How can I recover photos and videos after clicking 'Download and Keep Originals' on iPhone?

miru210 wrote:

I clicked on "Download and keep Originals" and got rid of all my photos and videos. Luckily I still have some photos left but I had 9.000 and most of it just disappeared. I thought it must be in my iCloud backup but I've been waiting for the photos to load back in again and nothing has changed. Could this mean that my photos have been permanently deleted?

Im not sure what I did wrong since all I tried was unsynchronizing my IPad and my IPhone. Everything worked perfect the last time I tried and I'm scared that I accidently made a big mistake and deleted many important pictures and videos from my phone.

I hope this isn't badly explained, I would really appreciate any suggestions or advice!

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

read here Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support

miru210 wrote:

I clicked on "Download and keep Originals" and got rid of all my photos and videos. Luckily I still have some photos left but I had 9.000 and most of it just disappeared. I thought it must be in my iCloud backup but I've been waiting for the photos to load back in again and nothing has changed. Could this mean that my photos have been permanently deleted?

Im not sure what I did wrong since all I tried was unsynchronizing my IPad and my IPhone. Everything worked perfect the last time I tried and I'm scared that I accidently made a big mistake and deleted many important pictures and videos from my phone.

I hope this isn't badly explained, I would really appreciate any suggestions or advice!

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

read here Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support

miru210 wrote: … I clicked on "Download and keep Originals" and got rid of all my photos and videos.

I don't get that-- where did you get rid of your pictures-- in iPhone settings, or what? And why?

iCloud Photos is a synchronization service. When you engage iCloud Photos on a device, then the Library on that device is kept just the same as the iCloud Photos Library. So, for instance, if you take a picture with your iPhone, it is added to the iPhone's Photos Library, copied to iCloud Photos Library, and then copied to the Photos Library on each of the other devices that you have connected. If you delete a picture on your iPhone, then that picture is deleted at iCloud and on all the other devices. 

The "Optimize Storage" choice saves space by keeping smaller images on your phone and relying on iCloud to keep the originals. "Download Originals" means keeping the large original files on your iPhone as well as at iCloud, and this takes up way more space on the phone.

If you turn off iCloud on an iPhone, delete pictures, and then turn iCloud connection back on, then the pictures at ICloud will be copied back to the phone in order to keep the Photos Libraries the same.

If you have Optimize turned on and you disconnect from iCloud, you get this warning:

If you turn on Download, and then, before there is time for the originals to download (perhaps weeks,) then the optimized pictures on the phone will be removed, as the warning says.

So, what did you do? And why?