Why is “iCloud Photos” So Weird

And what you can do about it

Apr 30, 2024

Why is “iCloud Photos” So Weird

And what you can do about it

I thought I was pretty much done with my comments about the weirdness of iCloud Photos, but I was wrong… both about being done, and also about some of the things I wrote.

I commented that by using iCloud for Windows one could easily move photos off of iCloud by moving the files to a different folder - on a different hard drive. This can be done within windows, or more conveniently, with image management software (I use a program called iMatch). You merely incorporate the iCloud picture folder (typically: C:\Users\your user name\Pictures\iCloud Photos\Photos) into your picture database. Then you can move your iPhone or iPad images out of iCloud into a different, appropriate, place in your picture database. Easy.

However, I also stated that you could also put some of your other images ONTO the iCloud merely by placing copies of the images into that same iCloud for Windows folder. You can, BUT I have found that, for some reason, it doesn’t always work! Some images placed into that folder never show up in iCloud photos on my I devices. While most images placed there quickly appear on the i-devices, a few never do. Why!?

My question to Apple is: I am using iCloud for Windows. I try to upload images to my i-Devices by placing those images in the folder C:\Users\your user name\Pictures\iCloud Photos\Photos. Most images are uploaded without a problem, BUT some images never appear on my devices! Some of these images were originally taken with the iphone , some were taken with other cameras, or were created with a scanner. So, what characteristics prevent images from being uploaded to icloud photos? Or in other words: What are the characteristics that an image must have to be successfully uploaded to iCloud Photos?

In Summary: Most images from my pc placed in my “icloud for windows” Photos folder will automatically upload into iCloud Photos on my i-devices, BUT some do not upload… Why not?

I have talked to Apple Help about this. No clear answers so far.

Update 2024/06/08: Even using iCloud.com (rather than iCloud for Windows) I still cannot upload HEIC or HEIF images. iCloud for Windows tells me that I can “only upload photos in JPEG format.” Strange, since the HEIC format is a format Apple has promoted. So, I can download HEIC images off of iCloud photos, but I cannot put them back, even unedited.

Original Post

Why is “iCloud Photos” So Weird

And what you can do about it

Apple “iCloud photos” is extremely useful and is used by almost everyone with an iPhone or iPad and probably most people with a mac computer as well. iCloud photos is easy to use, can share all your photos via iCloud with all your apple devices. All pictures you take with your apple devices automatically go into the “Photos” app. You can easily share those photos via email or AirDrop (to other apple devices) or with various messaging services and by posting to social media sites. With iCloud turned on they are also backed up (somewhere) automatically. Why would anyone complain?

Complaints:

You cannot rename iCloud photos! That’s right, for those of us who like to give our photos meaningful names using, for example, date name and number sequence like “20240512 beach 001”, you can’t do it. You are stuck with something like “IMG_3245”. (see workaround below)
Also, it is not easy to add photo details except for a caption. No place for other details like photographer, copyright etc. No IPTC support (additional app needed). GPS location and EXIF information (camera type and settings) are automatically provided by the device. Date and time is automatically added, but can be altered if needed.
You cannot make real albums, or folders, within your iCloud photos collection. Apple allows you to make what it calls albums, but these albums are just tags for the files, so the images with the same tag appear to be in the same album. There is no way to make subfolders in iCloud photos… something that those of us working in MS Windows have been doing for years to organize photos. All images on your iCloud are actually in one big folder. You will notice that images placed in an iCloud ‘album’ will still appear in the ‘all photos’ category… I don’t think there is an option to see ‘all photos except those I put into albums.’
Moving your images from iCloud Photos to another storage option can be confusing, but is possible.

By the way, to use iCloud you need to have iCloud turned on in your Apple account. On your Apple device under Settings>Photos> turn on iCloud Photos.

There are about 1.5 billion iPhone users worldwide. I would guess that many iPad users also have an iPhone so I won’t add those to the total population taking iCloud photos. However apparently there are only 850 million iCloud users. How many photos are taken each year with iPhones? Billions I would guess. Probably 10 billion…. per year! Does anyone actually know where their iCloud images are located? Can a particular image be found quickly? Probably not. I do have to give apple credit for creating a system that automates finding images by date, and often by person as well. Displaying images on an iPad is a great way to share images.

