Move photos from iCloud to External Hard Drive

To move the specific iCloud photos to an external hard drive, there are two ways for you.

• The first way to download iCloud photos from the iCloud website, then move the downloaded photos to external hard drive.

Please go to iCloud.com and sign in your Apple ID to download.

• The other way is to download your iCloud photos from Photos app on your MacBook.

Just go to Finder and open the Photos app, then choose Photos, click Preferences. Select iCloud, then click Download Originals to this Mac. In the last, click General and Show in Finder, to locate the Photo Library on your Mac. The default path: Users>your name>Pictures>Photos Library. Move the downloaded photos to your external hard drive.

More info and detailed steps you can follow from the link: backup iCloud photos to external hard drive

OK

Easiest way - create a new empty library on your mac (hold down the option key while starting photos)

Set it as the system library and enable iCloud photos.

Wait while photos downloads everything into the new library.

Select the images you want to export (it might be easier to add them to an album first, then select all in the album.

File>export unmodified originals (This should keep the file creation date (but will lose any edits made))

Choos a folder to store them in.

Delete them from the library (this will also delete them from iCloud and from your phone, so have another backup of them somewhere)

Sorry, The link address: backup iCloud photos to external hard drive

Are you using the photos app with a libary synced with iCloud? Or are you accessing the icloud photos directly from a web page?