Using a PC to view photos hosted on iCloud

[JohnnyOldBoy]

Hi,

We are taking photos on and iPad and iPhone, both backed up to iCloud. I have subscribed to 50GB of storage as well.

Does anyone know how to view the photos on a PC ? I have downloaded the App to my PC.

Using the App I select the Photo option and then get the message 'Your iCloud photo library is empty'

I would expect to see the photos in the cloud. They must be there as I have used 5GB of my 50GB storage.


Any ideas ?

 

[tuftywhite]

Do you have more than 1 iCloud Account, if so, are you logging in with the same one?

 

[JohnnyOldBoy]

No, I only have one Apple account.

 

[iand46]

Log into https://www.icloud.com/
on your PC, should be on there I think.

 

[ianf]

In the settings->photos & camera on each device, do you have iCloud Photo Library turned on?

You said you have the devices set to backup to the cloud, but that's actually just the phone data, not photos, they only upload as the above is turned on.

5GB of backups is about right for a few devices.

 

[iand46]

5GB is approx 1000 pics & 40 Vids on my iCloud account

 

[iand46]

Back up data in iCloud is only saved once for all your Apple devices no matter how many you use or share.

 

[ianf]

That last bit is wrong, and not really relevant to the problem that the OP's iCloud photos isn't getting populated.

There's a backup per-device, and it only includes your photo stream, along with things like phone settings (screen layout etc, hence one backup per device). Go into settings-icloud-storage-manage storage to see all devices and how much the iCloud library is taking up.

Once uploaded to iCloud Photos, it may or may not have the full image on the device depending on settings.

 

[iand46]

Sorry I was just referring to shared info between devices ie apps & email etc which for me only uses approx 1 . 5 GB.
Hasn't photo stream been removed with iOS 9?

 

[ianf]

That's the op's problem, it's not the backups that populate iCloud photo, but having the device set to send stuff to it. I bet he has 5gb of backup and 0b of iCloud photos.

If these are important pics, then at least one mac/pc should be set up to keep originals as well as in iCloud, so it can be backed up properly to an external disk occasionally as well.

 

[JohnnyOldBoy]

In the settings->photos & camera on each device, do you have iCloud Photo Library turned on?

You said you have the devices set to backup to the cloud, but that's actually just the phone data, not photos, they only upload as the above is turned on.

5GB of backups is about right for a few devices.

ianf,

Thank you, you are exactly correct. On the iPad I have just switched the iCloud Photo Library on and photos are being uploaded as I write this. When I did the same on the iPhone I got a message saying some photos would be uploaded and deleted off iTunes. Is it OK to do this ?

Can I ask about workflows going forward ? If I delete a photo from either iPad or iPhone I assume it is NOT deleted from the cloud ?

Thanks again

 

[ianf]

Nope it's the other way round, if you delete it anywhere, it's gone from all.

It should give you an iCloud library that's the set of all pics. You can choose to keep low-res for browsing on each device, or fill all of them with high res copies. When you open a low res one it'll pull the full file over.

Photos only upload over wifi fortunately.

Here's the skinny on it:- https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204264