Syncing photo library to PC - Number of photos does not match

Question

I am trying to consolidate my photo library with my girlfriend's, across several devices. I am having some problems getting her iPhone photos to my PC.

What I tried so far:

1) I accessed her iCloud via browser. However, apparently you cannot download photos in bulk there.

2) I installed the Windows app for iCloud that also has an add-in for the file explorer to download pictures. However, this app is outright broken. First, it stopped syncing after a certain number of pictures. I reinstalled the app and the app started syncing again, after the same number of pictures, but different MB folder volume. So there must be something off.

3) I connected her phone via USB to my PC. Before, I made sure that I enabled the option to store high-resolution versions on the device, and not only on the cloud. I then transferred the pictures.

However, I still have some issues:

1) The folders were named e.g., 120APPLE and 100CLOUD. How come that there are two types of series of folders, one called APPLE and the other CLOUD?

2) The number of items was completely off the count in the iPhone app. In the App, it was 7777 items. The count of transferred files was 7926. Also, if I only count the CLOUD or only the APPLE folders, I do not get the same count.

Any ideas what could be the explanations for the two issues I am facing?

Answer 1

Windows has an application called Windows Photo Gallery. I think Windows 10 has it out of the box, for Windows 7 you can download it for free from MS site (or at least you could). It is a MS try for local photos keeper, it keeps all photos in actual folders, not in a giant database. So I use it mostly for importing photos from the iPhone. It sees the device, shows all the photos by dates (and actually by events, can be several in a one day, pretty neat). I never delete old photos from my phone, so import finds them all every time. But you can deselect all and then select only for the last two days, for example.

If you have this application I recommend to try it.