how to download photos from icloud to an external drive

Transfer few photos to an external hard drive .

Select few photos https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/photos/pht40b0be510/3.0/mac/10.13 from system photo library and export https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/photos/pht6e157c5f/mac to a desired location say download folder in finder and connect an external hard drive to the Mac , then transfer( drag and drop ) the photos from download folders into the external hard drive see this https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mchl027f1d66/mac

To transfer all the photos saved in photo library .

Photos can’t be transferred directly from iCloud to an external hard drive for that you need to set up iCloud photo library see the article https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204264

And its preferences https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/photos/pht5156cc968/4.0/mac/10.14 , open finder > Go > home > your user name > pictures either drag and drop Photos Library.photoslibrary to an external hard drive , the second method is right click on Photos Library.photoslibrary and click on show package contents in the upcoming column , you can also drag and drop complete masters folder to an external hard drive that is connected .

Also as per the article https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/photos/pht6d60d10f/mac

• Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.
• See this article also Photos library - Move your Library to an external storage device

Read this : Back up the library in Photos on Mac - Apple Supportsupport.apple.com › en-in › guide › photos › Mac

See the article https://support.apple.com/guide/image-capture/transfer-images-imgcp1003/mac

You can set up photo library https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204264

And its preferences https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/photos/pht5156cc968/4.0/mac/10.14

As you wrote - I did try to download a few from icloud -- and all the dates/metadata were gone --it was a mess, I would like to keep the dates too.

Photos are not downloaded by dates https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT209454