Hi I have over 15000 photos on my mac, and having recently decided to use iCloud storage, only just over 10000 are showing in iCloud photos, and that number has been constant for a few days so I assume no more are going to be added to iCloud. Anyone know what the issue may be?
Thanks
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 24″, macOS 15.3
To be clear, are you talking about pictures with the Photos app rather than Finder? Are you talking about iCloud Photos rather than iCloud Drive? Do you use Optimize Storage? Do you have more than 10% of your storage free on your Mac and at iCloud.com?
Have you opened a Smart Album with
"unable to upload to iCloud Photos?" Can you find a pattern?
For instance, do these 5000 problem pictures have a different format? Did they come from a different source? Are they referenced rather than managed?
If you open one of the pictures and Edit it or crop it, does that work?
What's different about these pictures?
You are edging toward "danger" with only 16% of your Mac Storage free, but you should be OK for a while. I have seen rather crazy things go on with less than 20% free, but that is fairly rare, I think.
For more clarity: Does "scanning them into new folders in the Pictures App" mean saving your scans in folders inside your Pictures folder? And you then drag the folders into Photos, and the folder makes an Album-- is that what you're doing? That seems OK. Another good way to import pictures is to use "File>Import." Drag & Drop is not fully supported, and Drag & Drop especially gives uncertain results in exporting pictures from Photos.
You have not said what results you got from the "Referenced" Smart Album or the "Unable to Load" Smart Album.
Photos can be used two ways:
✓ Managed Library: the best, proper, and really only way that works, is to actually copy the pictures into the Library. Then you have two copies of each picture-- the one in Finder folders and the one inside the Photos Library. I move the Finder Folders to an external "archive" drive as a backup, so only the Managed pictures in the Library are on the Mac. It's a managed library because Photos knows where they are, keeps them safe, and its database can find them as it needs.
❌Referenced Library: the pictures are left in Finder folders, and Photos deals with them there. Lots of problems occur when people try this-- the database loses track of the pictures, maybe because some were moved or trashed or altered without Photos knowing about it. Referenced Libraries are handy for some sorts of testing, but never for personal use. We always recommend against a Referenced Library.
The type of Library your using is set in Photos' Settings>General:
Here you can see that I have "copy items to the Photos Library" checked. Sometimes, this changes accidentally, back and forth, so that people have some Managed pictures and some Referenced pictures. The Smart Album helps find these.
What do the Smart Albums tell you?
Thank you Richard for helping an old chap who has had Apple stuff for years apologise for knowing next to nothing about the technicalities behind Photos.
I'm referring to the Photos App and iCloud photos.
I haven't optimised and I have used 30gb out of 200gb iCloud photos, 420gb out of 500 on Mac.
I sync our 2 iPads and iPhones to mac and have just started using iCloud photos for backup, in the hope of clearing duplicates from our various devices.
I have been scanning lots of old photos into mac, by scanning them into new folders in the Pictures App which I have then dragged into the photos app and those folders show up in photos under Albums, but I can see now some are not in the Library tab- I've only had a quick look so far but maybe that is my problem, as I remember trying to edit some of these, and being unable to unless I make an editable duplicate - is this what you mean by referenced rather than managed?
I didn't import them directly to Photos library as I have been doing this over a couple of years, have a lot more photos to scan, and I thought this way made it easier for me to split into different years, events etc.
So having pointed me in the right direction, I hope, do you think there might be a solution to my lack of ability?
Thank you again for taking the time to help.
Regards John
I asked about editing because Photos is a non-destructive editor. If a picture is edited, the original file is never changed. Photos just remembers the edits and reapplies them when you look at the picture.
Photos also stores thumbnails so that you can quickly scroll through the Library. And it may store some Preview sized files for full screen views. But for editing, it brings up the full sized Original picture, so you can see all the pixels and fix scratches and things. If a picture won't edit, then Photos has lost track of the Original, perhaps because it was never loaded in to be Managed.
Hi again, looks like my photo settings are the same as yours.
Nothing comes up in ref smart search and only 43 items unable to upload , only one is editable- looks like 40 are thumbnail size.
I do seem to have lots of photos which look like duplicates but don't come up in Utilities duplicates, maybe thats's my problem, and I need to do some more manual photo editing, rather than looking at apps to search for duplicates which may do more harm than good.
Thanks for storage concerns, I'm optimising photos now and I still have the option of transferring 100 gb of CD's, shows my age, to flash drive until I can see what I can safely delete.
Thanks also for explaining smart album search - I had no idea about this.
Appreciate your help.
John
Re my reply above - I think the photos are showing in Photos library but some are editable some are not.
John
Why are only 10,000 out of 15,000 photos syncing to iCloud?
