Why You Should Quickly Upload Your Photos from iCloud or Google Photos

There are many reasons to put your images online, and there are also reasons to start downloading your photos from Google Photos and iCloud to your computer. remove them from the servers, and forget about the cloud. Far from panic propaganda, here are a few reasons to think twice about sync your photo album with Apple or Google cloud.

The main argument is related to your Confidentiality. Basically, the photos and videos you upload to iCloud and Google Photos servers are encrypted and no one will see this content. But we cannot be 100% sure of this. No system is infallible. And while Apple and Google have an excellent track record, the security world always assumes that even the most reliable of them can fail.

The second argument, viz. safety. Your photos are encrypted on the server and only you can access them using a password or other identification method. But what if someone is impersonating your identity? All of this personal content may fall into the wrong hands. A gaffe, a weak password, a hack… If the content you save to Google Photos or iCloud is that private or personal, you should think twice before uploading it to the cloud.

From this, several questions may arise. Your photos are not in your hands, they are in the hands of others. And that means they can do whatever they want with them. In other words, only our trust in Google or Apple keeps us from thinking that one day they will change their policy and decide to use our photos and videos train your algorithms, artificial intelligence and other products without asking us.

But you don’t have to go so far as to stop relying on the cloud. The practical argument for professional photographers. Images are stored in iCloud and Google Photos with a certain quality. iCloud retains original quality, although depending on where you see the images, you will see them compressed. For its part, Google Photos “optimizes” your photos by default. if you want them in original qualityyou must enter it manually.

In short, iCloud and Google Photos are two great services that increase storage capacity our devices. Reasonably priced and free by default, offering high quality service, etc. Come on, if that suits you, come on. But if you are concerned or affected by what has been explained above, then we will tell you how to download your photos from iCloud, how to download your photos from Google Photos, and finally the many alternatives that you have at your disposal for store your photo and video collection.

Apple makes it easy for us to upload photos to iCloud and download photos from iCloud if you prefer to store them elsewhere. What’s more, you don’t have to go one by one. You can upload your photo collection from iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC. The most practical way is to open the web browser you normally use and go to the official iCloud page. You will need to log in with your Apple ID, the one you linked to iCloud. Then go to A photo.

Once there, you can select a photo or video, two or more, or the entire collection. Last since Choose all. When you’ve chosen which photos you want to download from iCloud, click the plus button with the three horizontal dots. then choose dismiss and finally download to confirm. Your collection of photos and videos will be downloaded as a single ZIP file that you can open on another device or anywhere you have enough space.

Keep in mind that, as Apple explains, “when you delete a photo from iCloud Photos, it is also deleted from iCloud and all devices where you are signed in with the same Apple ID. If you choose to download the originals, space will be reduced memory on the device.

Another way to download photos from iCloud is to do it right from the Photos app. As in the previous case, you can do it from iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC. If you are doing this from an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Your User > iCloud > Photos. Then click on Download and save originals. From a Mac, you must go to the app Photos > Preferences > iCloud > Upload Originals to This Mac. And on a PC, you’ll have to do it from within iCloud for Windows.

If you want to delete photos from iCloud once the copies are protected on your devices, you just need to select and delete. But make sure you already have those images safely on your device, outside of iCloud, as we saw earlier. If you are unsure, you will have time to delete them later.

If you saved your memories to Google Photos to upload your photos to another device and stop depending on external servers, you can do the following. While there are several ways to do this, the best way is to delete all content through Google Archive. This is a Google tool that makes it easy to export a “copy of your Google account content for have a backup or use it on a non-Google service.” You can use it for any service, but this time we’re only interested in Google Photos.

After logging in with your Google ID associated with Google Photos, you must click take it all off. We want to mark only the Google Photos service. In English, Google Photos. in spanish, Google Photos. Marking it is enough, although you can see the albums it includes by clicking on All photo albums included. Maybe you want to exclude part of the copy.

Then we click on Next and we choose Delivery method. This can be a link to download or share your photos and videos to Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box. AT Frequency we leave the option export once. And finally, you can choose between ZIP or TGZ and the size of each generated ZIP. To make it easier to move them between devices. Finally, we click on Create export.

As I said in the previous section, once you are sure you already have all your photos and videos are safe on another device, you can now delete Google Photos content. But don’t rush to do it. Before that, make sure you find a good place for your photos and videos.

Where to store photos safely

We end with an important topic. After downloading photos from iCloud and/or downloading photos from Google Photos, your smartphone, tablet or computer is filled with images. Do we leave them there or look for them? alternate location? It will depend on the need to restore these photos, if you are going to look at them often or, if you want to keep them safe, access them infrequently, such as every few months.

In this sense, their systematization and classification will be useful. There will be photos you want always have on hand, on your phone and others that saving them on another device will be more than enough. Today, there are many ways to store photos and videos.

• USB sticks or flash drives. Connect and go.
• external drives. They are cheaper without electricity.
• Memory cards. They can be inserted into the phone and/or PC using adapters.
• secondary disks. Your PC has an extra drive to store everything.

Some of these options are not as convenient as iCloud D google photo. But they are safer. You will know they are there for you. What’s more, to use them, just plug and play. It’s not that hard.

The last ideal solution for getting as close to Google Photos or iCloud equivalent as possible consists of buy NAS. This is a device that in practice is a small computer. Its function is to offer a secure alternative for storing all kinds of data in the form of backups. And you can also save your photos and videos. Moreover, although there are NAS for professional use, nowadays you can find Very cheap home NAS in which you can store millions of photos and videos at home and make them available on all your devices through the Internet. You can even see this content on your TV, but with the special feature that they safe in your home and not on external servers from Apple or Google.