I have so many photos on my iMac (running OSX El Capitan) and hence on i Cloud that they nearly fill the memory on my iPhone 4. Is there any way in which I can select only those photos I want from iCloud to appear on my phone?
iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2010), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)
iCloud is primarily a syncing service to make all photo libraries on all devices identical and update them, if one of the library changes. If you do not want all photos from your Mac on your iPhone, don't use iCloud photo library, but sync only selected albums to your iPhone with iTunes (see: Sync photos to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch in iTunes - Apple Support).
Or keep only a small iCloud Library. You can have a large photos library on your Mac, that will not sync with iCloud and a smaller one with selected photos to be synced to iCloud. See: https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.0/?lang=en#/pht6d60b524
If you are using the option "Optimize Storage" on your iPhone, all photos should fit on your iPhone, even if your iCloud Photo Library is very large. Photos will always use all available storage, but optimize more photos, if storage is needed for other applications.
Thank you léon for this helpful and speedy answer. However I've looked on my iPhone for "Optimise Storage" and cannot find it in what I think are the obvious places such as "General" and "storage and iCloud usage". Can you tell me where it sits?
Settings ==> iCloud ==> photos - click optimize iPhone storage
LN
Thank you Larry but when I go into Photos in ==< Settings ==< Photos on my iPhone there is no mention of "Optimise iPhone Storage", just "iCloud Photo Library" (off), "My Photo Stream" (on) and "iCloud Photo Sharing" (on). I have been nervous of turning iCloud Photo Library to "ON" because staring to do so produces an immediate threat to remove 6,333 photos. Is not that I think I really will lose all these photos altogether but that I am not absolutely sure that I will not do so. Is that the problem that stops me seeing "Optimise Photoo Storage"?
Morley
Apologies Léonie for misspelling your name. have AMD and the "i.e." was in invisible my blind spot.
Morley
those are the instructions for optimizing using iCLoud Photo Library which you strongly implied you were using
hence on i Cloud
since only iCloud Photo Library has photos on iCloud
I do not use MyPhotoStream so someone who does will have to help you - there is no optimize feature with MPS as far as I know
LN
..
On your iPhone or iPad open "Settings > iCloud > Photos". The panel looks like this:
I have so many photos on my iMac (running OSX El Capitan) and hence on i Cloud that they nearly fill the memory on my iPhone 4. Is there any way in which I can select only those photos I want from iCloud to appear on my phone?
If you are using only My Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Sharing, the many photos on your Mac cannot be filling your iPhone.
Only iCloud Photo Library is storing all photos in iCloud and updating them on all devices.
My Photo Stream will stream the 1000 most recent photos to your iPhone. They will vanish after some time, if you do not save them to your Camera Roll. Shared Albums will download all photos to your device, a bit smaller than on your Mac.
But there is no optimize to reduce the amount of photos in these iCloud items. The only way to have access to all photos would be iCloud Photo Library, but that requires a paid storage plan if your Photos Library is large.
Thank you again Larry. I was obviously confused. This became significant because Photos was taking up so much space both in iCloud (29.9 GB of the 50GB I have available) and on my iPhone (8.41 GB, with only just over 1 Gb free an recent warnings about not being able to up-date or back-up the phone). There is a comment under the heading "Disable and Delete" that I felt implies that I was still using iCloud Photo Library, despite having not chosen to do so in the options available in >Settings >Photos. Obviously, from what you and Léonie have both said, that was incorrect. Is it safe to assume that the the 6,333 photos synced from iTunes will all be available in the iCloud library?
My sincere apologies if I'm being over cautious but I do value these photos, many of which are copies of prints and slides going back almost 60 years, some of them more than 100 years. I have transferred them onto computer files to make them available to an ever expanding family!
Morley
Obviously, from what you and Léonie have both said, that was incorrect. Is it safe to assume that the the 6,333 photos synced from iTunes will all be available in the iCloud library?
NO! if you enable iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone or iPad, you can no longer sync with iTunes, and all photos that have been synced using iTunes will be deleted from the device. Synced photos are not in the Camera Roll, they are not backed up, and they are treated differently.
Before you change any iCloud settings on your iPad or iPhone, you have to save any iTunes synced photos back to a computer, if you want to keep them and you do not have copies elsewhere.
Thank you again Léonie, you have probably saved me from a minor catastrophe. I am however now uncertain as to how to proceed. I had through that attached my iPhone to my iMac and importing any new photos would make them safe and that they would now remain so in iCloud. I have not found the iPhone User Guide of any real help. -Perhaps that is to do with my 83 years of age although my adult grandchildren don to seem to be able to help much! Can you tell me how I can now identify the 6333 photos at risk of being deleted if and when I turn iCloud Photo Library on? Would I be better advised to move all my photos into a new album, perhaps even on an external hard drive, and only then turn the iCloud library on before finally triaging the photos and moving only those I want in the Cloud back into the iCloud Library? At present my iPhone tells me the it has 256 images in the Camera roll and 486 in My Photo Stream so there are obviously a lot more at risk on the computer and/or in iCloud. O had a;ready pt quite a lot of the older images onto CDs but this seemed to be a rather clumsy and archaic approach nowadays.
Thanks again
Morley
Morley, are all photos that are now on your iPhone also on your computer? If you synced them with iTunes to your iPhone they must have been originally on a computer. Are all your iPhone photos in your Photos Library on your iMac?
Thanks for this further query Léonie. I think I know where it's going - hope so at any rate.
As far I can recall all the photos now or previously on my iPhone were taken with that iPhone although there may be a few that were originally downloaded from Facebook either onto the iMac or onto my iPad. That device has not come into the frame so far as it is nowhere near so full but it will do when I have sorted out the iPhone. I suspect that the iPad will have some photos at risk but doubt if any of these will be of great significance - they are mostly of great grandchildren of which there are/will be plenty of images!
Thanks again
Morley
How can I choose which photos from iCloud Phone
