Switching from Apple Photos to Google Photos
Before you jump to Google Photos you need to decide if you want to store your photos (and videos) at their original resolution or whether you’re happy to put up with some resizing—images are stored at a maximum of 16 megapixels and videos are stored at a maximum of 1080p HD. If you choose the second option, you can store as much as you want, for free. If you want to keep everything as it is, you need to think about paying for Google Drive storage, as you only get 15GB for free. Prices start at 100GB for £1.49 a month.
If for whatever reason you can’t get your iCloud photos back to a Mac or iOS device, the export options from iCloud on the web are a little less than stellar. Pictures can be downloaded individually easily enough, but for bulk downloads you have to use the Shift or Cmd keys to select multiple items at once, then click the download icon. Once saved somewhere, they can be uploaded to Google Photos using a desktop client or just your web browser.
Switching from Google Photos to Apple PhotosAs we’ve said, Google Photos lives on the web, but getting all your pictures and videos back down again isn’t too difficult—though it might take some time if you’ve got a massive photo library and a sluggish internet connection. With Apple Photos, you don’t have to store your pictures in the cloud, but if you do then you’ll probably need to pay for extra storage.
The Google Photos desktop client for macOS doesn’t have two-way sync, but the one for Google Drive does. First, go to Google Drive on the web, open the Settings page (via the cog icon) and tick the box marked Automatically put your Google Photos into a folder in My Drive under the General tab.
Hey presto, all your photos and videos are pulled down from the cloud. In the Photos app on your Mac, pick File then Import to load in the newly downloaded content. It’s only if you don’t have a Mac computer to hand that difficulties arise—if you’re using Apple’s photo services solely on iPhones, iPads, and the web, maybe.
A computer of some kind really is essential though as a stopgap between Google Photos and Apple’s Photos apps, even if you’re planning to use nothing but an iPhone and iCloud Photo Library for the rest of your life. In other words you can’t go straight from cloud service to cloud service. Without investing too much time and effort you should be up and running on your new photo management system and ready to take and store pictures again—at least until you decide to switch to something new.
Editor - Liam McClelland | @Liamicy