Migration from iCloud to Photos final step

[HighPeakRider]

Hello

First post and a little help if i may.
I’ve had my NAS since 2016 but only used for Timemachine, music and movie storage.
I was at the stage where I needed to pay for more iCloud storage and looked at the mess of a folder structure on my MAC that Apple Photo had created over the years.

So far I’ve imported everything to the NAS and created year folders as the main structure, this is backed up to a second NAS and into the cloud with Synology C2.

I‘ve turned off Photo’s in cloud, however, I have a full photo collection on my iPhone which isn’t an issue as I have lots of storage space as I only have about 36 gig of photos.

What I’m not sure about is the best practice for viewing as i’m used to iCloud just managing it.

I’m thinking of leaving all photos on the iPhone which is my main photo taker which are then synced to the NAS.
Not sure what to do with the iPad and MAC, is the correct process to delete the Apple Photos and just used the Synology Photo app?
I presume I can also delete the Apple Photo library on the MAC as its no longer being updated by iCloud.

At the moment I’m using Carbon Copy Cloner to sync the files from the NAS to Apple Photos on my MAC as its an extra insurance backup wise as this is then
backed up to the second NAS using TimeMachine, these are viewed in the Apple app..

Can someone offer the best method for Synology only best practice?

Many Thanks Phil

 

[fredbert]

Welcome to the forum.

I'm in a similar situation: very long time Mac user that has used iPhoto and Mac/iOS Photos in a lazy way. I've not used iCloud storage for Photos, only the My Photo Stream part that gets recent photos/camera roll sync'ed between devices. As such I'm still on the free 5GB iCloud

I've not yet worked out a best practice for fully weening myself off Apple Photos, but I do use the Synology Photos Mobile app to backup the iPhone to my NAS account. The alternative would be to use the similar feature in DS file app. Now I'm mostly using Synology Photos web and mobile apps rather than Mac and iOS Photos.

I still use Apple's system too but they are now separate repositories after doing a copy of photo and video files from my Mac. I now, too, backup the NAS using Hyper Backup to a second NAS plus photos and important docs to an encrypted Synology C2 vault.

The parallel approach, without using iCloud storage, is OK for now.

 

[Gerard]

I've not yet worked out a best practice for fully weening myself off Apple Photos, but I do use the Synology Photos Mobile app to backup the iPhone to my NAS account

how do you handle photos that you want deleted on your phone, and don’t want a copy of it on synology photos? Are you essentially having to delete those in both places.

 

[HighPeakRider]

Yes that's what I'm doing, I'm using my phone as a scrapbook and my NAS is the master copy that I want to keep.

Not sure if that's the right approach but its what I'm doing.......

 

[fredbert]

how do you handle photos that you want deleted on your phone, and don’t want a copy of it on synology photos? Are you essentially having to delete those in both places.

Pretty much what I do, unless I get in to iOS Photos and delete from there before it is backed up to the NAS.

I've started to do the same with my pocket camera as it is set to continuous (meaning most times I get two shots unless very light-fingered on the shutter): I review on the camera and delete unwanted shots before transferring (and I know there's strong debate about whether to use a camera's delete features for fear of card corruption, but it's working so far and saves ~50MB for every useless RAW+JPEG shot).

I find now that I'm using the camera instead of the iPhone for most photos now. The iPhone gets more use taking shots of awkward to see things like cabling at the back of the NAS or hi-fi.

Yes that's what I'm doing, I'm using my phone as a scrapbook and my NAS is the master copy that I want to keep.

Not sure if that's the right approach but its what I'm doing.......

Unless Apple changed the My Photo Stream feature since I last really looked at it: it doesn't (didn't) inlcude video backup via the stream so they required a physical upload to Mac iPhoto/Photos, or adding to a shared album. But Synology mobile apps did include them so was good knowing I had these backed up via this route.