IOS – How to restore photos from an iCloud backup to a new iPhone

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My iPhone fell into water and is now broken, completely! I desperately try to recover my photos via iCloud. I downloaded the iCloud manager for Windows since I never backed up my iPhone with my computer.

In this manager I can see that I have an online backup file of about 4.5 GB. iCloud is almost full. However, when I check the Photo Stream folder that got created, I only can see about 130 pictures. (I assume the 4.5 GB must be the rest of my pictures.)

Are my other pictures included in this online backup and how can I get to them, like backup to my new iPhone? Since this one has another ID can I restore only the pictures without messing up the data of my current iPhone?

Best Answer

Photo Stream and iCloud Backup are separate — your photos are stored in your iCloud Backup and many of them are duplicated and stored in Photo Stream (unless you deleted them from your camera roll in which case they're not duplicates).

The iCloud backup can be restored whole to your device. You can't restore parts of it — it's all or nothing.

However, there is a workaround:

  1. Make a backup of your new device to iTunes.
  2. Reset your device to factory settings and restore the iCloud backup.
  3. Use Image Capture or iPhoto/Aperture to import the photos.
  4. Reset your device to factory settings and restore the iTunes backup.
  5. Copy the photos back to your device.
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