Will iCloud drive FOLDERS delete the photos that are saved in them, when photos from Mac/iPhone apps are deleted?

iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos are separate and independent things.

The value of Photos is that it is an Image Management System that uses information specific to photographs, like faces, focal lengthens, keywords, captions, and things like that to help organize pictures.

iCloud Drive is simply a folder, and folders and files inside are managed by Finder, a File Management System that ignores image information and organizes by filename, file size, and so on.

You can put pictures in either place, independently. In either case, the files and pictures are still on the Mac's internal drive. Unless, that is, if you use "Optimize" to save storage space. This, too, is managed differently for Photos and for files. Since in many cases small pictures can be just as pleasing and useful as big ones, storage for Photos is saved by keeping smaller versions locally.

But for generic files, smaller versions make no sense-- there's little value in half a spreadsheet. iCloud Drive optimizes space more crudely by keeping only the names of some files locally,, and storing the actual files remotely. So, if you store pictures on an Optimized iCloud Drive, you can only see the pictures when connected to the internet, and possibly after some delay.

A third option is that you can put a picture Library and file folders on a small one-ounce SSD and carry it around with you.

Once moved from photos to a folder in iCloud, you can delete the photos from the photos app, yes.

StasiaJo25 wrote:

From what I understand, the answer is NO.

However, I want to clarify - since no one I know seems to understand why I want to do things this way - I am asking here. Everyone says "just use the albums in the photos app..." I'm a small business, managing graphics, photos, socials, etc. I also help with socials for other businesses. I navigate between my phone, my mac, and people that are requesting various photos. It takes some organization…

… but I'm paranoid having lost things in the past. From what I've read - these folders in iCloud drive on my Mac are separate from iCloud itself which is just synced storage. Can someone help me understand this better and ease my paranoia?

This is a general comment about the IT and data management administration path you are on, with suggestions for ensuring data continuity… And what might be on the horizon… Or more succinctly, hello and welcome to IT!

In general… More than a few photographers and photography-adjacent folks implement their own photo management system, learning and adapting as they go.

That approach starts out simple and inviting and cheap too, and tends to get more complex as the volume and the business increases. And it only gets more involved and more data. I think you’re at those point.

I certainly won’t try to convince you to use a pre-existing solution, though.

You’ll have to find your own beat way here.

I will however mention a very common mistake with these home-grown image and video data management apps: do not use and do not trust the file system metadata for your dates, use the embedded EXIF data, and use your own folder names. Again, do not use the file dates. Store your event or contract or customer ID or other info and other related metadata in the files. Why? The file system metadata can get modified when you might not or do not want it modified. The displayed dates are just not dependable for archiving. Related example tool: exiftool

As the volume of files involved here increases, a database can become preferable for store the related information too, as manually-managed folder names tend to get murky, and searching becomes more expensive.

And another part of the IT role: you will want to use local backups of your data, probably using Time Machine. You will definitely want to keep local backups of whatever important data is in iCloud, too. This archiving process is best automated and for whatever copies are appropriate locally, because manually-performed backups can be forgotten.

As you grow your data, and maybe add additional people, there are some potential options to ponder for photo storage, such as existing photo-storage apps apps past iCloud Photos or such, and some remotely-accessible third-party storage devices exist such as Synology Photos, or more comprehensive (and these available hosted) solutions such as NextCloud.

And you may not be aware of a useful iCloud feature, link sharing files and folders: Share files and folders in iCloud Drive on iCloud.com - Apple Support

Excellent advice from MrHoffman. Image management systems are better for managing images than are file management systems!

And backups: If you use "Optimize Storage" for either iCloud Drive or for iCloud Photos, then you are depending on some of your items having been removed from local storage-- and that means backing up your Mac doesn't backup all your stuff! No matter how faithful you are about backups, you can't backup what's not there! I use Optimize on my iPhone, but not on my Mac. If necessary, you can keep multiple Photos Libraries on the Mac, and keep the lesser used ones (or all of them) on an external drive.

You're welcome-- I hope that helps make sense of it all.

Here is some stuff about iCloud Drive:

Understanding iCloud Drive - Apple Community

Personally, I have an iPhone, an iPad, and a Mac, and I use iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos to keep them all the same. I also carry around a 1 ounce 2TB SSD that I can plug into any of those devices.