Storing photos on both iCloud and Google Photos

[torbjornhb]

Hi.
I have recently gone through all my pictures and have them sorted on an external hard drive. I have uploaded all the pictures to Google Photos, but there where already loads of photos there from before I did the upload. On total, there are about 60 000 photos on GP.
On my iPhone and in iCloud, I only have about 5000 photos.

My "dream" would be to have all the photos on both places, but I'm not sure how to do this.
I have now exported all my photos from iCloud to the external hard drive and deleted every duplicate. I am wondering whether I should delete all pictures from both Google Photos and iCloud, and then upload the photos from the external hard drive to Photos on my mac, and then use the goggle upload tool to backup all the photos. Any thoughts on this?

I also wonder what will happen if I just delete all the pictures from iCloud, and then import all the photos from the external hard drive. Will Google photos automatically backup all the photos?

Hope this is the right place to post. Admin must feel free to move the post of it's not the correct place.
Thanks in advance 🙂

 

[Just_Me_D]

If you login to iCloud via a computer and then delete ALL of the photos therein, the photos on all of your devices signed in with that same iCloud ID will also be deleted. If you then upload the photos from your external drive to iCloud (granted you have the cloud storage space) then those photos will sync to your other devices. I would assume it to be the same with your Google Photos, but I don’t use that particular service so I can’t say for sure.

 

[torbjornhb]

Thanks for your quick reply.
Yes, I am aware that that option would delete all the photos from ask my sole devices. I am a little afraid though, what will happen to ask the live photos if I delete the original ones, and the upload them again from the external hard drive. When I exported them from Photos on my mac, I chose "export as original", så that might keep the live photos...?
An option I am thinking about is to just import all the photos from the external hard drive to Photos on my mac, and then use a duplicate finder to remove the duplicates in the computer and also iCloud. I just don't know if Google Photos will backup all the new photos then. That is what I fear, because they are already uploaded to Google Photos.

 

[doogald]

Hi.
I have recently gone through all my pictures and have them sorted on an external hard drive. I have uploaded all the pictures to Google Photos, but there where already loads of photos there from before I did the upload. On total, there are about 60 000 photos on GP.
On my iPhone and in iCloud, I only have about 5000 photos.

My "dream" would be to have all the photos on both places, but I'm not sure how to do this.
I have now exported all my photos from iCloud to the external hard drive and deleted every duplicate. I am wondering whether I should delete all pictures from both Google Photos and iCloud, and then upload the photos from the external hard drive to Photos on my mac, and then use the goggle upload tool to backup all the photos. Any thoughts on this?

What I would do is keep all of the photos on iCloud - you seem to be comfortable that this is a complete set - and delete all of your photos from Google Photos - you know that there are duplicates. (Also make a backup of your Photo Library - not just export them, actually copy the Photo Library to an external drive, just in case.)

Then install and start using the Google Backup & Sync tool to upload your photos from the Mac Photos app to Google Photos.

 

[torbjornhb]

Thanks.
So delete everything from GP, nothing from Photos. Then import all pictures to Photos and use the sync tool to GP? And run the duplicate finder through Photos.

 

[FFR]

I would be cautious with google photos, they make it pretty easy to upload all your photos but near impossible to download all your photos back.:..unless you download them one at a time.

Good luck.

 

[torbjornhb]

Yes I've already found out about that. I downloaded all the photos the way Google suggested I should do it. Now I just have eight zip folders that I can't use top anything. The files they contain are really something... Onedrive is maybe better on this.

 

[doogald]

Thanks.
So delete everything from GP, nothing from Photos. Then import all pictures to Photos and use the sync tool to GP? And run the duplicate finder through Photos.

For me, "import all pictures to Photos" on a Mac means turn on iCloud Photos and make sure "Download originals to this Mac" is turned on.

 

[torbjornhb]

I have to admit that this pictures are starting to drive me crazy. I thought I did wise when I uploaded everything to Google Photos, and I only keep about 5000 of the latest photos in iCloud. But, now I'm starting to wonder if it would be better to keep everything in iCloud instead. Although everything is safe in Google Photos, it's almost hopeless to download/export all the photos from the service.

I have the 200GB subscription on iCloud, but it might be smart to go for the 2TB option and just upload everything. Although my Macbook Pro only have 256gb storage, and all the photos takes up more.
Can i still choose "import all" pictures from the external hard drive? And finally, after I exported the Photos library, will I get the same live photos back if I import the backup?

