Moving photos from iCloud drive to desktop

[iMore Question]

I take pictures for work and for myself. Between both of them I am almost out of storage. I need to be able to separate theses pix and move the work ones off of iCloud Drive into a folder on my iMac that can then be pulled off onto a CD or Thumb drive, then deleted from my devices. I would also like to do this for my personal pix as well.

I tried organizing iCloud Drive into Albums and then tried dragging the work ones to a desktop folder without success. I also tried selecting photos and dragging them, again no dice.

Any suggestions? Also is there any way to point the photos to a directory that separates them as I take them?

 

[Jeroen7]

You can copy photos from your photo album by choosing file/export. There you can choose a folder to save them in.
If thats done you can delete them from your photos. Don't forget to also clear out your recently deleted photos album, else you won't notice freeing up space.

 

[mrjayviper]

from what I recall icloud drive appear on Finder and copying files off/to the iCloud drive is as simple as drag and drop?

 

[Jeroen7]

from what I recall icloud drive appear on Finder and copying files off/to the iCloud drive is as simple as drag and drop?

thats true, but you cannot just drag and drop photos from the photo app to finder, you need to export them first.