How To Download Photos From Camera To Mac

If you have iCloud Photo Library activated, every photo you take with your iPhone or iPad, and every paradigm you lot upload to Photos on your Mac from a camera, will announced on all your devices. This may sound appealing but you may eventually come to the decision that you aren't prepared to pay for the iCloud storage required, or perchance y'all are getting a new phone that isn't an iPhone (!)

There are a few reasons why you might want to download photos from iCloud:

Yous may desire to remove photos from your iPhone simply when you try to delete them it says they will be removed from iCloud and all your devices and you don't want to do that!
Yous might desire to download copies of your iCloud photos to your Mac then that you lot tin can back them up – mayhap because yous need to repossess some of the infinite currently given to your Photo library by archiving sometime images.
Possibly you want to use a total-resolution version of a photo in a presentation, or to send to a friend or family fellow member. In order for your photos not to take up gigabytes of space on your devices, Apple tree uploads a full-res version to iCloud while showing a low-res version of on your device. In other words, you lot may exist able to view your photos on your Mac, but if you wanted a loftier-resolution version you might need to download information technology from iCloud.
You may want to grab a photo from your iCloud Photo Library merely you lot aren't on your Mac. In fact, you could even be on a PC.
You want to download total resolution versions of your photos for access when offline.
Yous want to exercise a full back upwardly of your Photo library (bearing in heed that if you cease using iCloud Photograph Library, or paying for iCloud storage, you lot will desire to download your photos kickoff).

In this article nosotros prove how to download the images stored in Apple's iCloud to your Mac, whether you want to grab individual or selected photos, make a fill-in of photos and then you tin delete them from your iPhone, or download the whole lot in i become so that y'all can back them up. (Nosotros have a full tutorial on backing upward your iPhone Photo Library here.)

Nosotros'll walk through a variety of ways to get your iCloud photos onto your Mac below.

How to download iCloud photos to your Mac using Photos

If you only desire to brand certain that you have a full-res re-create of a photograph on your Mac before deleting it from your iPhone, you tin can download the photo onto your Mac.

These steps assume you are using iCloud Photograph Library and that you have it fix in Photos on your Mac.

To check, become to: Photos > Preferences > iCloud. In that location should exist a tick in the box beside iCloud Photograph Library.

If you have iCloud Photo Library turned on, all your photos taken on your iPhone (and iPad) will appear in Photos on your Mac.

Find the photograph (or photos) you desire to save onto your Mac.
Click on the photograph(s) and elevate it to your desktop (or into a folder somewhere else on your Mac).

Now that you take a backup of the photo you can delete the original(s) from iCloud.

How to download iCloud photos to Mac: Photos app

How to download individual photos from iCloud.com

You tin download images from your iCloud on to any Mac or PC, just by logging into your iCloud in a spider web browser. Here's how:

Go to iCloud.com on a Mac browser and log in with your usual Apple tree ID and password. You'll see the usual array of iCloud apps, including Mail, Contacts, Calendar and so on.
Click on Photos to see all the images that are saved in iCloud.
Browse to the photo you want to download, and either click (to highlight) or double-click (to open information technology).
Either style, at the summit-right y'all'll see various icons: from left to correct, these signify favourite, add to album, share, download and delete. Click the download icon (the cloud with a downward arrow).
Check your downloads folder: the selected paradigm will take appeared there.

How to download photos from iCloud to Mac: Downloads folder

How to download all your iCloud photos to your Mac

As we said above, ane of the benefits of using iCloud Photo Library is that it makes it possible to view all your photos on all of your devices. Plain, it wouldn't be platonic if this meant that you needed a few hundred gigabytes of space bachelor on all your devices. Luckily, you lot don't need a lot of infinite to benefit from iCloud Photograph Library because y'all can set it to show depression-res versions of your photos while keeping the full-res version safe in iCloud.

However, if you have a lot of storage available on your Mac you might like to have total-res versions of your iCloud photos stored in Photos where they tin can exist backed upwardly for your own peace of mind. In fact, you don't fifty-fifty need a lot of storage on your Mac if you move your Photo library to a carve up storage device (we explain how to move your Photo Library to an external difficult drive here.)