got rid of it before I could take advantage of it. I got by for many months by going through and deleting crap out of my library that I didn't need. $10/mo doesn't kill me, but I'm semi-thrifty. Still worth it, but I hate that I'm paying for a volume of storage I don't even come close to fully utilizing and can't share it with my wife or aging grandparents who are on my family sharing and I have to pay a couple bucks for 50GB each.
The other thing is that 4K videos can take a while to buffer if you have slower internet. Last summer I bought a new house and the internet was 150Mbps and that seems to load the videos a lot quicker than my old 100Mbps with the same company that would sometimes have buffering issues. They're supposed to be upgrading me to 200Mbps for free soon so that will be even better. So you might have issues with slower internet for 4K, and you might also run out of data if your home WiFi is metered on a smaller plan due to the constant upload/download of videos. Kind of depends whether you use 4K and whether you have many videos. I have little kids but never hit my old cap of 1TB/mo, and we exclusively stream TV and movies and I use Dropbox a lot for big design files.
The biggest upside is that I don't need to buy the 256GB iPhone on my upgrade plan each year (local photo optimization), manage libraries to keep my storage low enough (aside from my cheapness prior to going 1TB), mess with syncing between devices, or mess with loading everything when I get a new device or replacement. It just restores and never causes problems. Only issue I've noticed in the past several months is the other day I was looking at some stuff from 2014 and some of my video thumbnails weren't loading before or after tapping on them, but their content played fine. Oh and sometimes my iPad goes into some kind of deeper sleep where it disconnects from WiFi so photos don't show up on there right away that I had taken on my iPhone in the past day.
The other thing is that 4K videos can take a while to buffer if you have slower internet. Last summer I bought a new house and the internet was 150Mbps and that seems to load the videos a lot quicker than my old 100Mbps with the same company that would sometimes have buffering issues. They're supposed to be upgrading me to 200Mbps for free soon so that will be even better. So you might have issues with slower internet for 4K, and you might also run out of data if your home WiFi is metered on a smaller plan due to the constant upload/download of videos. Kind of depends whether you use 4K and whether you have many videos. I have little kids but never hit my old cap of 1TB/mo, and we exclusively stream TV and movies and I use Dropbox a lot for big design files.
The biggest upside is that I don't need to buy the 256GB iPhone on my upgrade plan each year (local photo optimization), manage libraries to keep my storage low enough (aside from my cheapness prior to going 1TB), mess with syncing between devices, or mess with loading everything when I get a new device or replacement. It just restores and never causes problems. Only issue I've noticed in the past several months is the other day I was looking at some stuff from 2014 and some of my video thumbnails weren't loading before or after tapping on them, but their content played fine. Oh and sometimes my iPad goes into some kind of deeper sleep where it disconnects from WiFi so photos don't show up on there right away that I had taken on my iPhone in the past day.
If you read my post again you will maybe see what I said. I never said that you couldn't have optimised storage, what I said was that he could have it set on his phone(to save space) but not have it on his Mac.
I read what you wrote, in both posts, and it's incorrect. You can turn on Optimize Storage on your Mac.
Obviously your not reading it right. I never said you can't have it turned on on a Mac.
Maybe you could point out where I said you can't have it turned on on a Mac. If not then I guess we will just have to agree that you were wrong.
Btw I got my friends kid who is 9 to read my post and he got what I said straight away.
I respect that opinion 100% and I agree with it. What convinced me to use Google Photos despite this was my own tests (taking photos, blowing them up 100% before and after Google compressed them and reading articles like these: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/arpit-verma/bursting-the-myth-of-comp_b_8902076.html and https://petapixel.com/2015/05/30/jpeg-compression-test-google-photos-vs-jpegmini/ )
Also, Google Photos stores live photos unlike OneDrive, (and Flickr last I checked?) - which is HUGE for me. I'm making movies from my live photos pretty regularly now.
But if my job was photography or it bothered me enough about the compression, yeah I could totally see myself using Flickr, OneDrive (Office 365 gives me 1TB), or my own hard drive as a backup.
There should be an option to prevent it from deleting photos from iCloud when you delete them on the phone.
when I had a Samsung Note 5 (for 6 months only) it came with free 100GB Microsoft cloud drive and would automatically upload photoes from camera roll to the cloud.
deleting them on the phobe (for clearing space for example) wouldn't affect the backeup copy on cloud.
infact I recently signed in to One Drive and ALL my old photos where there.
Very cool and useful feature.
this is how iCloud photos should be.
It's a big negative point if currently has.
when I had a Samsung Note 5 (for 6 months only) it came with free 100GB Microsoft cloud drive and would automatically upload photoes from camera roll to the cloud.
deleting them on the phobe (for clearing space for example) wouldn't affect the backeup copy on cloud.
infact I recently signed in to One Drive and ALL my old photos where there.
Very cool and useful feature.
this is how iCloud photos should be.
It's a big negative point if currently has.
Obviously your not reading it right. I never said you can't have it turned on on a Mac.
Maybe you could point out where I said you can't have it turned on on a Mac. If not then I guess we will just have to agree that you were wrong.
Btw I got my friends kid who is 9 to read my post and he got what I said straight away.
Then neither of you must speak English as your first language. Commas seperate thoughts, or items in a list.
Maybe you're trying to suggest some scenario where a person uses the setting on one device but not on the other, but it's about as clear as mud.
I recently moved from an android phone to an iPhone so was using google photos all this while. As we know it the mutitasking on iOs is different then on android, photos do not get automatically backed up to google photos unless you have the app open, while the photos get automatically uploaded with iPhotos. Apart from the iPhone I am was already invested in the apple ecosystem, I own an iMac and an iPad so just switched over to iPhotos.
If you read just one line of what I wrote, as you highlighted then yes you can make it look I said that you can't have it turned on on a Mac but if you read the whole post then I'm sure even you can clearly see what I was saying.
Surely you're not saying that your not capable of comprehending a post
Probably best we put each other on the ignore list, bye