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Sharing photo library among users

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enuenu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 8, 2011
11
0
Just bought my first Apple gear. iMac and iPads for family. Downloaded some photos to the iMac via iPhoto and tried to allow other users to share the library. This caused major headaches. Prompts to repair permissions constantly appeared, even after permissions were changed. After a visit to the Apple store for a One to One session, it seems that the OS cannot provide this simple functionality;
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198

Surely there must be a simpler way for all users of our iMac to have access to the photo library. I thought it would be a simple folder permission issue. I cannot understand why such a simple issue is so hard on this system.

Would using a different photo organisation app solve the problem or is the problem due to the way the OS works?
 
C

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,561
1,672
Redondo Beach, California
enuenu said:
...
Would using a different photo organisation app solve the problem or is the problem due to the way the OS works?
Click to expand...

The problem is iPhoto. It is designed for one person per library.

Maybe create a user called iPhoto and everyone signs into that account to access the iPhoto library. But I never like shared accounts and would rather have one library per user.

There are multi-user digital asset management (DAM) systems but they are big and complex
 
E

enuenu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 8, 2011
11
0
Thanks for that.
ChrisA said:
Maybe create a user called iPhoto and everyone signs into that account to access the iPhoto library.
Click to expand...
That's the solution I have in place at the moment. A little inconvenient, but it works.

ChrisA said:
There are multi-user digital asset management (DAM) systems but they are big and complex
Click to expand...
Which DAM would be one of the more common ones used by smaller users?
 
E

enuenu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 8, 2011
11
0
After spending hours with Apple phone support, even they couldn't get a virtual disk and all the user access permissions working. In the end the only solution was to buy an external hard disk.

You can't store your photos on your iMac and allow all users to look at them. Seems incredible but that is how it is.
 
H

hipnetic

macrumors 65816
Oct 5, 2010
1,266
562
Hopefully the OP doesn't mind me hijacking this thread a bit. I've got a MacBook Air with a good chunk of photos (about 30GB worth) loaded into iPhoto. I just got a new rMBP and am going to be transferring my settings over to that. But I don't really *want* to store my photos on my laptop, anyway. My wife and daughter also have Macs, and we all have iPhones. I also have an always-on server (running Windows 7 Media Center and Plex) which has a few drives hooked to it, including a couple with additional photos.

I'd like for us all to have access to the photos using a UI that will help to organize them, and with the ability to easily access them from outside of the house. A couple of thoughts…

1) Plex. I believe Plex supports Photos (I never tried that feature before). I suspect that the UI is lacking compared to other options, though. This option is good because it keeps everything private inside my network, but also means that I'd need to implement a better backup solution.

2) An online service. Obviously Apple offers a service, but it seems pricey and I'd actually rather not be locked into an Apple-specific solution (I love my MacBooks but have contemplated trying a different smartphone OS). Flickr is probably at the top of my list right now, but other options include Google+.

For any of these options, I'd like to be able to share photos with strangers, friends, and family, and would like it to be flexible enough that I can do that on a picture-by-picture basis, but doing it by album would be OK, too.

One thing I like about iPhoto is that it sorts things by date and location. In playing with Google+ and Flickr, I know that they have access to the location info, but it doesn't seem like it gives you a view mode where you can easily group photos that way, etc.
 
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