Newby Photos Question

[Jajh]

Hi All,

Long time lurker newby poster!

Just wondered if someone could take a look at what I am thinking of doing with my photo library before I mess something up!

Ive always stored photos on my mac mini and only really used the My photo stream but I am starting to wish that I could access all my old photos from different devices.

My library hasnt been very well maintained and I have lots of old albums that i moved over from iphoto and earlier versions of the photo apps.

I was thinking of doing the following:

- Upgrade my icloud storage to enough to upload all of my photos.
- Turn on icloud photos on my devices (so that i can see all of my photos)

The things that worry me are:
- Will my mac mini still be the master library with all the original photos?

- if i take new photos with my phone, do I still need to physically plug it into the mac and download the actual photos to the mac mini so that I have a local saved version?

- Can i share my icloud photo library with my partner who is also on my family sharing setup?

Finally would you guys recommend deleting my old albums and starting from scratch to categorise the photos? Do you have any tips on automatic albums? Do i need to go through thousands of pics and add tags, people etc?

Sorry for what might be basic questions but its doing my nut in trying to find a clear answer!

J

 

[Jajh]

Bump :-0(

 

[Super T]

Great questions - I'm sort of in the same boat, my only proper "library" is generated from my phone since whenever apple started generating it, but i have also been trying to bring in all my old photos that were just saved in folders by event/date, or totally disorganized. I'm also trying to scan a bunch of older stuff in. It's pretty tedious, but I'm just doing sort of folder/event at a time and correcting the date/time to my best guess and adding keywords and people. also sort of selectively picking what events really warrant albums or not, and then setting up some smart albums along the way ("christmas," "zoo," "[daughter's name] birthday" etc. to pull in meaningful keywords. Curious to see any suggestion to improve efficiency!

 

[mailbuoy]

The things that worry me are:
- Will my mac mini still be the master library with all the original photos?

- if i take new photos with my phone, do I still need to physically plug it into the mac and download the actual photos to the mac mini so that I have a local saved version?

- Can i share my icloud photo library with my partner who is also on my family sharing setup?

Finally would you guys recommend deleting my old albums and starting from scratch to categorise the photos? Do you have any tips on automatic albums? Do i need to go through thousands of pics and add tags, people etc?

You can have original photos both in iCloud and on your Mac. Do not select "Optimize Mac Storage" form the Photos preferences if you want originals on your Mac. Also, if your iPhone and Mac are on the same iCloud account and you have them both set to use iCloud storage for photos then photos taken on your phone will show on your Mac without physically connecting the two. If both you and your partner are on the same iCloud account then all photos will appear to both. If your partner is not on the same account then you could create a shared album (albums) for whatever photos you want. For your last issue, I don't have a recommendation - my photos are not organized as they should be!

 

[stephenschimpf]

Sorry for what might be basic questions but its doing my nut in trying to find a clear answer!

Those are good questions, and I didn't know the answers to them myself three years ago.

Background: I was a Windows user, and I used to connect my iPhone to my Windows computer with a cable, copy over the photos, and then delete them from my iPhone. On my computer I used to create folders for years and months and organize the photos that way. In retrospect, that was a horrible system, and as you can imagine, I didn't go back and look at my photos that much...I was just sort of collecting them. In the cases I did want to look at something, it was hard to find the photos I was looking for.

When I switched to an iMac, I decided to go "all in" with the Photos app. I had about 35,000 photos and videos taking up close to 200 GB of disk space.

Like you, I wanted to be able to view my photos, ALL my photos, from any device. I used to not do a lot with photos, but learned that editing them by using the auto-enhance tool or making other adjustments, and especially cropping and rotating could turn an okay photo into a great one. I wanted to be able to do that on one device and have those edits automatically appear on all my devices.

What I did is import my 35,000 photos and videos into Photos and then I began organizing. I'm talking making folders for events, Egypt 2007, Egypt 2009, Sedona 2020, for vacations, etc. I found it unnecessary to tag people since the Photos app does a great job of identifying people in my photos. Similar for other things. Just search for "cat" and it does a great job of finding photos with cats in them. If you just want photos of your cat, you can add them to a folder, or put the cat's name in the title and it will find them all when you search for that name.

