iCloud picking a path for photo organization, icloud or local?

[B737]

stuck in old habits want to be more efficient...

For the last 16 years I have let my iPhone camera roll build up, then remove photos off iPhone to my PC where they are organized into folders as "albums". Camera roll goes to zero. The photos reside on the PC. I sync with iTunes, it puts their copies onto the iPhone organized by folder album that iTunes looks at. This is very clunky.

My photo library isnt crazy. ~11,000 pix organized into ~20 folders, ~40 gb. My phone, Mac & iCloud have plenty of storage available.

I travel for a living, this system gives my photos a safe place to live on a desktop PC at home (that rarely gets used).
My MacBook travels with me is used most often. My iPhone & MacBook are at high risk of getting damaged / lost.

If I install iCloud onto my Windows 10 PC and let it rip, it's going to grab all 11,000 photos which have been carefully organized into folders and put them in one giant iCloud pile, never to be organized again. This is what's stopping me.

I read that if I move my photo library over to my MacBook, the photos app will allow me to keep the file structure that I copy over from my PC. Although, pictures taken going forward probably won't follow this file structure format, plus risks if the MacBook gets lost / damaged.

I could import the photos into iCloud and tag them into iCloud albums one large group (folder) at a time, that would not take me that long. However, that is still putting all the pictures into one giant pile. Does it matter in 2023?

I'm hoping someone who has done something similar in the past sees this and can shed some light on how I can most efficiently evolve.

 

[RhetTbull]

If you are using more than one Apple device it really just makes sense to pay for iCloud and let Apple manage the photos for you. Here's what I recommend in your situation:

Enable iCloud Photos on both iPhone and MacBook. If your photo library exceeds the standard iCloud free plan (5GB), you'll need to purchase additional iCloud storage.

Copy the photos from the Windows PC to the MacBook's Photos library (either via mounting the Windows drive over the network or copying to an external disk you then plug into the MacBook). Upon doing so Photos will give you the option to keep folder organization which will create albums and folders in Photos to match the original organization. This step does require you have enough storage on the MacBook to do copy the photos. If not, you can use Optimize Mac Storage setting in Photos which keeps preview only on the Mac and uploads original to iCloud. In this case you might want to copy over the folders in batches, wait for Photos to sync and thus free up space, then copy the next batch. Also, before copying the folders, ensure that Photos > Settings has "copy items to Photos library" checked (this is the default). More on this below.

Now once everything syncs (which can take a long time even on a fast network....iCloud is finicky) you'll have the same photos and albums/folders on each device. Moving forward, stop emptying the camera roll onto the Windows PC and just let iCloud sync everything.

If you end up with duplicates, Apple has a tool to remove them or you could use something like PowerPhotos.

That said, your idea of having a "safe" backup is wise. I'm an old Gen Xer too and I want to have a backup of everything under my control. I've seen too many horror stories due to disk crashes, natural disaster, stupidity, etc. to trust a single backup. Also, important to keep in mind that iCloud is *not* a backup; it's a sync mechanism. Delete a photo accidentally in one place and it's deleted everywhere, lose access to your iCloud account for some reason, no more photos -- not a backup. For that reason, I've created my own backup tool that is *very* flexible and very well tested. My tool, osxphotos is free and open source. It is quite powerful but does require some comfort with the command line. See install instructions here. For example, to backup into folders/albums (preserving your original organization structure), you could run this command:

osxphotos export /path/to/export/folder --directory "{folder_album,NoAlbum}" --update

This would export into a structure like this: `/path/to/export/folder/folder_name/album_name/IMG_1234.JPG` If a photo is not in any folder, it will be exported into "NoAlbum"....and you can use whatever name you like there. If omitted ("{folder_album}"), the default folder is "_". If a photo is in multiple albums you will get duplicates using this method (the photo will exported to each album).

