After the holiday: back up, cull, and shrink your photos — the one-evening workflow

The most common mistake first

Most people start with deleting — "make some room first". A safe workflow works the other way around: you back up before culling, not after. Delete first and back up later, and one accidental swipe loses the sunset photo irretrievably. The order for the evening is therefore: back up → cull → shrink → share.

Step 1: back up twice (20 minutes, runs in the background)

The short version of the 3-2-1 rule for home use: two copies in two places before anything is deleted.

Copy 1 — the cloud: iCloud, Google Photos, or another photo service; after the holiday, get on Wi-Fi once and let the upload run. Watch out for "optimize storage" functions: they replace local originals with shrunk versions — for the archive, make sure the cloud really holds the originals.
Copy 2 — local: via cable to a computer or external drive, into a folder with a descriptive name (2026-06 Croatia). The year-month pattern up front sorts itself chronologically in any folder view.

Only once both copies exist may you delete on the phone — and then generously.

Step 2: cull in three passes (the core of the evening)

A single perfectionist pass through 800 photos fails — after 100 images all decisiveness flags. Three quick passes, each with a single question, work:

Pass 1 — "trash it": delete only obvious rejects: blurry, thumb in the shot, burst duplicates, the seventh photo of the same church. No artistic decisions, just garbage collection. Typically 800 becomes 400.
Pass 2 — "hearts": mark favorites (the heart symbol exists in every photo app). The question isn't "is it good?" but "would I show this to someone?". Typically: 60–100 hearts.
Pass 3 — only the hearts: from the favorites, choose the 15–30 images that tell the story of the holiday. That's the album that gets shared — and the only one anyone ever looks at again.

Step 3: shrink — but only the copies that leave the house

An important distinction: the archive stays at original size. Only what's sent, uploaded, or put on the web is shrunk — for that, 1600–2048 px on the long edge is almost always enough:

Drag the sharing selection in batch through the resize tool (runs browser-local, even with 30 images at once) — 4–8 MB per photo becomes 300–600 KB, with no visible difference on screen.
To squeeze out more storage: JPG compression at quality 80 — details in the size guide.

WhatsApp compresses photos hard — fine for the family chat, not for "send me the nice photos". The options at a glance: for good quality in the messenger, the document trick helps (send the original as a file, details in Images for WhatsApp); for whole albums, shared cloud albums (iCloud/Google Photos) are the most convenient route — the recipient downloads at the quality they need.

A privacy note for sharing beyond the close circle: holiday photos carry GPS coordinates — including those of the holiday apartment or your own home in the "finally back" photo. Before posting in groups or forums, run it once through the metadata check.

The evening checklist to tick off

Cloud upload fully completed (originals, not "optimized")?
Local copy in the folder YYYY-MM destination?
Passes 1–3: trash gone, hearts set, an album of 15–30 images ready?
Only now: phone storage cleared?
Sharing selection shrunk to 2048 px, metadata removed if needed?

If you like, print the best images — whether the resolution is enough for a poster is covered in Is my iPhone photo good enough to print?, and for the photo book there's a dedicated guide.

Sources

Apple — iCloud Photos and optimize storage · Google Photos — Backup quality.