Oh, while doing all of this I realized I had far too many photos, so I got good at deleting ones that weren't that good, and I whittled my library down to about 20,000 photos.

Okay, so, to answer your questions:

Yes, you should increase your iCloud storage to enough to hold all your photos.
Yes, you should turn on iCloud Photos (not photo stream) on all your devices.

Yes, you Mac mini will be your master library. On your iPhone and/or iPad, set it to optimize photos, which means it will store a reduced-size photo on the device, and will download the full-size one from iCloud if necessary, like when you're editing the photo or zooming in. On your Mac mini, set it to download the original full-size photos.

No, you won't have to deal with cables any more. If you go on a trip and take a bunch of photos with your iPhone, the full-size photos will all be uploaded to iCloud and reduced-size versions optimized for the iPhone screen will remain on your phone. When you get home, you'll find that reduced-size optimized versions will already have been automatically downloaded to your iPad, and full-size originals will already have been downloaded to your Mac mini. If you've got an external drive and are using Time Machine, the photos will already have been backed up to that drive. It's great.

I don't know about sharing your iCloud Photo library with someone else, but believe it can be done.

Hopefully this helps and I didn't give you an misinformation. It's just what I did and my opinion about what works for me. I'm very happy with my setup now.

 

[Brian33]

EDIT: looks like faster people answered before I could finish my reply! ?

- Will my mac mini still be the master library with all the original photos?

Yes, if you turn on the correct setting! On your Mac, go to Photos-->Preferences-->iCloud tab, select iCloud Photo Library, and ensure that you select "Download Originals to this Mac." This will ensure that all photos exist in that Mac's photos library, and (important to me) can be backed up to another drive.

- if i take new photos with my phone, do I still need to physically plug it into the mac and download the actual photos to the mac mini so that I have a local saved version?

No, you won't have to plug in any more, if you go to iPhone's Settings-->Photos and turn ON iCloud Photos. I also recommend turning on "Optimize iPhone Storage" so that you don't have to fit your entire photo library on your phone! With iCloud Photos turned on, after you take new photos with your phone they will be automatically uploaded to iCloud (full size original), and when the Mac is awake, they will be automatically downloaded (full size original) and put in your Mac's local Photos Library. It's really nice! I believe they will be downloaded even if you don't open Photos, though it doesn't hurt to check once in awhile.

- Can i share my icloud photo library with my partner who is also on my family sharing setup?

I don't know the answer to that, as we don't have family sharing set up. Without family sharing, I have not found any way to really share my Photos library with my spouse. I'd like her photos to go into my library automatically, and for her to be able to browse my library, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. You can make shared iCloud albums and manually move photos into them, but it's not like having full access.

Finally would you guys recommend deleting my old albums and starting from scratch to categorise the photos? Do you have any tips on automatic albums?

I guess by "old albums" you are referring to the albums that were automatically created from iPhoto Events as part of the upgrade process to Photos. There's no real need to delete them. Remember that each photo can be put into numerous albums.

Do i need to go through thousands of pics and add tags, people etc?

You don't have to, but I don't know any other way to get it organized! ? You certainly don't have to tag every photo with a person's face, though. Me, first I try to tag the best photos (I used to use iPhoto's star ratings, which are now keywords) and delete the worst. I have automatic albums for "three to five star photos" and "four and five star photos". Then I work on these "better" photos -- maybe adding Faces tags, making themed albums for events, and/or assigning other keywords as I feel like it. I'm not totally consistent about doing this, and some things slip through the cracks, but at least I have some of the library organized.

I also like make an attempt to keep "junk" out of the library. I have a keyword and automatic album called "Temporary Need". I try to assign it to photos of documents, items in ebay listings, etc. that I won't want to look at after the task is complete. Every once in awhile I go to that smart album and delete those photos. Unfortunately, I don't know a way to assign keywords in Photos app on iOS...

 

[MBAir2010]

as an avid photographer, last year i subscribed to 50GB of iCloud.
i has a lot on the iPad which i started with to upload to iCloud.
and i add photos manually to the iCloud on the MacBook air
which i don't auto-share my photos with on iCloud.

i hope this was easy to understand, i lost over 1000 photos on flickr trying to sync in 2012 and will never do that again!