Can you control which photos are moved to iCloud Photos?

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Can you control which photos are moved to iCloud Photos?

Under the Apple Support article Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support there is a section headed “Download copies of your photos and videos” that tells you “When you turn on iCloud Photos, your photos and videos automatically upload to iCloud”. Nowhere else in this article is there any info about exactly how this works. Does it really mean ALL photos, anywhere on your device - in this case a MacBook Pro?

Without this information I am hesitating to enable iCloud Photos as I have over 40,000 images stored in over 70 different Photos libraries with much carefully collected metadata added. If anything does not work as I want, I’ll have a huge amount of work to do to unpick the mess. So initially I would like to set up iCloud Photos based on a small Photos library (that would be a copy of one of my libraries so I’ll lose nothing if it all goes wrong). Then I can see if the process is working as I require, and gradually move more of my collection over to Cloud. Is it possible to do this, and if so, how?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Mar 22, 2022 6:11 AM

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Answer 1

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TonyCollinet

Level 7

23,867 points

Mar 22, 2022 6:20 AM in response to RobertDHarding

Hi

It is referring specifically to the photos in your photos library/photos app, and only those. (And then only in the system library. Other libraries won't sync)

iCloud syncs the photos libraries of all devices that are connected to it. So if you have a phone and a mac, they will both have the same photos in their libraries. Edits are also synced.

So create a new library. Set it as the system library, then only what you put in that will be synced.

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Answer 2

Mar 23, 2022 2:59 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Than you TonyCollinet - I thought this might be the case but wanted to make sure! May I ask you - or anyone else reading this - a related question? Am I right that on an iPhone there is in effect only one Photos library? When I enable iCloud Photos on my iPhone, will ALL the iPhone photos get merged into iCloud Photos? Or will this process skip those I had uploaded to my iPhone (originally using iTunes) in albums labelled "From My Mac"?

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

195,545 points

Mar 23, 2022 3:41 AM in response to RobertDHarding

Right, on the iPhone you will have only one Photos Library. All iPhone Photos will sync into your iCloud Photos Library.

But be careful, When you enable iCloud Photos all photos synced from your computer with iTunes in “from my Mac” will be automatically erased, from the iPhone, when you enable iCloud Photos on the iPhone. The manual syncing is not compatible with iCloud Photos. You have to save all manually synced photos before you enable iCloud Photos, if you do not have the original copies on your computer.

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Answer 4

Mar 23, 2022 4:36 AM in response to léonie

Thank you Leonie. I had already decided to play safe and manually delete all "From My Mac" photos from my iPhone before enabling iCloud Photos, and I think I'll manually back up all the actual iPhone photos too! (via USB or via AirDrop.). Quite an operation but it seems as if it will be a worthwhile investment of time. I'm hoping that via iCloud Sharing all my metadata from my Mac will be preserved.

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Can you control which photos are moved to iCloud Photos?

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