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iCloud full on 200gb plan #1
Milo's picture
by Milo
May 22, 2015 - 8:40pm

Well my iCloud is full. It’s worthless! 200 gb is nothing for storage. Most of us have backup hard drives and computer hard drives in the terabytes. So now I have to educate myself on what to do next!!!???? I can’t afford to be Apple’s lab rat. I need access to my photos…I don’t want duplicates on every Apple device I own….I NEED to edit out in other programs…I want one system or ecosystem if it’s Apple, Adobe or whoever. I’m not upgrading to pay $20 a month to store my photos in the cloud. Especially when it’s never going to be ALL my photos. 

IF I can manage which photos are stored in the cloud easily, then I would like that. But this has been too much. Too much work, confusion and unnecessary change. 

I don’t even know where to start now?????? I really want Apple to be my management system. I’ve enjoyed the ease and organized Apple products. BUT I rely on my photos for work. Photos app is a disaster. 

jollyllama's picture
by jollyllama
May 22, 2015 - 9:42pm

As much as I hate to say it, I think Apple’s decision to kill Aperture was partially a way of saying that they don’t intend their cloud photo services to be used by people like us with massive photo libraries. For now, at least, Apple cloud photo services are targeted at casual photographers with a few thousand photos, not a few hundred-thousand. I hope that changes (keep an eye on WWDC at the beginning of June for announcements) but that’s just the state of things right now.

Milo's picture
by Milo
May 22, 2015 - 9:51pm

Thanks for the reply. I am just shocked at the carelessness of this Photos move. Cloud storage is a great idea. I use several companies for it. Dropbox, Flickr, Evernote, iCloud, GoDaddy email and hosting, Gmail and Google-plus, Facebook and I don’t remember how many others. It works. They work.

Except for Apple’s Photos. 

Maybe I need to create my own cloud with Apple’s TimeMachine? Hard-drive connected to the TimeMachine router?

Thomas Emmerich's picture
by Thomas Emmerich
May 23, 2015 - 2:39am

As of Photos 1.0 the only way to manage what get’s synced to iCloud is to have multiple libraries. You can only set one library (the “System Library”) to sync to iCloud so keep one library that contains the photos you want synced and put everything else in one or more other libraries.

You create additional libraries or change libraries by holding down the option key when starting Photos. Unfortunately there’s no built-in way to move photos between libraries. For that you need third party software. The company that made iPhoto Library Manager also makes a new utility application called PowerPhotos. PowerPhotos helps manage multiple libraries and moves photos between libraries - among other things. I haven’t personally used it.

Thomas

Thomas Emmerich's picture
by Thomas Emmerich
May 23, 2015 - 2:54am

Need to correct my last claim. Apparently PowerPhotos cannot yet copy photos between libraries although that was an advertised feature before it was released. Apparently it is not possible with the current version of Photos. Fatcatsoftware has a blog post about it.

Thomas

Milo's picture
by Milo
May 23, 2015 - 4:22am

I cringe at the thought. 3rd party software to manage a digital asset manager….a manager for the manager?? 

I’m trying to make it work but losing my loyalty and faith in Photos.

Tom's picture
by Tom
May 23, 2015 - 3:15am

I’m in the camp of not wanting my photos to sync between devices.  I upload all of my photos that I take to flickr, and have the flickr app on all of my devices.  Therefore, I have access to all of my photos, all of the time, unless I’m in an area of no data reception.  But, I know I’m in the minority (I guess).

Milo's picture
by Milo
May 23, 2015 - 4:25am

Flickr works great across all platforms….and it’s free!! Like Google-plus, Flickr lets YOU manage what photos go in the cloud storage.

Debbie's picture
by Debbie
May 23, 2015 - 8:56am

I do the same with Flickr. All 160,000 photos are on Flickr at full res and with the same file structure as my Aperture Library. I love the Flickr app, especially after it’s recent redesign.

~Debbie

mikebhm's picture
by mikebhm
May 24, 2015 - 12:20am

“As of Photos 1.0 the only way to manage what get’s synced to iCloud is to have multiple libraries”.