Any thoughts on Onedrive? I have also uploaded the photos there, but I can't say I like it very much. At least not compared to Google Photos.

 

[doogald]

Another sync option is Dropbox. There is an option in the Dropbox app to sync your photos from your phone. This puts your photos in a folder structure, too, easy to download when you need to. (I believe you can set it up that DropBox does not actually store your uploaded photos on your computer, just on their cloud storage.)

If you are in the Apple "ecosystem", I do think that iCloud Photos is the way to go. It's too bad that you are storage-limited on the MBP, but you can also put the library on an external drive. (If you launch Photos from the dock while holding the Option key, you have the option to create a new library, and you can put it on an external drive. Only the system library can sync with iCloud Photos, but I think you can make that new library the default system library.)

I'd make sure that you have the photos both in iCloud Photos but also backed up somewhere else, as you've been describing from the beginning, so downloading them all to a Photos library on your Mac and backing up the Photos library to another location (e.g., a Time Machine backup, or something like BackBlaze) would be super-smart. Of course you can set up Photos on the Mac with iCloud Photos so that it doesn't download originals, but then you are dependent on Apple storing the only copy of all of your photos in the cloud. I just would feel nervous about that myself.

I agree with you about OneDrive - I was not all that impressed. It's too bad, since you get 1 TB of storage with an Office 365 subscription.

 

[diego.roscetti]

I am kinda going through the same thing, contemplating between iCloud Photos and Google Photos.

This might be off topic but didn’t want to start a new thread.

I saved a couple of pictures from my device from Google Photos to Photos on my phone. I noticed that those pictures the Photos app did not pick up the faces in the pictures.

Is this normal?
Should I expect Apple Photos to not pick up faces for all the photos I transfer from Google Photos?

 

[torbjornhb]

Thanks.
Great post. It could be an option to make another Photos library on an external hard drive. But what will happen to the pictures on my current Library of i choose to use another library on an external drive? And if I do so, would it be the case that the originals are kept on the external drive and on iCloud, and my mac (Photos) will show the smaller preview photos? And then I can easily download them to Photos from iCloud as long as I have Internet connection?

 

[Lee_Bo]

When I first switched over from Android to Apple, I too tried to keep all my photos in both iCloud and Google. Then I just decided to put all my photos in iCloud. While I'm not a huge fan of the way Apple just dumps all the photos into one "folder", it's just easier. Would love for Apple to let us create folders in iCloud Photos, but I think I have a better chance of winning the lottery during a thunderstorm while getting struck by lightning as I'm saying my ABC's backwards.

 

[torbjornhb]

Do you use one library, or more? I'm having 70k photos, so it's a bit much to keep in one library. The dream would be if they could be stored on an external drive, and then be uploaded to iCloud do I could have them accessible on all Apple devices without taking up any space on my mac.

 

[doogald]

Thanks.
Great post. It could be an option to make another Photos library on an external hard drive. But what will happen to the pictures on my current Library of i choose to use another library on an external drive?

Your current library remains untouched. You can always open it again by option-clicking the Photos app int he dock, or, of course, you can always delete the library file and never use it again.

And if I do so, would it be the case that the originals are kept on the external drive and on iCloud, and my mac (Photos) will show the smaller preview photos? And then I can easily download them to Photos from iCloud as long as I have Internet connection?

Unfortunately, iCloud Photos only connects to whatever you designate as the System Library. That would be nice if it would work.

Maybe your best option instead is to use iCloud Photos on your Mac with optimized storage and then once a week/month/whatever period works for you, export the photos from the Photos app to an external drive for archival "just in case".

If you export a Live Photo as unmodified, it exports two files - a jpeg and a mov (video) file. I haven't looked, but I assume that there are tools that can re-establish them as Live Photos if you need to import them back.

 

[acevskaivona]

I have an iPhone, and I think that the best place to store photos on this phone is iCloud. I am paying ten dollars a month for some additional space on the iCloud. I am taking a lot of pictures, and every photo is backup automatically on my cloud storage. For example, every day, I take a lot of selfies with self portrait poses , and when I arrive at home, I always check my iCloud account, and my photos are always on the storage cloud. I tried to use Google Photos, but it is not as comfortable to use as iCloud.

 

[Annie_M]

Storing photos on Google Photo is not comfortable if you have Samsung

First of all, hello and welcome to iMore! I’m surprised by your statement! I would think that since Samsung is an Android phone that Google photos would work well on it.