Incorporate iCloud images into iMatch??

[rgdudley]

I am wondering if there is any problems if I incorporate iCloud images into iMatch.  I have iCloud for windows installed and my iCloud images are therefore (i think) reside also on my hard drive.  It has slightly fewer than 2000 images. 

I am assuming that I can list/import that folder as a folder in iMatch.

Problems??

[Mario]

Usually cloud storage allows you to mirror what you have in the cloud on your local disk. OneDrive does, DropBox does, GooleDrive does. This means you can just add the local folder to your IMatch database and work with it.
Which is of course the best thing to do. Having only one copy of your data is bad idea!
Consider that your Apple account can be terminated any day, for any reason, and without anything you can do about it. This happens every day and all your data would be lost! For me and most IT people I believe, cloud storage is only the 3rd tier - for good reasons.

I assume Apple does the same as the other popular cloud vendors, allowing you to mirror your Apple cloud stuff on your local disk. But then, being Apple, they might not, in order to keep all your data under their control?
I don't use Apple products, so I don't really  know.

[rgdudley]

I have gone ahead and incorporated my iCloud pictures into my iMatch database.
I have iCloud for windows installed and that mirrors your iCloud Pictures onto your hard drive. (Note that iCloud drive is a slightly different thing).

So all your iCloud pictures are then on your hard disk at: Drive letter/username/pictures/icloud photos/photos... and this folder can be imported into iMatch.

This way all the iCloud photos can be examined in iMatch and it is easy to search for similar images in your total database. Files deleted, or moved to another folder, from that folder from within iMatch will then also disappear from the icloud, fmoved into that folder will eventually appear in your icloud photos too. However, if you delete a file on your iphone or ipad then the file will not be deleted from within iMatch. It will show up as missing and you need to remove it from iMatch 'manually'.

New ipad, iphone photos will, eventually appear on your hard drive and will appear in iMatch when you "rescan" the folder.

So far no problems. The icloud images will not be backed up with my current iMatch backup protocall, but they could be added... but that may not be necessary.

I don't like the fact that I can't specify the location of the iCloud folder... or can I? Have to check.

(A few months ago I tried the method of dumping all my icloud photos into another folder for imatch, but in that case I was not moving things out of iCloud when I moved them to other folders.)

[rgdudley]

After playing around with this.... 

A bit of follow-up regarding incorporating icloud photos into an iMatch database:

Seems to be working fine... with the following provisos

Thing to be aware of (I think):

1) 'iCloud photos' does not understand sub-folders! So creating a sub folder from within windows or via iMatch creates a folder on your hard drive, BUT icloud photos ignores it and will include images in that sub folder in the icloud photos as if there was no sub-folder! At least that is my experience so far. So creating subfolders under iCloud Photos from within IMATCH or windows does not really make sense.... ..?

(Note that the "folders" created on the iPad and iPhone photos app are merely "tags" not real folders.)

2) Metadata,, in theory should be the same for both systems, but seeing detailed metadata on iCloud Photos is not as easy as in iMatch.  But looking at these images in another app should show changes... still checking that. 

Conclusion:  I will continue to have my icloud photos folder connected to IMatch, BUT I will primarily use IMatch to move images I want to save out of the iCloud and into my regular folders in IMatch/Windows.  I will avoid dealing with metadata on those files until after they are moved to proper IMatch folders.

[Mario]

Thanks for sharing the info, appreciated.

It seems to work smoother with OneDrive, GoogleDrive or Dropbox. Folder structures etc. are mirrored in the cloud and on your other devices. There is always some trade-off with the Apple ecosystem, it seems.

I merely use the cloud as a 3rd layer backup.
Storing all your files on another person's computer (Apple's in this case) is fine, but only if you have local copies under your control. I understand you also do that, which is smart.

I also only upload data into the cloud that I have encrypted on my machine before uploading. It's not that I would not trust Goolge/Microsoft/Apple etc. with my data (I surely don't) but I'm from Germany and I have to follow the GDRP regulations, which considers cloud space provided by US companies as not safe to use from a privacy standpoint.

Software like the free Cryptomator makes this very easy.

