How to download photos from iCloud

How can I easily move lots of photos from iCloud to another computer that is not associated to this iCloud account?

Here’s the problem. Our family uses an iMac as a main computer and most family photos of common interest are kept in the standard Apple Photo application on here. The computer is attached to the father’s iTunes and iCloud account. The father’s account uses the „Family“ function to share stuff with other members of the family. The mother also has her own separate iTunes/iCloud account.

Both father and mother back up their iPhones on this computer.

The problem arises with the storage and administration of the photos from these phones. The father’s iPhone has plenty of memory and his photos stay on his phone until downloaded to Photo.

The mother’s iPhone has limited memory and therefore her photos are automatically backed up to her iCloud account.

Although we can access her iCloud account via a browser from the family iMac, it seems impossible to batch-download her photos to the iMac. The problems seem to be:

1. Although the iMac could be attached to a second iCloud account, this linking doesn’t include access to photos in iCloud.

2. When accessing the mother’s iCloud account, photos can be selected and downloaded individually. This is no help however when, for example, wanting to download 500 holiday snaps to the family computer.

Is there a workable easy method to get the photos downloaded from the mother’s iCloud account to the family iMac (which as mentioned is attached to a different iCloud account)?

We do not necessarily want a blanket solution for everyone to be able to share all of their photos to everyone else in the family. We want to select and batch transfer groups of photos. Although longtime Apple users, I fear we are missing something in the philosophy of how this is supposed to work.

Feedback is highly appreciated.