iCloud vs Google Photos (or other services)

[BJB Productions]

Hi - after trying out iCloud photos, I decided I prefer storing my photos locally. I loved the luxury of having access to my entire library at any given time, but there were also some drawbacks for me. The problem is - I'm running out of space on my rMBP to store my library. My original plan was to purchase a USB3 hard drive since they're so affordable and just store my Photos library on there, then maybe do a cloud backup.

However, I'm wondering what other people's solutions have been for this. I would love to somehow still be able to access my complete library from my phone at any given time, but would prefer to store my photos locally and then do some sort of cloud backup.

Ideas?
Thanks!

 

[robgendreau]

External drive. Portable drive. Thumb drive.

It's a management thing. Do you REALLY need access to your photos all the time from your phone? how 'bout culling some and just storing the best, most useful, etc?

Another thought is to use Mylio. It can synch folders to your phone, and hence isn't the all-or-nothing solution that iCloud is. Some would be the same on external, internal and phone, some only on external, etc.

 

[Madmic23]

I use Google Photos and love it. It will backup unlimited photos up to 16MP, anything above that gets down sampled to 16MP. If you want to store full quality above 16MP, it will count towards your Google Drive storage, so you'd have to pay for more.

The nice thing is, you can download the Google Photos Desktop uploader and have it upload new pictures automatically from a watched folder on your computer, say "Photos."

For your case, you could setup an external drive to store your photos on and have that be the watched folder. Every time you download new pictures, they would also be uploaded to Google Photos, making them available on all of your devices. If you go with the unlimited storage option, the full quality photos would all be stored on your external drive.

This way, you'd save a ton of space on your laptop and always have access to all of your photos (as long as your online). When you need the originals, just plug in your drive and you're set to go. Or, go with the full quality option and just download the full quality image if you ever need it for something.

 

[MacGizmo]

I would suggest backing up to an external drive AND a cloud solution. The problem with cloud-based services is that they go away. Companies go out of business, sell the service, change the terms, or place limitations that you may not like. It's best not to trust your most precious digital files to any service.

That being said, Flickr offers 1 TB of space for free and has a lot of great features. The OS X and iOS apps are fairly decent—and lots of other apps hook into Flickr.

 

[BJB Productions]

Any thoughts on iCloud vs Google Photos?

 

[MacGizmo]

My 2¢:

iCloud—It isn't going anywhere. Apple has invested billions in data centers throughout the world for iCloud services. They may change the name, they may alter the app. But the app and the service aren't going anywhere. Because you're paying for it, and it locks you in to the Apple ecosystem.

Google Photos—It's free. Free is an awful price to pay for software. Google has a long, long list of wonderful apps and services that it cancelled with little to no warning. It's a great service with some awesome features... but I wouldn't waste my time uploading photos because I KNOW it's going away within two years.

 

[BJB Productions]

My 2¢:

iCloud—It isn't going anywhere. Apple has invested billions in data centers throughout the world for iCloud services. They may change the name, they may alter the app. But the app and the service aren't going anywhere. Because you're paying for it, and it locks you in to the Apple ecosystem.

Google Photos—It's free. Free is an awful price to pay for software. Google has a long, long list of wonderful apps and services that it cancelled with little to no warning. It's a great service with some awesome features... but I wouldn't waste my time uploading photos because I KNOW it's going away within two years.

Thanks, well maybe I will try iCloud again. I love the integration with all my other Apple products. FYI - I only use Photos to store my iPhone photos, not my DSLR photos. I keep those on a separate drive.

 

[robgendreau]

iCloud may not go anywhere, but Apple's record with online services is rather meh. They are finally gonna open up iCloud more, copying Dropbox, in 10.12. We'll see.

And I agree about Google freeware. They've bounced around too (Picasa, Google+, Google Photos).

But there are other more professional places to put images, depending on whether you are doing backup, storage or gallery displays or portfolios. I'd look into Dropbox; one of the more mature, stable and affordable places to store stuff for general use.

 

[BJB Productions]

iCloud may not go anywhere, but Apple's record with online services is rather meh. They are finally gonna open up iCloud more, copying Dropbox, in 10.12. We'll see.

And I agree about Google freeware. They've bounced around too (Picasa, Google+, Google Photos).

But there are other more professional places to put images, depending on whether you are doing backup, storage or gallery displays or portfolios. I'd look into Dropbox; one of the more mature, stable and affordable places to store stuff for general use.

Dropbox is an option for sure, but didn't they kinda ditch their photo service?

 

[Jason Lewis]

for me, i often use external drive for backing up my photos and videos, i think it's the most safe way.

 

[vixster1901]

For me, the better question is, DAM. Has anyone found a DAM system. This is ridiculous that there is NO DAM system any longer. Portfolio was awesome till they stopped developing it for the single user. (Sorry, I don't mean to hijack the OP, I see it all related.)

