I want to help a friend get setup with iCloud Photo Library. They have an iOS device without a lot of free space and they have a PC and an old Mac that can't run Photos.app. In addition to using iCloud Photo Library they want to back up their original photos from their iPhone to their PC or old Mac. I don't think this would be an issue except they don't have enough space to store all of their originals on their iOS device so they must use the 'Optimize iPhone Storage' setting. My fear is that they will only be backing up thumbnails when they go to backup their photos to their desktop. Is there anyway around this?
ICloud – Backing up full resolution photos from iPhone while using ‘Optimize iPhone Storage’ with iCloud Photo Library
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Related Solutions
It depends on where the app is pulling images from. If you have selected "Optimize iPhone storage" then these apps will only have access to the lower-resolution thumbnails, as bmike pointed out (they use Camera Roll).
Unless the app is specifically coded to pull photos from iCloud Photo Libary (which Apple currently supports), they will just have access to the low-resolution photos stored locally on the device.
All the apps you have mentioned access your Camera Roll, therefore the low-resolution images.
Two things to note:
- the small print under "Optimize Mac Storage" states that "Originals will also be stored on this Mac if you have enough storage space", so hopefully the fact that you have plenty of space to spare will qualify as "enough storage space" and nothing will be deleted immediately (hopefully!)
- even though you're not offered the option in the dialog, once you select "Optimize Storage", you can immediately switch the radio button back to "Download Originals to this Mac"
Neither of these things necessarily guarantees that the originals won't be removed and re-added, but at least you will end up with all the originals on your Mac once it has had a chance to synchronize everything to its satisfaction.
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Best Answer
They may have updated the iCloud Photo Library for Windows capabilities: