Originally Posted by
Tartarus What do you exactly mean with edited photos?
Did you edit them yourself or do you mean the compressed version?
iCloud for Windows downloads (syncs) photos as is.
The version that you have saved on your iPhone will be the one that’s downloaded (synced).
This is a background process, so you don’t have to actively do something to get them on your phone except for setting up iCloud for Windows once on your computer.
Again, thanks for your feedback.
An edited photo is one which the user (me) has made modifications to (e.g. cropped, enhanced the lighting, remove red-eye, change to black & white, etc.). If this is done in the iPhone (where I edit many photos), there is absolutely nothing to indicate it is an edited photo when viewing in iCloud or on the phone - unless the edit is obvious such as an edit to black & white. However, once it is downloaded to Windows, an edited photo is a JPEG and an original is a JPG. That definitely helps.
I tried iCloud for Windows and was not happy with many of its limitations - one of which was I couldn't select which photos I wanted to download, and another was that it wasn't clear to me if it was downloading the original or the edited version of a photo which I had edited. So I switched to drag and drop. That worked until I filled up the capacity of my phone. Shortly before reaching that point, I switched to optimize storage at which time I could no longer rely on drag and drop. So it made sense to retrieve the latest photos from iCloud. To revert to iCloud for Windows would be like going backwards 100 steps just to move forward 10 steps. I don't need, nor do I want the benefits of iCloud for Windows. That isn't what the thread is about. This is strictly about downloading photos from iCloud.