loss of metadata from photos downloaded from iCloud

I am trying to backup and free space by downloading photos from my iCloud account to my Mac. As others have pointed out, metadata like date and location are lost during download via compatible format, and the originals have an unreadable format, which is therefore useless. Besides, metadata seems to be lost there too. Why does Apple make it so difficult to download ones own documents? Does anyone have a workaround? I need to also free some space on my iPhone, and cannot do that if I cannot store the older photos elsewhere.

I suspect Apple wants you to keep buying more memory on iCloud and more devices once they get filled up. That would be pretty greedy of them.

I hope there is a solution out there.

Cheers, Giuliano