Q: If I disable and delete iCloud photos on my MacBook Pro, will the photos be deleted from my iPad as well?
I have an iPad air that has always been set to "Optimize storage" so all of its photos were being stored in iCloud. Recently, I (stupidly) turned on iCloud photo library on my mac laptop (Macbook Pro), which immediately filled up the 5G of storage. Now I want to undo that, so that I can use that storage to back up my iPad. The photos on my laptop are still on my laptop hard drive (I have the option "Download originals to this mac" selected) - and they are backed up to an external hard drive via Time Machine as well.
The question I can't seem to find an answer to is this: when I disable and delete the iCloud photo library on my laptop only, will it then delete all of the photos that were originally taken with, and uploaded by, my ipad? That is, will those photos no longer show up on my iPad at all?
Secondarily: since I have "download originals to this mac" selected, does that mean that those photos - the ones I originally took with my ipad - will still be saved, to my MacBook Pro? And just no longer accessible to the iPad?
And: if I want to "share" photos from my laptop back to my iPad, is there a way to do that without using iCloud photo library (that is, without using up all that space?) Is this what Photostream is for? And if so: how do you use that?
(Why does this all have to be so complicated? - I actually don't want an answer to that, just to the first three questions!) Thanks all!!
iPad Air Wi-Fi, iOS 9.3.2, MacBook Pro 2012 OS 10.11.5
Posted on Jun 7, 2016 1:19 PM