My Photos file on the Mac is 14 Gb, my iCloud storage says photos take 7Gb. (iPhone says 1.7Gb, iPad 3.8Gb) I thought that the iCloud photos were the highest resolution, and reduced as downloaded to iPhones, iPads, Macs as appropriate. Why would they be taking up twice the storage on the Mac than in iCloud?
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
Your iCloud account stores the full-resolution images. If you have your devices set to optimize, then the library sizes will be different. The Photos app on your Mac will likely be larger by some magnitude given that it contains much more "overhead" in the library (thumbnail, original, and modified version of the same picture, other items like smart albums, etc). You may also have items in your library that do not sync with iCloud (avi files for example).
If you compare image size individually, you'll see those are the same.
Your iCloud account stores the full-resolution images. If you have your devices set to optimize, then the library sizes will be different. The Photos app on your Mac will likely be larger by some magnitude given that it contains much more "overhead" in the library (thumbnail, original, and modified version of the same picture, other items like smart albums, etc). You may also have items in your library that do not sync with iCloud (avi files for example).
If you compare image size individually, you'll see those are the same.
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