Icloud photo storage compression

Question

Level 1

4 points

Icloud photo storage compression

I have pictures taken last year with iphone6,. Stored on icloud photo library they have 300k size (small) every way I've tried to view them (eg using my pc, ipad etc ). A new test picture taken shows up as 3 meg, the size i expected. I want to get to the full sized files of old pictures on icloud for printing. How do I do this? What is causing the old pictures to be small? Apples documentation says it is storing the pictures on icloud at full size.

thanks for any input

iPhone 6, iOS 10.3.2

Posted on Jul 22, 2017 8:39 AM

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Answer 1

zinacef

Level 10

88,810 points

Jul 22, 2017 9:31 AM in response to stuartwho

The transfer process shouldn't shrink them I would think. iCloud should store the originals in their original format, and the copies in whatever manner you choose to store them on the device, i.e. whether that device is your Mac, iPad, or iPhone, by choosing either 'Download and Keep Originals' (use if you have enough device storage space) or 'Optimize (device) Storage'.

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Answer 2

stuartwho Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 22, 2017 10:38 AM in response to Eric Root

it turns out the answers are 'it depends' ... which was driving me mad.

1) My Sony DSLR has a wifi connection that automatically puts images onto the iphone... its just that the images it (the sony) sends are small ones. I found this out by signing on to icloud with my pc and looking at the file details (they were 300k). The same images on the camera downloaded directly to the PC were 4.5 meg.

2) I was trying to use an app on the iphone called keepsake which lets you buy framed photo's from your iphone. The trouble was i could only get small pictures. It looks like their app is grabbing the optimized (small) pictures from the phone. It didn't matter where the pictures were taken (Iphone or sony) . However if I look at Iphone6 pictures on the cloud using the PC they are indeed the original size....., so I can use the keepsake app to get big pictures... but I must do it through my pc.

thanks for the help

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Answer 3

stuartwho Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 22, 2017 12:09 PM in response to Eric Root

Yes, you can sync them from the camera or copy them off the sd card using sony's utilities or file manager to a pc...... then you have the full sized files. you can also move them to the icloud library from the pc and they do appear to take all the file a attributes (size, dates, camera setting etc) with them on icloud.

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Answer 4

Phil234

Level 1

83 points

Jul 24, 2017 6:16 AM in response to stuartwho

On your iPhone or iPad. Go to settings > photos. You should see iCloud Photo Library is enabled and right under that you should have two options. Download and keep originals and optimize storage. You probably have optimize selected. If you want the full resolution photos either turn download and keep originals on or go to iCloud.com and download the photo from there. Let me know if that helps

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