 

[robgendreau]

Dropbox still has a photos page with albums, timeline, etc on my account. Maybe they dropped free storage or something? I dunno.

For me, the better question is, DAM. Has anyone found a DAM system. This is ridiculous that there is NO DAM system any longer. Portfolio was awesome till they stopped developing it for the single user. (Sorry, I don't mean to hijack the OP, I see it all related.)

There are lots of digital asset managers, if that's what you mean. Enterprise stuff, or individual.

 

[MacGizmo]

For me, the better question is, DAM. Has anyone found a DAM system. This is ridiculous that there is NO DAM system any longer. Portfolio was awesome till they stopped developing it for the single user. (Sorry, I don't mean to hijack the OP, I see it all related.)

I use Pixa. It's not as robust and feature-packed as the old Portfolio was, but it's pretty decent.

 

[BJB Productions]

Well, I just reactivated iCloud photos and now I'm stuck with Photos "Updating" and it says my library will be removed in 14 days. Can't seem to fix it.

 

[thingstoponder]

Google Photos is basically worthless seeing as they don't have desktop apps. What am I supposed to do when on my Mac, access my photos in a browser? And then download them if I want to edit them? What a disaster.
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My 2¢:

iCloud—It isn't going anywhere. Apple has invested billions in data centers throughout the world for iCloud services. They may change the name, they may alter the app. But the app and the service aren't going anywhere. Because you're paying for it, and it locks you in to the Apple ecosystem.

Google Photos—It's free. Free is an awful price to pay for software. Google has a long, long list of wonderful apps and services that it cancelled with little to no warning. It's a great service with some awesome features... but I wouldn't waste my time uploading photos because I KNOW it's going away within two years.

Google Photos isn't really free, unless you want your stuff compressed which I don't know why anyone would. The storage prices are about the same as iCloud. If you use Apple devices I see zero reason to not use iCloud services.

 

[MacGizmo]

I'm actually quite shocked at how well iCloud Photo Library works.

 

[vixster1901]

I use Pixa. It's not as robust and feature-packed as the old Portfolio was, but it's pretty decent.

Thank you for this! I'll give it a try.. Stoked!!!

 

[BJB Productions]

I'm actually quite shocked at how well iCloud Photo Library works.

I agree - I finally got my problem resolved and it's quite seamless now.

 

[ConnorMcJeebus]

Google Photos is basically worthless seeing as they don't have desktop apps. What am I supposed to do when on my Mac, access my photos in a browser? And then download them if I want to edit them? What a disaster.
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Google Photos isn't really free, unless you want your stuff compressed which I don't know why anyone would. The storage prices are about the same as iCloud. If you use Apple devices I see zero reason to not use iCloud services.

I'm not at home right now so I can't check, but don't photos show up in the Google Drive for Mac app?

And compared to iCloud, you can store waaaaayyyyy more photos for free in Google Photos/Drive than you can in iCloud. My free iCloud storage was consumed after one month with my new iPhone. My free Photos/Drive storage is barely at 10% capacity and contains a decade of photos and videos. Sure, they're compressed, but it's free.

 

[miknos]

Google Photos unlimited offering is very sneaky about compression.

They should give a warning:
-If you upload videos with resolution below 720p (like 600, 480,etc), your videos will end up being 320p.
-If you upload slow motion videos, you'll end up screwing it. From the iPhone app I uploaded a 10 sec (30mb) video to test. Go to computer browser and you'll end up with a 664kb video! If you copy the video file from the iPhone to the computer and then upload using the computer browser, the file will end up being a 26 sec 3.9mb file. A mess.

 

[talmy]

If you have Amazon Prime, you can store unlimited photos on Amazon Drive for free, or $12/yr without Amazon Prime.

I've got no experience with it though.

 

[vixster1901]

Dropbox still has a photos page with albums, timeline, etc on my account. Maybe they dropped free storage or something? I dunno.


There are lots of digital asset managers, if that's what you mean. Enterprise stuff, or individual.

There aren't! not a 1 or 2 client solution without renting.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'm wary of "cloud storage" for any type of file storage, such as photos, music, etc.

It's kind of like owning gold or silver -- if you can't "hold it in your hands", you don't really "own" it. For data files, I reckon the equivalent is to have the files "on disk" in your possession.

I keep my modestly sized photo library on a partitioned drive specifically for storing photos, videos, and other media.

Rather than let iPhoto (or Photos, or Aperture) create and maintain an internal photo database, I chose to store my photos in a standard finder "folder/file" hierarchy with folders named so that I can recognize them.

I then set up my editing apps (iPhoto, Photos, Picasa, etc.) to "reference" my single existing library. Thus all my originals remain in MY OWN library, and I can even browse through them with the finder if I wish.

I -do- back up this partition to [multiple] other drives.

I realize this is an old-fashioned, perhaps outdated approach. Most users want something simpler, that they don't have to think about. But I prefer a more closely managed approach to file storage.