I used to take quite a few pictures (mostly with a Nikon). Several hundred images per year prior to digital imagery. Once I got a good digital camera I started taking several thousand images per year until recently. Also, many earlier images have been digitally scanned from prints, slides, and negatives. Phone images didn’t really interest me until the quality of those images improved, perhaps in about 2010 or 2012. Only about 2,500 of my 40,000 images are made with Apple products. Nevertheless, I do want to keep track of many of those images, but not all of them. Some, like reminders of something I needed to buy, or picture of a spare part that needs to be replaced, can be deleted.

Also, I sometimes copy a few of my Nikon images onto the iPad so I can have them handy to show friends and relatives. I have a sd card reader that I can plug into the ipad for uploading images. It is also possible to download iCloud images onto the sd card, but that is probably not the best way to get your images off the iCloud.

Moving Images Out of iCloud

If you want to have a long term storage solution for your images with the ability to easily find your images with some sort of organization, you will probably want to move them off of the iCloud and onto, for example, an external hard drive. While this can be accomplished through basic Windows file management, by creating a system of folders (for each year?) and subfolders (for everts and dates?), using an image management software program is a better option, and that will allow you to add comments, details, keywords, tags etc. to each image. For image database management I happen to use a software called iMatch. Image editing software is also a useful tool to have. I mostly use Adobe Lightroom Classic, but I also use several other image editing programs.

Using iCloud.com and iCloud for Windows

The term iCloud is a bit confusing since there is both iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive. In general, it is reasonable to think of these two things as two different entities. On Apple devices there are lots of additional things in the iCloud with the most obvious being: apple email and contacts, apple calendars and some apple apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, among others. These are all available on Apple devices. All these, including iCloud photos, can be viewed on a Windows pc, via iCloud.com via a web browser. iCloud for Windows, a downloadable Windows app can also be used. It is a bit more focused and can deal with your iCloud photos. Either one can be used to download your iCloud images to your pc.

iCloud.com can be visited via a web browser. Once you log in with your Apple ID, you will see all your Apple content that is in the iCloud… including your photos. To download an image, highlight the image and click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the image (or on the screen) or click the download cloud icon. If you click the three dots you will be given a choice as to the type of download you want, original or edited. For most people original is fine. If you select several images (using the shift or crtl keys when selecting) your download will be in the form of a zip file containing all the selected images. These can then be extracted to the hard disk location of your choice. In the past there was some concern that location and time data was being stripped from the images, but that does not seem to be the case now.

iCloud for Windows is a Windows program that can be downloaded and installed from the Microsoft store. Once installed it can be opened like any other Windows app. The main benefit of iCloud for Windows is that it will automatically, if you want, download all your Apple images onto your pc’s hard drive at C:users>username>Pictures>iCloud Photos>Photos. (Note that iCloud for Windows also copies the contents of iCloud Drive onto your hard disk.)

iCloud for Windows synchronizes of all your Apple images with your hard drive just as if it were another Apple device. If you add images to that folder on your hard drive, they will also show up on your Apple devices. It is important to keep in mind that all your iCloud images will be mirrored on your hard drive, so they will take up disk space. To a certain extent you can treat these iCloud images as any other images on your pc. For example, they will show up in Microsoft’s Photos app and in any other photo app of your choice. However, there are a number of oddities you need to be aware of.

Oddities Dealing with iCloud for Windows

Because iCloud for Windows synchronizes images with the iCloud, iCloud retains some control over those images. The synchronizing takes time, so even on a good connection, changes you make may take a few minutes. However, making changes to iCloud images is not easy! There is no way to rename images on an Apple device, and although you can rename an iCloud image on your pc, the new name will not show up on your Apple devices. Nevertheless, edits made on Apple devices will show up on the pc copy of the image even if the image on the pc has been given a different name. (Apparently Apple does not use the file name as the identifier.) Note also that an image edited on an Apple device will cause the file to be refreshed on your pc’s iCloud folder and will erase edits you may have made to the file on your pc using a different editor, including any IPTC information such as Title, description, and comments, that you have added. Date taken and location do not seem to be affected.

