cameranerd74 wrote:
. Apple's FAQ says your photos are not permanently stored in iCloud so you still need to back them up locally.
Could you give us a link to the FAQ you are referring to?
Perhaps you misunderstood the reason for the recommendation of a backup. When you are using iCloud Photos, you can beside that Apple is storing the photos safely. But the purpose of iCloud is to keep all your devices in sync and the documents and data on them identical. iCloud Photos is mirroring what is on your devices, but only the current state. when you change something on one device, the change will sync to iCloud and from there to all your other devices. This is very convenient, because we can start to work with our photos on one device , then switch to another device and continue to work. But if we make a mistake and accidentally mutilate or delete our photos, we have no backup history like with Time Machine on a Mac, and we may not be able to revert to the previous state, if we already emptied the Recently Deleted album. That is why it is highly recommended to make additional backups, so we can revert to previous state.
If you do not want the syncing service and keep the Photos Libraries identical on all your devices, I would not use iCloud Photos. For me it is very useful - I am always having the same photos and videos in the same state of edits on my iPhone, my iPad, and all my Macs, even if the system versions are all different.
But if you just want to transfer new photos from your iPhone, download the photos directly, either using a USB connection or Wi-Fi.
