Difficulty in Downloading iPhone Photos from iCloud

[TrvlBug]

Help! We want to download our photos (DH takes a LOT) from iCloud onto an external drive. Per Apple, if you download from iCloud to the Mac laptop, the system downloads, HOWEVER, it downloads with storage, hence, size optimization of the photo in mind. It will NOT download the "full" photo. The only way to accomplish this is to download to an external drive which we want to do.

We were at the Apple store last Friday and the Genius Bar tech who helped us with the migration of our iPhone 10s to our new iPhone 13s, started the process. We had to complete the process at home because the store simply didn't have the bandwidth w/o the process taking hours. We got home and completed the process.

The problem we have is that lots of photos are missing and some of the photos are in black and white . We of course, don't recall what Genius Bar tach did! 2 hours on the phone with phone support yesterday were unsuccessful in downloading the photos totally intact. They simply don't know how to accomplish this process. It amazes us that this is such a complicated process.

I'm hoping someone knows the steps necessary to do this. Thank you for any insights.

 

[RetiredAt49]

I suspect the issue is related to your Internet connection because it can take a LONG time for you to transfer your iCloud photos to a device. I have a fiber connection so it’s pretty fast but many do not have that extremely fast connection so it could take days or weeks.

 

[TrvlBug]

I suspect the issue is related to your Internet connection because it can take a LONG time for you to transfer your iCloud photos to a device. I have a fiber connection so it’s pretty fast but many do not have that extremely fast connection so it could take days or weeks.

We also have fiber so download is very quick, in fact, much quicker than the download at the Apple store. What I'm missing is the instructions on how to do the download from iCloud onto the external device.

 

[mpeirce]

I'm hoping someone knows the steps necessary to do this. Thank you for any insights.

I’m not clear on what you’re trying to do. Are you using a Mac and have an external disk that you want your photos on? Or you using an iPhone to do this?

Do you want your photo library on the external disk or the “original photos”?

 

[TrvlBug]

I’m not clear on what you’re trying to do. Are you using a Mac and have an external disk that you want your photos on? Or you using an iPhone to do this?

Do you want your photo library on the external disk or the “original photos”?

We are using a laptop and have the external device connected to the laptop. We want to transfer the original photos from iCloud to the external device via the laptop.

Apple advises that even the iPhone does NOT store the "full" original photos due to storage constraints. When you or I access the photo on our iPhone, it actually pulls the photo from iCloud. Who'd a thunk. We thought the original photos were located on the phone and initially were looking to transfer directly from the phone to the external drive, but it cannot be done that way and needs to be done via the computer. We should have taken notes .

 

[mpeirce]

From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517

1. Quit Photos.
2. In the Finder, open the folder that contains Photos Library. By default, Photos Library is stored in the Pictures folder of your home folder. You can open your home folder by choosing Go > Home from the Finder menu bar.
3. Drag Photos Library to a location on your external storage device. Learn what to do if you get an error.
4. After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
5. If you use iCloud Photos, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
6. If you want to delete the original Photos Library to save storage space on your Mac, you can drag it from its original location (the Pictures folder of your home folder) to the Trash. Then empty the Trash.

You could also Use the Export Unmodified Originals for X Items... command in Photos after selecting all your photos. That’ll just dump the photo files into a selected Folder on your external disk.

Note. All your photos may not be stored locally on your disk, but Photos will fetch those it needs to from iCloud as it’s exporting them.

 

[mpeirce]

Just noticed you said “a laptop”. Mac or PC? I was assuming Mac in the post above.

 

[TrvlBug]

From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517

1. Quit Photos.
2. In the Finder, open the folder that contains Photos Library. By default, Photos Library is stored in the Pictures folder of your home folder. You can open your home folder by choosing Go > Home from the Finder menu bar.
3. Drag Photos Library to a location on your external storage device. Learn what to do if you get an error.
4. After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
5. If you use iCloud Photos, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
6. If you want to delete the original Photos Library to save storage space on your Mac, you can drag it from its original location (the Pictures folder of your home folder) to the Trash. Then empty the Trash.

You could also Use the Export Unmodified Originals for X Items... command in Photos after selecting all your photos. That’ll just dump the photo files into a selected Folder on your external disk.

Note. All your photos may not be stored locally on your disk, but Photos will fetch those it needs to from iCloud as it’s exporting them.

Thank you, we will try that. I believe the Genius Bar tech used an "export" function to download the original photos. Yes, we are using an Apple laptop. We converted totally to Apple when DH retired.

 

[USGrant1962]

Just noticed you said “a laptop”. Mac or PC? I was assuming Mac in the post above.

Yea, a couple of weeks ago I learned how obtuse Apple, iOS and iCloud are with handling photos. Trying to d/l a couple to our PC was, to say the least, not obvious. Silly me, I thought I could plug the phone in to a USB port and drag and drop. You know, like every other device in the world.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

Yea, a couple of weeks ago I learned how obtuse Apple, iOS and iCloud are with handling photos. Trying to d/l a couple to our PC was, to say the least, not obvious. Silly me, I thought I could plug the phone in to a USB port and drag and drop. You know, like every other device in the world.

That's how I get mine off my iPhone8. Sometimes it take a few minutes for the phone to show up in file explorer (Win10).

 

[TrvlBug]

That's how I get mine off my iPhone8. Sometimes it take a few minutes for the phone to show up in file explorer (Win10).

Per Apple techs, you are not getting a photo with full resolution if you do that. That is our problem, we want the full resolution or "original" photo. The photos on your phone as well as on the Mac laptop are "optimized" (Apple's terminology) for storage and therefore, are not at full resolution.

You'd think we were asking for Apple's first born .

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

Per Apple techs, you are not getting a photo with full resolution if you do that. That is our problem, we want the full resolution or "original" photo. The photos on your phone as well as on the Mac laptop are "optimized" (Apple's terminology) for storage and therefore, are not at full resolution.

You'd think we were asking for Apple's first born .

I don't have iCloud storage for photos enabled. But my phone says I could free up 5.3GB if I did! I just copy them over and delete them occasionally... mostly junk. I just looked at one of them and the resolution is 96 dpi.



When I had a digital camera I had to lug around separately, I took a lot more photos. Mostly now use the phone camera for occasional quick sharing and for reference and not for artistic or nostalgia purposes (prices, parking location, etc).