The `--update` flag tells osxphotos to incrementally update the export each time you run it so only new / changed files are exported. See the tutorial or run `osxphotos docs` at the Terminal prompt to open the documentation in your browser.

So, to replace your current workflow, you could use this to export either to the Windows PC via a network mount (from the MacBook) or to an external disk.

Alternatively, if your MacBook doesn't have enough storage and you end up using "Optimize Mac Storage" or you just want to download directly to the Windows PC, there's another excellent free open source tool, iCloud Photos Downloader that can download directly from iCloud to the Windows PC. I don't use this so I can't provide assistance but this might be the closest to your current workflow as it could run periodically to update the Windows PC with a copy of everything. It is less flexible than osxphotos but does download directly from iCloud as opposed to going through Photos as osxphotos does.

Finally, you might be tempted to use a referenced Photos library to keep your photos in the original folder structure instead of in the Photos proprietary `Photos Library.photoslibrary` library bundle. (That is, uncheck the
"copy items to Photos library" setting) Resist the temptation as in that way lies madness. Once you do this, you can never move the photos to another drive or device because then Photos will not be able to find them due to something called "security scoped bookmarks". Basically, Mac apps aren't normally allowed to see your file system and Apple honors this in Photos giving Photos a cryptographically signed "bookmark" to access your referenced photos that's tied to the volume ID of the drive and the folder path and moving the photos breaks the signature. Also, photos stored this way cannot be copied to iCloud and thus won't be synced across devices. I also built a tool to fix this but just don't do it. It's not worth it.

 

[B737]

I cannot thank you enough for taking the time for such a well-thought-out response. That is extremely helpful.

I need to digest the above a bit, but I see the thinking here.

Something else I thought of before I do this, was to go into each Windows folder (album) select all with file explorer and add appropriate album tag to the batch of photo properties in each folder. Should something go wrong, they will be able to be reorganized. Primarily, when iCloud copies them all into one pile, they will be able to be easily sorted by group since they will have been tagged then I can organize by iCloud album.

Thank you for the explanation on photos database in MacOS, that was confusing me to see them all vanish into the proprietary folder / database, I wasn't understanding that, and it was giving me apprehension.

with apple 1 i have 5 tb of storage available so there is plenty of space there and on the devices.

 

[RhetTbull]

> add appropriate album tag to the batch of photo properties in each folder

Yes, good idea. I don't use Windows so don't know how easy this is or what tools are available but I do know exiftool can do this sort of thing from the command line.

Edit: and if that should happen, I can show you how to use osxphotos to "reconstruct" the albums from the tags/keywords.

 

[B737]

Let me make sure i have this right @RhetTbull

I'm going to copy my photo library from my PC to a folder on the mac over the network.

In photo app im going to make sure "copy items to library" is on. Then, using "import", point it to the folder I just copied from the PC. Check the box that says "Keep Folders". It's then going to copy the entire thing plus its structure. Then I can erase that source folder.

Then turn on icloud photos and let it do its thing. (since the photos will be organized already)

what about going forward, say a year from now? how do i pull down and store a local back up of the photos in the last year? if im reading correctly, I can just go into iCloud and batch select and download to safe storage in the PC.

Once i get my brain wrapped around all this I will then take a closer look to get a handle on running scripts ect.

 

[B737]

omg this is so much better! I can't believe I waited this long 😂

I am not planning on installing icloud to the PC, I think that will just muddy everything up. The import with the albums and tags went perfect all into the mac, it was so easy, everything came over organized.

So I guess my question now is, I have all my photos backed up on my PC as of this month looking back 16 years. So in a year from now, how do I grab the photos that arent on the PC and drop them there for safe keeping? I suppose I will go into icloud (web interface?) sort by last 12 months then just download onto PC, as backup.

 

[RhetTbull]

I suppose I will go into icloud (web interface?) sort by last 12 months then just download onto PC, as backup.

Yes. Or use one of the scripts to do this for you.