Photos application taking up double the storage.

What does the Photos.app show in Photos, when you select the "Library" in the sidebar of Photos and open the Info with ⌘i ?

This will show you the total size of the current version of the images and videos, but the storage needed in iCloud and on your mac may be larger. Photos is storing the original (or originals, if a photo has more than one original, for example RAW&JPEG pairs) plus the edited versions and additional working copies, database entries for the albums, folders, metadata, plus caches created by background processes and external editors. Usually the additional content will need roughly 20% of the size of the originals, but if you are shooting RAW&JPEG, or are editing all images with external editors, the library size can double. For some external editors the edited versions can be much larger than the originals, if the edits are saved back to Photos as TIFFs.

The local library on your Mac may be smaller than the storage used by your library in iCloud, if you have enabled "Optimize Mac Storage" in the Photos > Settings > iCloud. Then Photos will remove originals from your Mac and keep them only in iCloud, so the local copy of the library will be smaller. But without "Optimize Mac Storage" the local copy of the iCloud Photos Library will usually be larger than the storage used in iCloud.

See the second paragraph on this page in the user guide: Use iCloud Photos to store photos in iCloud – Apple Support (UK)

Looking at your screenshots, it looks like you have enabled the "Optimize Mac Storage" in the Photos > Settings > iCloud, to save storage on your Mac. Then your local library does no longer contain all high resolution originals and your photos in iCloud will be the only copies. You are probably aware, that then your Time Machine backups will no longer include all photos, as Time Machine can only backup items that are on your Mac. If you have not already done so, keep copies of all photos on an external drive by exporting them from Photos, or you may not be able to recover accidentally deleted photos, if you delete photos permanently.

Your Photos Library is really so large, that you are needing so much storage.

In your case you should enable again "Optimize Mac Storage", as you cannot afford to keep the originals on your Mac - the size of the resources folder is showing you how much storage your library will take, even fully optimized, with the originals only in iCloud. But then you will have to save at least copies of the originals somewhere else, for example on an external drive.

Or get yourself an external drive to host your Photos Library. If you move the Photos Library to an external volume, you can save the complete size of the Photos Library, not just the storage taken up by the originals. See: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

The bar with storage used is showing you the storage needed for the photos, including the photos only in iCloud, so the total is more than the size of th disk.

Which system version is running on your Mac?

After I upgraded to macOS 11 Big Sur and then macOS 12 Monterey, I have frequently seen, that the size of the Photos Library has been reported completely inaccurately. The problem seems to be, that the Photos Library is a bundled package of many files and folders, and when Photos is modifying the content of the package, the total size of the package is not always updated immediately and reliably. And the storage overview in the -menu has not been very reliable on the older system versions as well.

What is your main concern? Do you want to free storage on your Mac or in iCloud, or both?

To see, how large the library Photos Library on your Mac really is, you may want look into the package.

• Quit Photos, if it is running.
• Select the Photos Library, then ctrl-click it and use the command "Show Package Contents".
• Now you will see a Finder window with the folders inside the library. If you look at it in list view, you can see, how large the folders inside are. Does this add up to the size of the library shown in the Finder?

Here is a screenshot of my iCloud Photos Library: The largest folder is "originals", followed by "resources". "Optimize Mac Storage" can reduce the size of "originals", but not of the other folders. "resources" will grow, whenever you edit photos, particularly, if you use external editors. "private" is the place, where other processes are caching their data. You may be seeing additional folder with "Photo Cache" in the names, which can become quite huge, in my example the Apple TV Photo Cache".

Do the total sizes of all subfolders add up to the total size of the Photos Library you are seeing?

As you only just disabled the "Optimize" feature, the "originals" folder will still be much smaller than in cloud, as it will take a while, until the originals have been downloaded to your Mac again.

You have probably turned off iCloud Photos, before all originals had been synced back to your Mac.

Do not erase the photos from iCloud, before you have checked, that all original image files are now back on your mac. You may need to download missing originals from iCloud.

Good Luck! it should work now with iCloud Photos turned off completely. Without iCloud+ it would be problematic with a Photos Library as large as yours.

When I transfer the pictures I have taken from my iPad to my Computer the picture is so Hugh that only part of it shows when I open it.