Retrieving deleted photos after being deleted from recently deleted

-noskcaj wrote:

Then what do you do on the computer to retrieve them from the older iCloud? And would you find an older iCloud on an older device or where would you find the old iCloud?

Catfan1765 is not saying that you get to access an "older iCloud" – that you get to roll Apple's servers back to whatever was stored on them a month ago (or whatever).

But if

• You had copies of the photos in iCloud Photos stored on your computer, and
• You have backups of your Mac as of what it looked like some time ago

then you might be able to pull photos out of those local backups to put back into your Photos Library.

You would probably have to be careful not to mess up the current Photos Library in the process.

Note that:

• If you were using "Optimize Mac Storage" and your Mac was running low on space, it might not have had full-size local copies of all of the photos in your iCloud Photo Library. In that case your backups might have only reduced-size / reduced-quality versions of some photos, so that would be the most that you could get back.
• For the backups to contain copies of your local photos, as they existed before the catastrophe, the backups would have to be either versioned (e.g., Time Machine backups) or old (made before the catastrophe). If you had a backup that was just a clone of your system at some time AFTER the catastrophe, that backup wouldn't contain your photos and there would be no retrieving photos from it.