How about a mixed consolidated and referenced library. Start off with whole library referenced. Make it the system library and it will tell you nothing has been uploaded (because referenced photos are not uploaded). Then consolidate the albums/projects/folders you want to be available on all devices.

I am in process of doing this with my 600Gb/60000 photo library covering 2000-2014, converted from Aperture. All has gone well so far but not tried the consolidation yet as Photos is still very busy digesting. When I changed this lib to be my system lib it conveniently merged with the 2015 photos already in iCloud.

Will update later.

One useful feature of this process is that although the referenced files do not appear on the other devices, the folders containing them do. This makes it very easy to see what has been consolidated.

Thomas Emmerich's picture
by Thomas Emmerich
May 24, 2015 - 1:29am

Seems like a great idea. Only problem is consolidation is a one way trip. Once you consolidate a photo you can’t go back to referenced.

Thomas

mikebhm's picture
by mikebhm
May 24, 2015 - 4:22am

Yes it certainly would be great if Photos could relocate originals back to being referenced, like Aperture, and perhaps it will come. Meantime the ability to have a mixed library does mean I can have all my photos in a single library and the most important shared across devices. 

Very clunky but one could export photos, delete them and reimport as referenced.

mikebhm's picture
by mikebhm
May 24, 2015 - 4:26am

Quick update: selective consolidation is working fine, now Photos has stopped “digesting”.

Seems that large new referenced libraries need a few hours of high activity. When you first try to edit an image it asks to connect to the referenced files and to select the referenced older. The it seems to spend a long time reconnecting. If you try and close the library during this period, you get a small window saying “Closing Library” which stays until the process completes. Many threads elsewhere about this, but it is a once off event.

Debbie's picture
by Debbie
May 24, 2015 - 4:53am

I wonder how this would work for someone who uses only managed libraries? Just thinking out loud…

~Debbie

mikebhm's picture
by mikebhm
May 24, 2015 - 7:30am

Debbie, it won’t at all. 

Only one library can be the system library, hence upload to the icloud and be shared across all devices. If you have multiple managed libraries you are committing all but one to be non-iCloud.

Therefore the whole point is to put everything into one large library which can be the system library, and then only to consolidate (convert to managed) just the ones you want to shared.

mikebhm's picture
by mikebhm
May 24, 2015 - 8:54pm

I have run into some problems.

A key part of my plan was that the library would automatically re-connect with its referenced masters, in the event that either the library or the referenced masters had to be restored from a back up disk. Small scale trials showed that it appeared to do so, but the large scale version does not appear to.

For now I am going back to where I was with a fully consolidated library of just my 2015 photos in the system library.

EDIT Just to clarify this. The problem of not reconnecting with referenced files is all related to the second Mac. I put my mixed library on the primary mac, and made it the system library. On the second Mac the system library synced the managed photos of course, and also all the referenced photo folders (without any photos in) with the system library on the primary mac.  I had hoped when I connected the referenced masters to the second mac the Photos lib would connect with it, since all the folders were there. I realise now this was not a realistic expectation.

Reconnection to restored backups of library, or referenced files on externals works automatically when a single Mac is involved.

Tom's picture
by Tom
May 23, 2015 - 6:22am

I’m not going to throw Photos under the bus, yet.  There are features of it that intrigue me, and who knows what is in store with coming iterations?

I’ll continue to use Aperture, but I think I’ll run a copy of Photos alongside Aperture, if it’s not too much of a pain.

Debbie's picture
by Debbie
May 23, 2015 - 9:02am

I have a love/hate relationship with Photos so far. Some things are great, other things not so much. I hope it improves over time. I don’t sync with my iDevices except for Photostream and some iCloud Shared Albums, but I do sync between my iMac and rMBP. I still have my Aperture Library intact. I’m going to try multiple Photos Libraries as I would like to just sync a small number of photos with my iDevices. Mostly current iPhone photos. It all feels so complicated right now. Thankfully, Joseph’s video series is helping me make some sense of it.

~Debbie

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