iCloud Photos Question

[hsleiman]

Hi everyone, hoping to get some help optimizing use of my iCloud storage and photo management on my mac. I currently pay for 50 gb of storage and use about 35 gb in photos and videos. Currently, iCloud photo syncing is on and my entire library is available on all my devices. I really don't need every single photo or video I have ever taken to be accessible online all the time. Is there a way to back up my library periodically to my mac hard disk and then clear all the old pics/vids from iCloud photo sync while allowing newer pics and vids to work through iCloud photo sync until I manually back them up to my mac? I'm trying to avoid having to upgrade my iCloud storage subscription bc I really don't need all those old photos and videos with me all the time.

 

[glenthompson]

You can export the pictures from Photos and save them in a local folder. Then delete them out of Photos. It’s only $2 per month to upgrade your storage.

 

[TechSnoop]

Can export with Photos (File > Export > Export N items > Keep metadata etc.) but you'll lose organization - and possibly format (If you have JPG, HEIF, RAW, TIFF etc., Photos will convert all of them into JPG, PNG or TIFF). A couple other options, both retain organization, format, metadata etc. are Photos Takeout and OSXPhotos.

 

[RhetTbull]

I'm the author of osxphotos mentioned above by TechSnoop. One of the things osxphotos can do is find all photos or videos greater than a certain size and export these. It has an option to also add these items to a Photos Album which would then let you easily delete them once exported. Take caution however as once an item is deleted in Photos on one device, it will get deleted in iCloud and on every other device. You cannot "selectively synch" in Photos.

For example:

osxphotos export /path/to/export/folder --min-size 100MB --add-exported-to-album "Big Photos and Videos" --verbose

will export all photos and videos >= 100MB in size and add them to the album "Big Photos and Videos" (which will be created if necessary)

 

[BotchQue]

Can export with Photos (File > Export > Export N items > Keep metadata etc.) but you'll lose organization - and possibly format (If you have JPG, HEIF, RAW, TIFF etc., Photos will convert all of them into JPG, PNG or TIFF). A couple other options, both retain organization, format, metadata etc. are Photos Takeout and OSXPhotos.

Whoa, that's good to know ahead of time! (I will be consolidating a couple libraries once my ASD arrives...) Thanks @TechSnoop.

 

[BotchQue]

I've thought about this a bit more, and have an additional question to throw out there:
I was planning on setting up my new Studio, with Photos and Affinity Photo, and dual local drives to keep all my "serious" photos, and not even hook up Photos on my Studio to my iCloud account. Keep it all separate.
Meanwhile, put all my casual photos (family/pets/political/memes) on iCloud and sync my phone, tablet, and laptop's Photos to that account, without my new Studio talking to that account at all.
Anyone see any reason why this wouldn't work? tia

 

[bradbomb]

You can also have multiple Photos Libraries on your mac. Only will be designated as the iCloud library. Theoretically, you can use one of the above methods to export out the photos you want to keep separately and then import them into the other library (or you should be able to select Export Unmodified Original in Photos which for me worked for HEIC, RAW, iPhone RAW, and JPG).

Designate a System Photo Library in Photos - Apple Support

If you have multiple photo libraries on your Mac, you can choose which library to use with iCloud Photos and Shared Albums.

support.apple.com

 

[RhetTbull]

@BotchQue
>Anyone see any reason why this wouldn't work?

This should work fine. As @bradbomb said, you can have more than one Photos library so there's no reason you couldn't sync the Studio to iCloud and also have a second library for your "serious" photos. You can switch between them by holding down Option when opening Photos.