Back up your photos
Finally, let’s make sure you never again lose a cherished memory
Most people consider photos and videos to be hugely important, and so it’s vital to safeguard them. If they’re only stored in one location or device, they are vulnerable.
The best backup method depends on which devices you use. If you use an iPhone for capture and a Mac for editing, Apple suggests iCloud Photo Library. This is activated in Photos > Preferences > iCloud. Turn on iCloud Photo Library and your pictures start uploading.
With iCloud Photo Library switched on, photos, videos and your edits become available across all your devices. It also means that photos aren’t included in your iCloud backup, making that smaller – though you still need the same space to be available in your iCloud storage. However, be mindful that uploads take a long time (especially on slow connections), and will likely require you to upgrade your iCloud storage if you take a lot of photos. Also, the connectedness of iCloud means changes propagate across all devices.
Apple offers another option as an alternative: My Photo Stream. This doesn’t eat into your iCloud storage, but only includes the most recent 30 days of photos, and omits videos and Live Photos. If you use Photo Stream, you must connect your iPhone to your Mac on a regular basis to download videos and Live Photos to the Photos app. You should also do this if you choose to use neither iCloud Photo Library nor Photo Stream – otherwise anything you capture on your iPhone will be gone if you lose the device. (Likewise when using non-Apple cameras that have no connection with Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library.)
Keep copies
To provide further protection for photos and videos, consider making periodic backups of your Photos library, which is usually located in your user account’s Pictures folder. You might also get into the habit of exporting especially important images and videos to a folder within your Pictures folder.
This means they won’t actually vanish if they’re accidentally deleted from iCloud Photo Library, and will be backed up on an ongoing basis by whatever system you’re using to safeguard your Mac’s contents, whether that’s Time Machine, cloning, the cloud, or a combination of all three.