Moving photos from mac to iCloud

First thing: turning on iCloud in Photos doesn't move your pictures to iCloud; rather, it synchronizes them. That is, it copies your pictures to your iCloud Photos Library, and from then on it works to keep your Mac Photos Library and the iCloud Photos Library showing exactly the same pictures. iCloud is a synchronization service, not an archive service. With iCloud Photos turned on, when you add a picture on your Mac, the same picture gets added to iCloud. And when you delete a picture on your Mac Photos, it is deleted in iCloud Photos. So don't delete pictures on your Mac unless it's OK to lose them! Of course, they go into the Recently Deleted album, so you have a chance to undo.

Synchronizing with iCloud will not "free up space on my MacBook pro." However, you can choose to use iCloud to "Optimize Storage" on your Mac by only keeping smaller versions of images on your internal drive while the full sized files remain in iCloud Photos. You could probably save over a hundred GB that way, though it would not show up immediately-- only "as needed."

The synchronization may take days to finish, but it might get stuck if there are pictures or videos that, for some reason, are not compatible. This is especially true for videos where the codecs seem to keep changing even when the suffix indicators don't. Sometimes you can tell which ones cause a problem by making a Smart Album with the criteria:

I appear not to have any.

Otherwise, finding the offending files can be troublesome. Let us know what you find, and we can work from there.

And, continuing léonie's comments, if all you want is to store your pictures (not the Photos Library which has the originals as well as editing and commenting information,) then you can export the pictures to Finder folders, and those folders can be stored on iCloud Drive. iCloud Drive is separate from iCloud Photos (though it's part of the same storage package,) and it is accessible by iPhones and Macs. Pictures, like any files, can be stored there but, as léonie said, you then lose the functionality of Photos and the Photos Library.

robeds wrote:

I'd hoped that iCloud would do this and I didn't have to go to another source for storage since I already have apple icloud storage. Doesn't dropbox also store a copy on my computer?

Dropbox has options for archive only or sync.

iCloud is sync only.

If you store your photos in a different cloud, you cannot use the Photos.app any longer. You can save photos in the cloud, but not a Photos Library. The local copy of your Photos Library has to be stored on a locally mounted volume. A Photos Library cannot be stored in a folder, that is syncing with some cloud service either. Do not move your Photos Library onto iCloud Drive, into a DropBox Folder, or onto Google Drive or similar. The syncing will damage the internal links in the Photos Library package, usually beyond repair (Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support). iCloud Photos is the only safe method to store a Photos Library in the cloud, and you still need a local copy of the Photos Library on a local volume, so Photos can access the iCloud Photos Library.

robeds wrote:

If there is a better way or not keeping a copy on my MacBook, then I am open to doing that as well

Transfer the files to an external drive.

Install the Google Photos app, and it will upload automatically. Likewise for the Amazon.

robeds wrote:

I was hoping to keep access to them without having to carry an external drive. That's why I was trying to get them to the iCloud instead, even if I didnt have a copy on the MacBook

Something like DropBox?

Hmm, I though I answered this. Best option is Google Photos. It has excellent organizing features such as albums, facial matching, can automatically create slide shows by matching locations and scenes, and will send periodic reminders of past events.

Shutterfly is also good, although there is some question about whether they provide access to law enforcement.

Dropbox and box.com are also choices, but they don’t have any features for organizing other than file folders, and you have to do that manually.

Amazon photos, although I have no experience with it.

I use LiveDrive for backing up my Macs, and also for photo backups, but it is expensive ($250 a year). However, it provides unlimited storage, automatic hourly backups, and keeps the 30 most recent versions of each file. And you can back up 5 computers for the same price.