I've read many reports in IT fora and press about people having their Apple/Google/Microsoft account closed for "abuse" or "violation of terms" - and then never getting them to open the account again or only after some lengthy process involving lawyers...
If all your emails, data and photos are linked to an Apple/Google/Microsoft account, and you lose this account for any reason (and than happen even by mistake), you're in trouble.
Because reaching a human person at these companies to sort things like this out is almost impossible. It's all chat bots and now ChatGPT with pre-canned answers and no real understanding or will to help you.

[rgdudley]

As a followup to my post about using iCloud with iMatch I ended up writing a short note on my Sub Stack.  I continue to incorporate my iCloud photos into iMatch by making use of iCloud for Windows. 

The article is at:  https://substack.com/home/post/p-144168872?r=m70x1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Of particular note... within iMatch (as within Windows):

• You can move images out of the iCloud ONLY IF you are moving them to folders on a different disk drive. (They will be moved out of iCloud.) Trying to move to another folder on the same drive will give an error.
• Although you can rename iCloud images within iMatch and, of course, the new names will show up on your Windows drive BUT will NOT show up in the iCloud.
• However, you CAN move an image out of iCloud (to a different drive), rename it, and place it back in the iCloud folder with the new name.  It will then be incorporated in to the iCloud images as a new image with the new name.
• You can easily move any images onto iCloud by placing them into the iCloud folder.  This is handy for having favorite images easily available to show friends etc.  Suggest giving a name that indicates you have kept the original elsewhere.
• Using iCloud for windows will place your images in the folder C:users>username>Pictures>iCloud Photos>Photos.  You can incorporate that directly into iMatch.  You CANNOT rename that folder.  It will show up in iMatch as a folder named "photos"

[6b6561]

I was never hit by the #1 "can't move files" things as first thing that I did with iCloud Photo was to create a junction link from my data drive to the hard coded directory and can therefore cut and paste files as I want to. Of course this only works if you have two drives on your system.

Code Select Expand

mklink /J "F:\iCloud Photos" "C:\Users\<username>\Pictures\iCloud Photos\Photos"

[6b6561]

I skimmed through your substack and I have a workflow proposal for you based on what I do. I use Google Photo for my carry around photo album but I do also have iCloud in the mix. So I deal with photos coming from iPhone, Android and cameras... all going back into gphoto.

What I would propose for you is to:
* Setup a new category or keyword in IMatch called "copied to iPhoto". (I have it as a category as I don't want this in the meta data.
* Create a "IMatch managed" folder in iCloud photo
* Setup a batch job called "copy to iPhoto" in IMatch where you set the output file name to "{File.Path|replace:F:\Digi bilder==C:\Users\<username>\Pictures\iCloud Photos\Photos\IMatch managed}" (Thank you Mario for the recepie)

Workflow:
* Offload your images from iCloud to IMatch
* Organize, cull, edit...
* Add the pictures you want to have in iCloud to the iCloud category
* Select the pictures in the "copy to iPhoto" category
* Run the batch job and the files are copied back into iCloud in the way you want to have them

[Mario]

"batch job" => run the IMatch Renamer to copy the files added in the iCloud category to the local iCloud sync folder, when I understand correctly.

Let us know if you need help with the Renamer.

[6b6561]

Thanks Mario for the info on the Renamer, that will come in handy as I have some images with very strange names. Your documentation is just fantastic!

As such I'm not worried about filenames, I have given up on that a long time ago, due to number of devices in use. Only time I change file names if I have a clash where two cameras would have used the same image names in the same time period.

I do the copy back to iPhoto with the batch processor, works perfectly for my workflow.

[6b6561]

Caveat: If you duplicate photos in the iPhone photo app, then both files will have the same display name and Windows will only see the original file.

Reason for this is that the name is just a display name for the object in the cloud. Photos in the cloud are stored as an object with an ID, something like 1EE74501-83E2-48DE-844C-983CA8B18FB6, the object is given a display name. Object ID's are normally not shown, but you can see them in the URL if you access iCloud photo in a web browser.

[Mario]

That's not something IMatch can handle for you, sorry.