Photo Stream, iCloud Photo Library, iCloud and iTunes

[jtanko78]

What am I missing here? I just purchased a new iMac. After setting everything up, I am getting alerts that my iCloud is almost out of storage and I am getting different totals for photos everywhere. Hopefully you can follow along with what im about to try to put into text here. On my iPhone in photos it shows that I have 1,064 photos and 94 videos. Then below that it shows that "1,124 items have not been uploaded to iCloud" in red font. When my phone is connected to iTunes, under summary when i hoover over the storage bar at the bottom that shows how much space is being used by specific items on the phone, it shows that there are 2,290 photos on my device. Where are these additional 1,000+ pics if my phone is only showing that there are only the 1,064 photos and 94 videos??? Also, going back to the "1,124 items that have not been uploaded to iCloud", when I look at the photos app on my iMac, not it shows that there are 744 items to be uploaded. I did hook my phone up initially to my iMac and imported all of the photos from my phone to the mac. Not sure if this might be part of the problem. And when I go into iCloud online, it shows that there are only 558 photos in iCloud. I'm pretty tech savy most times, but as i initially mentioned, I just purchased an iMac and have not had a computer in the last 3 years, so im not really familiar with how all of this is suppose to work now since iCloud library came into play.
Also, one other question I had regarding photos; after I connect my phone to the mac and import all of the photos, are all of these photo safe if I decide to delete photos off of my iPhone? Of do i need to move them out of the photos app completely and save them somewhere else like the desktop or external hard drive prior to deleting?? Sorry for any confusion. As you can see I am already confused enough right not lol. Hopefully someone one here can help me to understand how all of this works a little better. Thanks in advance.

 

[Just_Me_D]

iCloud, as it currently stands, is a "sync" service with a 5GB limit and it doesn't matter if Photostream and/or iCloud Photo Library is enabled. In my opinion, they are the same. Anyway, I'm going to assume you haven't purchased additional iCloud storage. Your iPhone and Mac, if configured using the same Apple ID & passcode, are sharing the allotted 5 GBs of iCloud storage. Photos and videos consume a large portion of space and being that you have 94 videos, I'm not surprised you're running out of room. To remedy the low storage issue, you need to either purchase more iCloud storage space or offload the pics to an external disk or other cloud services like OneDrive, Dropbox, etcetera.

 

[Ledsteplin]

Also, any photos you have in the "Recently deleted" album will take up space. Keep those deleted. I was getting emails from Apple telling me I was almost out of iCloud storage space. I deleted the recently deleted photos, cleared some cache and was back to 2.4 gb available.

 

[jtanko78]

So when I import photos into the "photos" tab of the photos app, are they still taking up space in iCloud? Or are these photos under the "photos" tab now saved to my hard drive? After I've imported the photos and they are under my "photos" tab, are they safe if I delete photos from my iCloud? Or do I need to save them outside of the photos app to say a folder on my desktop prior to deleting?

 

[Ledsteplin]

Just remember that any photos you have in iCloud are also on your phone.
So you imported photos from your computer to your phone? Then you say, " Still taking up space in iCloud...". What do you mean by that? You don't import photos from iCloud to the phone. They're already on the phone. I'm not understanding you.

 

[jtanko78]

When you import photos from your iPhone to the photos app on Mac. I guess what im trying to ask is the photos you see in your photo app on the mac, are these the photos in iCloud as well? If I delete photos on my mac in the photos app will it delete photos in iCloud? Or just the opposite, if i delete all the photos in my iCloud, will this delete the photos out of my photos app on mac? I have been waiting to find time to do a test run, just haven't found the time yet.