Master_Dissaor wrote:
Hi everyone,
Long Story:
I have Photo library (180 Gig) which I manually sync on my iPhone, also this photo library was replicated in 2 additional hard drives, plus then one I connect to my Mac (SSD) for sync purposes, anyway, the 2 HDD backups got corrupted, the SSD is working fine but when I tried to copy it throws an error, I tried "show package contents" and copied files folder by folder to find the corrupted file and well... that worked so I got my backups but know I'm thinking about moving to iCloud
Short Story:
After a scare with my backup us I deduced to move to iCloud
Anyway:
I do Manual sync of my photos library to my iPhone
Questions:
1.- If I turn on iCloud photo do I need to sync and delete the current albums on my iPhone so I don't have duplicate albums (I'm guessing the library will be downloaded from iCloud now)?
When you turn on iCloud Photos all manually synced photos will be automatically deleted, as manually syncing is not compatible with iCloud Photos.
2.- What happens to my hard copy on my drive, I see the option to optimize and the option to download originals, but there is no option to Keep the files?
The original files from your current library will stay on the Mac, if you enable iCloud Photos with "Download and keep originals". What happen is the following: Photos will upload all files from your Mac to iCloud Photos Library and merge them with existing files in iCloud, resolving conflicts between duplicate albums and photos. If there is a duplicate of one of your photos already in iCloud, the original on your Mac may be replaced by the identical original from iCloud. This may change the file creation dates of some photos.
3.- Is there anyway I can keep my original files on my drive (External SSD) plus the iCloud library ?
Your system photos library will sync with iCloud Photos. You can either keep the system Photos Library with the original files on your external volume, or regularly export the new originals to your archive originals on your external SSD. I am keeping copies of all originals on an external volume, so I can easily recover them, should my Photos Library become unreadable.
4.- If I take a picture on my phone, I understand it will get populated via iCloud, but if I wan to move it for example to my Dogs library, do I need to connect to the Mac, import and delete, then move to the Library? will that then show that picture in iCloud and thus on the "Dog Album"
If the iPhone is syncing with iCloud Photos I would keep an iCloud Photos Library on the Mac as well, so you will automatically have all iCloud Photos in a Photos Library on your Mac.
It is difficult to import manually from an iPhone, if it is syncing with iCloud Photos, as it will take very long for the photos to show on your Mac for importing. If you have an iCloud Photos Library on your Mac, it will continually and automatically download from iCloud and you just need to export the new Dog photos from your Mac iCloud Photos Library and import them to the Dogs Library.
You can have many Photos Libraries on your Mac, but only one Library can sync with iCloud Photos, as you can have only one Photos Library on your iPhone. If you want to see an album "Dogs" in iCloud, create an album named Dogs in your iCloud Photos Library on your Mac, then drag alll new Dogs photos into that album. iT is much easier to manage albums and folders in your Photos Library in Photos for Mac than in Photos iOS. Any album you create in a Photos Library that is syncing with iCloud will automatically sync to all your devices that are also syncing with iCloud and will also appear at www.icloud.com .
