Hi - my Photo on my Mac has refused to download my photos today as storage is full. I need to free up 2GB. I have been subscribing to extra data storage on icloud and have 695GB available. I have tested deleting some images in Photo to increase storage on my Mac but it duly deletes from icloud too. Is there a way around this? Or do I resort to deleting from both and going back to downloading on portable hard drive storage? thanks Suzy
iCloud is best thought of a syncing device
Sorry you had to find out the hard way
The best options are an external drive as you mention or cloud storage such as
Google Photos OR
Upthere.com
For the computer, go to Photos/Preferences/iCloud and select Optimize. That will reduce the space required by about 90% when fully effective.
Thanks for your reply Eric - unfortunately my Mac has already had the Optimize box ticked. It seems that I have too many photos..... Just would like to offload my photos on my mac to icloud for storage and free up some space. Any further suggestions much appreciated. thanks
If you used iPhoto before migrating to Photos, remove the iPhoto Library from your system drive. As long as you have the original iPhoto Library or Aperture Library on your Mac the Optimize option will not help. Photos is sharing the storage with iPhoto as described here (Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries - Apple Support)
Only after removing the previous libraries will deleting originals from Photos free storage.
Thanks for this Leonie - will give this a try and let you know how I get on. Suzy
deleting photos on Photo without removing on icloud on Mac
