Q&A: How to take your photos back from Big Tech & More

Thanks for the questions, we've got the answers

We’ve had a lot of questions lately, so today, I thought I’d answer a bunch.

Let’s start with the recent piece on taking back images from Big Tech, as both a pre-cautionary measure and basic safety. You should always have your data available locally, and backed up on drives, as well as online.

“Can you back up what you’ve got – and just keep rolling, too, with iCloud?” writes Dave from Indianapolis. “ I presume one can have “both” but I don’t know where to begin.”

You sure can have both, but getting the images back from Apple won’t be easy.

Go to iCloud.com, select the Photos tab, and then scroll to the top, to the first photos you put into iCloud. You want to select all (on Macs, Command A) and then clicking the download tool and be done with it.

But that would be too simple.

Apple gives you a pop-up message saying you can’t download more than 1,000 at a time. (On the Help page for how to do it, Apple conveniently doesn’t mention this!) I wish I had a magic bullet solution here, but alas, I don’t. Even though I basically don’t use iCloud, I still have over 16,000 photos in there. So that’s 17 different download steps.

So just highlight a selection of photos until you get to under 1,000. Apple will show you the number on the side of the screen. Then click download and start over again. And over. And over.

Google Photos

Google makes it less cumbersome to get your data back from Google Photos. Go to takeout.google.com and you’ll see a long checklist of 55 items you can download from Google, from your Google Play and Blogger history to your Chrome bookmarks.

Go to the top of the screen, click Deselect All so you don’t have to check and uncheck all these, opt for Photos, and wait for the download. Google says it could take hours or even days to complete. I clicked the button Sunday morning—I’ll let you know in the next edition how long it took to get them back.

Amazon

It’s even harder with Amazon Photos, which happens to have the best terms of any of the big 3 photo services. Free, unlimited storage to members of the Prime entertainment and shipping program. Which means that if you’re like me, you’ll have more photos on Amazon than iCloud or Google, which cost $9.99 monthly for 2 terabytes of storage.

However, it also has, by far, the worst terms for retrieving them. How does one by one sound?

With Amazon, to take them back, you’ll have to select your choices, one at a time, and download them that way. This could take days, if not weeks, to complete.

A word from our sponsor, SmugMug

As you all know, I use SmugMug to run my website and act as a virtual hard drive that replicates what I have at home. Go to Paris for a PhotowalksTV shoot? I create a Paris gallery. And so on.

So there is no ALL photos section at SmugMug, because that’s not how the site is set up. Everything is in a Gallery. I have 1500 galleries and 275,000 photos on my http://www.jeffersongraham.net website.

However, each gallery does have a download all tool.

Workaround? If so inspired, I could copy gallery photos into new archives, and then download them. That would be time consuming! Or I could spend $9 for a third-party app called Smudo, which promises to do all the heavy lifting and bring everything back with a one-button click.

Next question: Editing PhotowalksTV videos on the iPhone?

“Thank you for you excellent Photowalks filmed with the iPhone,” was a recent question posted to my YouTube channel. “Can you say a little about how they are assembled. Video editing software? Is that done on the iPhone also?”

I wish. It amazes me that 16 years after the introduction of the iPhone, no one has come up with the killer video editing app to do this on the iPhone. Apple’s iMovie is too primitive and I’ve never gotten the hang of Adobe’s Rush.

While I shoot most of the episodes on the iPhone, for a variety of reasons, including portability, quality and the ability to walk the streets with a non-threatening camera, I edit the footage in Apple’s Final Cut Pro on my MacBook Pro, where it really helps to see the images on a 16 inch screen, add music and graphics, and move things all over the place.

Is there a great video app out there for editing on the iPad? Readers, tell me about it.

Please help me tame my Gmail!

“Is there a way to search for ‘attachments’ only in my gmail?” asks Ginger. “Would help me delete those more quickly! Or what about attachments & older than 2020!?”

The best way to make room on Gmail and not run out of storage is to head straight over to Google One. This is the corporate entity that oversees storage plans for Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos, which are all intertwined. Rates start at $1.99 monthly and go to $9.99 monthly for storage.

Google One will show which e-mails have large attachments, and offer you tools to delete them.

Part II: How to tame your Gmail

More on Backup here:

Thanks as always for reading, watching and listening. I write this from Day 4 of COVID--somehow I escaped it in 2020, 2021 and 2022 but it finally got me on Thursday. But hey—I can only lie in bed for so long, so thrilled to put out another edition! As always, smash the Like button, let me know your thoughts with a Reply and keep those questions coming!

Jeff