iCloudPD with Immich internal library?

[Nuuki9]

Hi all!

I've been using Photosync for several years to get photos and videos from my iPhone to my NAS. I now use Immich as my photo server, and though this approach has worked generally well, but Im looking at moving the copy phase over to iCloudPD.

Currently, I transfer media into a staging area on my NAS. I then use Immich's CLI tools to import from there into its own internal library.

My suspicion is that if I tried to do the sdame thing using iCloudPD, it won't work - PhotoSync keeps its own record of what's been transferred, but I assume that iCloudPD is just looking at whether the media file is present in the target folder, and copying it over if not.

For videos this would be fine - I'd be deleting them from iCloud once transferred, so they'll only transfer over once. However with photos I plans to leave them in iCloud, and once I move them from staging into Immich I'm guessing they'd then transfer over again next time.

That being the case, I think I have two options:

1. Delete photos from iCloud, as well as videos. This is a pretty heavy handed approach and I quite like having my photos in iCloud.
2. Sync media into an Immich "external library". These files are not touched or moved.

Can anyone who's using iCloudPD with Immich comment on my assumptions here, and how they're managing it?