So, as a workaround, if you really need to rename an iCloud image, you can move an image from the iCloud for Windows folder, rename it, then put it back. iCloud will accept the new image with the new name. However, you cannot move an iCloud image to a different folder on the same drive on your pc. If you do, you will get a message telling you that “the operation is not supported by the iCloud sync provider”. You will have to move the file to a folder on a different drive, rename it, and move or copy the new file back to the iCloud folder, where it will be incorporated into iCloud as a new image.

So, moving iCloud images on your hard drive is not possible, but moving an image to a different drive is possible since iCloud for Windows interprets that as removing the image from iCloud. Then you can rename the image and place it back on the iCloud folder where it will be considered a new image. Moving iCloud images to a different drive is also handy for other reasons: you can permanently move your images out of iCloud and into a more reasonable image organization scheme.

Moving Images Off of iCloud and Getting them Reasonably Organized

You can use either iCloud.com or iCloud for Windows to move images off Apple’s iCloud. Using iCloud.com you can download images to a suitable folder, and then delete them from iCloud from within iCloud.com. If you don’t delete them from iCloud you will end up with multiple images and that can become very confusing. By the way, you can always place copies of your favorite images back onto the iCloud by uploading with iCloud.com or by placing copies into the iCloud folder if using iCloud for Windows. If they now have clear names like “COPY of 20210212 Bob Birthday 01” you will know you have the original somewhere else… hopefully.

Where should you keep them? Up to you. BUT, if you really want to keep track of all your images, presumably including old family photos that you have scanned, I suggest using an external SSD drive with two backups. Ideally you would automate backups, but I only back up manually, with Backup4all about once per month. If you take a lot of pictures, as a professional photographer or serious hobbyist, you will want to make more regular backups. Automated online backup software options are also available (like Backblaze, or Carbonite). Some will backup an external drive as well as your hard drive.

While you can use Windows file management programs to manage your images I recommend using dedicated image management software. I use iMatch which has a moderately steep learning curve, but is extremely versatile. I recommend using a separate image editing program even though there are several programs that do both image management/organization and editing (such as Adobe Lightroom Classic), but given all the many different options available for image editing I recommend separating the organization of images from editing.

I manage my iCloud pictures using iCloud for Windows by incorporating the iCloud folder on my hard drive into my picture database managed with iMatch. I tell my iMatch software that I want to include the iCloud folder as part of my iMatch database. iMatch does not move pictures but merely keeps track of where they are on the disks. Within iMatch the iCloud folder appears as a direct subfolder of C: where is shows up along with a few other C drive folders in my picture collection. Most of my iMatch managed images are on an external drive. This allows me, within iMatch, to easily move iCloud images out of the iCloud folder and into whatever folder I want (on my external drive). When I move them, they are automatically removed from the iCloud. Easy. Then I can rename, categorize, tag, add details etc., and edit to create new versions. I can then easily put selected images back on the iCloud.

Once you know how to do it, it is simple. But keep in mind that the software is always being modified.

For the time being I would recommend using iCloud for Windows to get all your iCloud photos onto your hard drive (assuming you have the disk space). Then, using image management software, gradually move your favorite images out of the iCloud and onto a dedicated external drive for long-term storage, retrieval, editing and viewing. Avoid editing images that are still syncing with the iCloud.

Software mentioned:

iCloud.com https://www.icloud.com/

iCloud for Windows https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud-windows/set-up-icloud-for-windows-icwee190673a/icloud

iMatch https://www.photools.com/imatch/

Adobe Lightroom Classic https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom-classic.html

Backblaze https://www.backblaze.com/get-started

Carbonite https://www.carbonite.com/

Possible IPTC editor app for use on iPad/iPhone: MetadataEditor from the Apple store.