Using Photos with limited Bandwidth and multiple devices...

[gpspad]

I have a slow DSL connection and travel a lot without internet access, I do like Photos but all the uploading and downloading is killing me because I have multiple devices. Taking a long video, means that the video has to download to two different macs and two iPads. I keep one full copy on my mac, and rest of the devices get thumb nail versions.

If I connect my iPhone to my macbook before the phone uploads the originals to iCloud, will photos be smart enough to know that the photo or video already has a copy of the file and not download it from the cloud?

 

[ApfelKuchen]

I don't have a firm answer for you (I haven't tested this behavior extensively), but I don't think it works the way you hope. I think it's the other way around - Photos will detect that the file on the iPhone has been uploaded to iCloud Photo Library, and therefore won't be shown as available to import when you connect the iPhone to the Mac.

I believe that Photos on Mac will not import images from iPhone that have been uploaded to iCloud, regardless of whether they've been downloaded to the Mac. I think the "synced" flag (or whatever it's called) on the iPhone's image file (that's the marker that indicates whether an image has already been transferred from the iPhone) is switched when the image is uploaded to iCloud. That would be beneficial - if the same image file is imported twice (once to iCloud Photo Library, again to Photos on the Mac) then that image will be added to iCloud Photo Library twice - once from iPhone, and again from Mac.

 

[gpspad]

I don't have a firm answer for you (I haven't tested this behavior extensively), but I don't think it works the way you hope. I think it's the other way around - Photos will detect that the file on the iPhone has been uploaded to iCloud Photo Library, and therefore won't be shown as available to import when you connect the iPhone to the Mac.

I believe that Photos on Mac will not import images from iPhone that have been uploaded to iCloud, regardless of whether they've been downloaded to the Mac. I think the "synced" flag (or whatever it's called) on the iPhone's image file (that's the marker that indicates whether an image has already been transferred from the iPhone) is switched when the image is uploaded to iCloud. That would be beneficial - if the same image file is imported twice (once to iCloud Photo Library, again to Photos on the Mac) then that image will be added to iCloud Photo Library twice - once from iPhone, and again from Mac.

I am more worried about downloading large files multiple times.